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• • • • • • control in many states, where the issue so often pits rural and small-town legislators against their big-city colleagues. That is one element the gun lobby uses to bolster its position, contending that crime- infested urban areas are trying to impose their standards on the rest of the state. Gun control support is "mainly reflected by people in Seattle," says Padden, the Spokane Republican who is the new chairman of the judiciary committee (now known as the Law and Justice Com- mittee). "Seattle is so far out of sync with the rest of the state." Urban officials from St. Louis and Kansas City and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia waged the same fight last year, lobbying their respective legis- latures furiously to win local control over gun laws, but to no avail. "This is simply an issue that people who live in cities feel much different about than people in rural areas," says Jackson County, Missouri, prosecutor Claire McCaskill, who fought unsuccessfully for local restrictions for her county, which includes Kansas City. ltimately, however, it was neither preemption nor assault weapons that crystallized gun owner anger and spurred ballot-box retalia- tion across the country. It was the Brady Bill. After the measure passed Congress, NRA membership ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ soared. Gun shop owners reported sharp increases in the number of weapons sold in anticipation of the new law's imple- mentation. In Washington State, the gun lobby took advantage by directing gun owner anger toward Governor Lowry, their longtime antagonist. He may not have been up for reelection, but dozens of Democrats in swing and marginal dis- tricts were. "We were using members of the legis- lature asLowry clones on the gun issue," says Alan Gottlieb, "the same way Republicans on the national level were saying members of Congress were Clin- ton clones." The gun lobby in Washington State also had the advantage of a fresh political organization, still in place from the spring crime bill debate. Prior to the session, leaders from the Washington State Rifle 20 GOVERNING March 1995 and Pistol Association, the Arms Collec- tors Association, the shooting range oper- ators and other pro-gun groups had been meeting monthly for strategy sessions. Once the legislative session began, they met weekly. By Election Day, they had a fine-tuned political machine. Drawing from subscriber lists for hunt- ing and firearms magazines, gun club membership rosters, gun dealer sales records and, ironically, names drawn from state background-check records on firearms purchasers, the gun lobby matched phone numbers to 180,000 vot- ers, each of whom received a call. "The odd thing," says Brett Bader, the Republican consultant, "is that there were more Democrats than Republicans pho- tographed on their brochures with a shot- gun in their hands out in a field because Democrats were desperately trying to restore their credentials on the issue." The final tally was an electoral debacle for Washington State Democrats. In con- tested state legislative races, 50 of 70 NRA-endorsed candidates won office. On the other hand, candidates backed by Washington Ceasefire, the state's largest gun control lobby, were creamed. Their endorsed candidates won only in Seattle- area districts. Nationally, 20 of 25 NRA-endorsed candidates won governorships, along with 74 percent of NRA-backed state leg- islative candidates, according to NRA fig- ures. It is hard to pinpoint just how many races the NRA and other gun groups directly affected~stimates in Washing- ton State range from a handful to as many as 20-but few would argue that the gun lobby did not cast a very large shadow. he most visible change for many states is at the gubernatorial level, now that the lions of gun control- Pennsylvania's Robert P. Casey, New York's Mario M. Cuomo, Texas' Ann Richards and Connecticut's Lowell Weicker-are no longer in office. All were replaced by candidates more supportive of the gun lobby's agenda. In Texas, for example, the right-to-carry leg- islation vetoed by Richards in 1993 seems likely to pass with George W. Bush in office. A recent Dallas Morning News poll of legislators showed 69 percent supporting the mea- sure, and Bush has indicated that he would sign it. The gun lobby's repeal-and- reform agenda is also likely to surface in North Carolina, where, after Washington State, Republicans posted their biggest gains. The hostile Democratic House leadership is out, replaced by gun-rights sym- pathizers. "Now the change in the makeup of the legislature is going to allow us to really follow our agenda, rather than running down to North Carolina to ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ defeat gun bans and licensing and registration schemes," says the NRA's Reilly. Meanwhile, in Washington State, gun control supporters insist they will con- tinue to press their own agenda for 1995, which includes another push for preemp- tion and an assault weapons ban. But practically speaking, they will be lucky to hold on to what they achieved last session. The only way the gun control forces will be able to alter that reality, says Gottlieb, is to take a lesson in the art of politics from the gun lobby he is part of. "When Senator Wojahn can turn out 180,000 people to vote like we did last election and change things around, she can get her legislation passed," he says. "Quite frankly, I wel- come another assault weapons vote in the Senate. It allows us to define who the anti- gunners are and go back after them again in the next election." 0 Rich Ftrshman p/rotograph Washington Seaator Lorraine Wojahn forced a floor vote on assault weapons. Some colleagues wished she hadn't.