Mayor Mike on what he wants his super PAC to do:
“… The point of his super PAC, he said, was to provide “spine” for politicians under that sort of pressure, which is why, for instance, it is supporting the re-election of Representative Robert J. Dold, a Republican from Illinois. Mr. Dold got a “D” from the National Rifle Association for backing some gun restrictions. “You’re not going to beat the N.R.A. overnight,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “As you get going, people start realizing that there’s a sane group of people out there that want them to do intelligent things, and that that’s where their support is going to come from.” …”
That’s nice, except for the fact that Independence USA PAC, like Mayors Against Illegal Guns, is funded almost entirely by one person: Bloomberg himself. There’s no “group”, it’s just more astroturf wrapped around Bloomberg’s ego.
By and large, the antigun groups have given up on directly influencing elections through PACs and GOTV efforts. Being astroturf they don’t have a constituency like NRA to raise money from or tell whom to vote for and appear to be shifting towards more “educational”/public relations type activities in an effort to still appear relevant.
Bloomberg got that partly right, but he should have stopped after he said, “You’re not going to beat the N.R.A.”