The advocacy group started by President Obama’s former campaign officials began its first advertising campaign on Friday, pressuring 13 Republican lawmakers in their home states to expand background checks to all gun buyers.
The ads, which include the legislators’ photos and Twitter handles, are running on local news Web sites in their home districts. In total, the ads cost close to six figures and represent the first paid media campaign by Organizing for Action, the group formed last month to use Obama’s campaign apparatus to mobilize support for his legislative agenda.
This comes as Obama and Vice President Biden are ratcheting up pressure on Congress to vote on the administration’s gun-control agenda, which includes universal background checks as well as bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
On Friday, OFA is holding its first “day of action,” staging more than 100 events across the country. The events include house parties to write letters to the editor or your congress member, rallies featuring local surrogates like police chiefs and mayors and candlelight vigils to remember people who have been killed in shootings.
OFA is focusing Friday’s activities around background checks, the most popular of Obama’s gun-control proposals. With lawmakers still at home for recess, OFA officials hope the events and online ads help demonstrate grassroots support for toughening background check requirements. Senators could take up the background checks proposal next week when they return to Washington.
“We decided to focus on background check loopholes today,” OFA spokeswoman Katie Hogan said. “It’s not that we don’t support the entire plan to curb gun violence; we do. But since there’s such a broad consensus about background checks, we thought it was important for us on our first ‘day of action’ to push members of Congress who have yet to take a stance.”
OFA’s ad campaign does not target Republicans — such as Sens. Mark Kirk (Ill.) and Tom Coburn (Okla.) and Reps. Michael Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and Patrick Meehan (Pa.) — who already have voiced support for expanding federal background checks.
Instead, the ads are aimed at 13 Republicans whom OFA officials believe could be swayed to support the proposal but have not yet stated a position. They include lawmakers from states Obama carried in his reelection last year, including California, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.
The targeted lawmakers are: Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) and Susan Collins (Me.) and Reps. Mike Coffman (Colo.), Jeff Denham (Calif.), Jim Gerlach (Pa.), David Joyce (Ohio), John Kline (Minn.), Buck McKeon (Calif.), Gary Miller (Calif.), Robert Pittenger (N.C.), David Valadao (Calif.), Daniel Webster (Fla.), and Bill Young (Fla.).
The ad campaign was first reported Friday morning by The Los Angeles Times.
Other OFA efforts on Friday are aimed at additional lawmakers. Jon Carson, the group’s executive director, e-mailed Obama supporters urging them to tweet at or call their members of Congress. The e-mails are personalized by congressional district and include the Twitter addresses and phone numbers for one’s local representative.
“If Congress passes legislation requiring universal background checks — which are supported by 92 percent of Americans and even 74 percent of NRA members — it will be an important step toward keeping our kids and communities safer from gun violence,” Carson wrote in the e-mails. “But it won’t happen unless we demand it.. . . With just a couple clicks, you and many other constituents will create a drumbeat that can’t be ignored.”
Discuss this topic and other political issues in the Post’s Politics Discussion Forums.
OFA ads pressure 13 Republican lawmakers to expand gun buyer background checks
This article
OFA ads pressure 13 Republican lawmakers to expand gun buyer background checks
can be opened in url
https://newspolynomial.blogspot.com/2013/02/ofa-ads-pressure-13-republican.html
OFA ads pressure 13 Republican lawmakers to expand gun buyer background checks
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar