A Chicagoland special House election to replace disgraced former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. has suddenly become Ground Zero of the national gun control debate, courtesy of anti-gun crusader Mike Bloomberg.
The billionaire New York City mayor’s super PAC is poised to dump at least $2 million into the race, sources told POLITICO — a staggering sum for a single House race that’s meant to thwart a National Rifle Association-aligned Democrat who was cruising along as the frontrunner until a barrage of Bloomberg-financed attack ads hit the airwaves.
The massive independent expenditure by Independence USA PAC dwarfs what any of the 17 Democratic candidates have raised themselves. It’s a none-too-subtle statement of Bloomberg’s intention to take on the NRA after the Newtown, Conn. school shooting — though it’s debatable how much of a test case it is since the NRA is staying out of the race.
The bulk of Bloomberg’s cash has financed an air war against Debbie Halvorson, a former one-term congresswoman and longtime ex-state legislator with an “A” rating from the NRA. The lone white candidate in the Democratic field, she’s hoping that her base of suburban and rural voters in the southern outskirts of the district — who by and large favor gun rights — will be enough to give her the small plurality it will take to win.
The Democratic primary is on Feb. 26. The general election is all but irrelevant given the district’s heavy Democratic makeup.
“I believe that substantial expenditure by the forces doing battle with gun violence will likely send a real … loud warning to a lot of members of Congress that it’s no longer safe to side with the NRA — that’s really what’s going on here,” said Robert Creamer, a partner at Democracy Partners who has followed the race.
Bloomberg is sending a clear message - he will be kingmaker in politics.
So what if he's full of shit on the gun issue and he just told his representative on the Teachers Retirement System pension board to vote against divesting the fund from gun and bullet companies?
This is about the Little Mayor staying relevant and getting attention and being the guy who gets feted and fellated in the media.
Expect him to pull this kind of stuff on education too, as he has in the L.A. school board race by giving $1.1 million to an education deform proponent.
This is foul and emblematic of all that is wrong with politics in America today.
An oligarch who gives a shit about nothing but making money and getting attention for himself can throw millions into a race and throw it the way he wants.
Add in the either oligarchs that do this - Gates, the Kochs, the Waltons, Broad and others - and what you have is a fake democracy that is really nothing other than oligarchy.
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