NRA-ILA | Bloomberg Whips Out Checkbook for Another Virginia Election Cycle

We recently wondered about our favorite anti-gun billionaire, Mike Bloomberg, and whether he would remain committed to buying the votes of legislators willing to promote his gun-ban agenda.

We didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

The new trend in Virginia seems that the election season doesn’t really kick in until Bloomberg starts pouring in money. CNN recently reported that Bloomberg’s personal gun-ban apparatus, Everytown for Gun Safety, plans to funnel “more than $1.8 million” into Virginia elections this year. This continues the former New York City mayor’s trend of spending his personal fortune in the Old Dominion to buy politicians that will promote his extreme gun control agenda.

In 2017, Bloomberg’s Everytown spent nearly $1.5 million to elect current Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D). With a strong anti-gun advocate like Northam as governor, Bloomberg then turned on the money spigot to flood Virginia with another $2.5 million in 2019 in order to purchase the commonwealth’s legislature.

Within weeks of Bloomberg-funded anti-gun extremists winning full control of Virginia’s legislative process, one of the most extreme gun bans—even more restrictive than the law in place in Bloomberg’s home state of New York—was quickly introduced. Countless other bills designed to erode the rights of Virginia’s law-abiding gun owners quickly followed.

In spite of tens of thousands of law-abiding gun owners and supporters of the Second Amendment showing up in Virginia’s capital to peacefully protest this unprecedented assault on Virginians’ firearm freedoms, Bloomberg’s legislative minions continued to push the radical anti-gun agenda.

While the crown jewel of the gun control agenda—the ban on semi-automatics and standard-capacity magazines—was ultimately defeated, Bloomberg’s bought and paid for legislature did pass a number of anti-gun bills.

Clearly, Bloomberg wants to go much farther with his campaign to destroy the right to keep and bear arms in Virginia.

This year, the bulk of Bloomberg’s money appears to be earmarked for Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, with about $1 million apparently pledged to the campaign thus far. McAuliffe, like Bloomberg, is a wealthy businessman and investor from New York, although his estimated net worth is “merely” $30 million; a far cry from the lofty perch of Bloomberg’s billionaire status.

Also like Bloomberg, McAuliffe has a long history of funneling money into the coffers of anti-gun politicians. With McAuliffe, however, he uses other people’s money. He became prominent in politics as a prolific fundraiser; this includes helping pump $275 million into then-president Bill Clinton’s political accounts.

McAuliffe, of course, has been Virginia’s governor before, serving from 2014-18. In that campaign, Bloomberg’s Everytown put a relatively paltry $20,000 into getting him elected, although Bloomberg did use another mechanism for converting his wealth into political influence; his Independence USA PAC supported McAuliffe to the tune of $1.75 million. Back then, McAuliffe’s anti-gun activities were predominantly limited to vetoing legislation that supported the rights of crime victims and those who are concerned about self-defense, as anti-gun legislators were in the minority.

Then came Bloomberg’s 2019 spending spree.

This year, Bloomberg has increased his Everytown buy-in on McAuliffe by at least 50 times since he held office the first time, and his overall investment for buying Virginia legislators is in the neighborhood of $10 million since 2015. If all of Bloomberg’s purchases pay off at the polls this November, we can expect the two New Yorkers to cash in by completely gutting the Second Amendment in Virginia.

Ironically, the former New Yorker, McAuliffe, once called out the current New Yorker, Bloomberg, and the anti-gun group that relies on his largesse to exist. In 2016, when McAuliffe was compelled to work with pro-Second Amendment legislators in Virginia to fix a mess created by the commonwealth’s Attorney General regarding right to carry reciprocity, Everytown put out a press release saying they “condemn the Governor’s decision.” A later release said McAuliffe was “sullying his legacy,” that he had “betray[ed]” anti-gun activists, and had “abandoned his standing” as a gun control proponent.

McAuliffe, according to CNN, dismissed Everytown’s temper tantrum, and shrugged off the group as “an outside group meddling in state politics.”

At least he got that right.

But these days, Bloomberg is willing to spend whatever it takes to tighten the New Yorker’s grip on the Virginia legislature, as well as whatever it takes to get the ex-New Yorker McAuliffe back in as governor. If this spending spree is successful, we anticipate the past will be forgotten, and McAuliffe will have an open-door policy for Bloomberg and his paid-for anti-gun proxies in the legislature, as they do everything they can to destroy the rights of Virginia’s law-abiding gun owners.