March for Our Lives may have recently cut its staff to the bone thanks to fundraising woes, but don’t expect any large scale layoffs from Everytown for Gun Safety or its affiliated groups like Moms Demand Action. So long as billionaire Michael Bloomberg is serving as the organization’s sugar daddy Everytown employees have job security and anti-gun politicians can be assured of campaign contributions.
But while Everytown and Moms Demand Action have been providing support for candidates from Kamala Harris down to state legislators, the group is going to be focusing some of its efforts on electing anti-gun attorneys general around the country, with the New York Times reporting that Everytown plans on spending at least $10 million over the next two years specifically on AG races.
The group, Everytown for Gun Safety, will back Democratic candidates in 10 competitive states, including Virginia this fall and Arizona, Georgia, Minnesota, Nevada and Wisconsin, among others, next year, according to John Feinblatt, the organization’s president.
The pledged spending from a group fueled by Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor and a Democratic megadonor, is notable because of his apparent reluctance to put his money behind Vice President Kamala Harris last year. He spent months resisting entreaties to donate, though fellow billionaires persuaded him to give $50 million in late October to a nonprofit group supporting her campaign.
Everytown has for years spent money on down-ballot efforts to elect Democratic candidates for state legislatures, particularly in places where gun control measures had a chance of being enacted and where smaller sums of money could have an influence on races.
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Mr. Feinblatt said that his group’s push to support attorneys general, which will be called the Everytown Rule of Law Fund, would focus on defending states from actions by the Trump administration more than on serving as an offensive playbook for enacting gun control measures.
Attorneys general “are trying to protect the rule of law,” Mr. Feinblatt said. “They’re trying to protect the things that are in every basic textbook of American democracy.”
He added: “We want to make sure that the A.G.s know that groups like us will support them if they do the right thing, and we want them to know that we have their back today and we’ll have their backs in 2026.”
While Feinblatt claims the Bloomberg-bought attorneys general will focus more on suing the Trump administration over various actions it might take, any Democrats that Everytown helps to elect will also be reliable voices in support of keeping existing gun control laws in place and advocating for more. A.G.s often file amicus briefs in legal disputes where they’re not a direct party, and Bloomberg’s hoping to build a legal army of attorneys who will advocate for keeping gun and magazine bans in place, making the Second Amendment off-limits to adults under-21, and erecting as many barriers to carry as possible through the use of “sensitive places” where guns are banned.
Gun owners in Virginia have a chance to deal Everytown’s campaign an early blow, since our elections will take place this fall. I’m sure the Bloomberg bucks will be flowing into the state in support of Abigail Spanberger’s gubernatorial campaign as well, but the gun control group will also be spending heavily to knock Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares out of the office he’s held since 2022. We’ve already shown that an legion of grassroots activists can defeat the deep pockets of the anti-gun billionaire, but Second Amendment advocates can’t afford to be complacent about the prospects of an Everytown-funded A.G. (or governor) intent on implementing an “assault weapon” ban and other infringements on our right to keep and bear arms.
Read the full article here
