Did gun control cost McAuliffe and Democrats the Virginia election?

[Kang Colby]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/did-gun-control-cost-mcauliffe-and-democrats-the-virginia-election/2015/11/04/fa5dfdfa-830d-11e5-9afb-0c971f713d0c_story.html

Sturtevant beat Democrat Daniel A. Gecker after GOP supporters ran ads blasting Gecker for trying to win the seat with $700,000 of outside help from pro-gun-control TV advertisements paid for by a group linked to former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“The gun thing, I would have done it differently,” Sen. Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax) said. “It’s speculation at this point, but I feel the Gecker seat was one we thought we were going to win. . . . [The gun issue] was one variable that was thrown in at the last minute.”

Other observers were blunter in ascribing blame. A Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial said Gecker “made a massive mistake” by accepting the ads from Bloomberg. “A campaign focused on guns redounded to Gecker’s despair,” it said.

Virginia governors can’t be reelected, so the GOP’s continued control of both chambers of the General Assembly means McAuliffe has little to no chance of fulfilling his dreams of expanding Medicaid or passing new gun-control laws.

I hope we learned something from this past election. If you peddle gun control in a purple state, it will backfire. Bloomberg would have been better off to just send his check to the Republicans directly. A gun control ad in a purple state is a direct endorsement of the opposition candidate. The consequences of this are real and painful...people are going to loose out on the benefits of expanded Medicaid. I hope the controllers can sleep well over this.