Here is a letter that the NRA sent to Wisconsin judicial candidates. It asks about their position on 2nd Amendment issues, then
So, if you refuse to [del]testify before our Committee[/del]fill out our form, you can be labeled [del]a Communist[/del]soft on the Second Amendment.
Just a mite 'strong-armish" in my opinion.
If anything, it’s charitable toward the views of the NRA membership.
That’s normal. The NRA routinely sends out questionnaires to candidates, and many gun owners would treat a non-response as a hostile gesture.
Honest question…do other organizations that make political donations ever ask prospective candidates if they support issues that align with the organization (or ones that oppose it)? Seems like they would, though seems like just looking at a candidates record would be sufficient.
Is that how you interpreted that letter? I saw it more as “No, you don’t HAVE to fill out our little questionnaire. By the way, that’s a nice little reputation you’ve got there. It would be a downright shame if…something…should happen to it.”
Strikes me as politics as usual.
If you are a candidate for a significant office (as opposed to city dog catcher) you are probably keenly aware of how your positions will be used for or against you by interest groups and they will all play similar games…right, left and center.
The NRAs advantage here is gun owners are probably the surest bloc of single issue voters out there so they wield disproportionate power at the voting booth.
That said, given the current climate, I am not sure thumbing your nose at the NRA is as politically dangerous as it once was.
Some candidates (for example those running for office for the first time) don’t have a “record”.
The NRA in the last few years has turned themselves from a mainstream issue advocacy organization to right wing media organization.
The problem for them is that if they’re just another Breitbart News then there’s absolutely no upside for centrist Democrats to keep working with them. Sure, gun rights have always skewed right. But it was always center-right. They’re sawing off the “center” part, because gun ownership is becoming a smaller and smaller part of most American’s lives. There are more guns than ever, but it’s fewer and fewer people owning more and more guns.
So they’ve decided to abandon the hunters who used to make up the vast majority of their membership, and concentrate on the gun nuts. Because the hunter’s support was a mile wide but only an inch deep. There aren’t that many gun nuts, but they’re a bottomless well of money and commitment.
It is very common for groups to give ratings to candidates based on vote histories and/or responses to surveys.
I didn’t get that vibe, no. Not even from the vague ‘?’ rating thingy. I think you are reading more into it than I am.
I think the pro life group are probably as sure single issue voters as the gun folks. But they don’t have one big wealthy group behind them to run ads , etc.
This isn’t anything new. They also have “qualified” rankings where they didn’t ask a new candidate yet but they’ve been A-range in the past. I believe they also have a similar “asterisked” qualification for people who don’t return the survey but
Lots of advocacy groups have report cards. Either through direct survey or some algorithm that measures their votes. E.g. the League of Conservation Voters and Sierra Club, Human Rights Campaign, Planned Parenthood and Right to Life Committee, etc.
Yes, surveys/report cards are used by a lot of groups, but how many broadly hint that there is a good chance that if they don’t participate the symbol used to say that will probably be taken as being a negative opinion?
Any of them that are honest.
Yeah.
Are there samples of other letters that show this to be true?
I am making a statement about the honesty of their letter. I have no idea if other letters are honest.
Yeah… it’s not so much that it’s different from political pressure as usual, as that it is a bit of a “dick move”. I am quite aware of how single issue voters may react to someone who does not care to engage about their single issue. Phrasing it as “fair warning: anything other than actually Answering Yes will be assumed to be the same as actually Answering No and will be held against you” is at best condescending.
To me, it’s at worst condescending.
I don’t know about letters, but LCV’s scorecard website has the douchiest passive agressive popup poll. That’ll make me click disagree out of spite.
I don’t put dick moves past LaPierre/Loesch, but in this particular case it doesn’t sound like a threat. It doesn’t tell you how to answer, but notes that absence of a response is not neutral.