LOCAL & STATE
None have taken gun-group’s donations since 2005
In Florida, a state with a reputation for gun-friendliness, the National Rifle Association hasn’t given money to any state candidate for 13 years.
In Florida, a state with a reputation for gun-friendliness, the National Rifle Association hasn’t given money to any state candidate for 13 years.
A review of campaign finance records for the NRA Political Victory Fund, the gunrights group’s political arm in Florida, shows it donated regularly to candidates from 1996 until 2002, then just a handful over the following three years. The last two candidates to get money from the NRA — $500 each in 2005 — were Florida House candidate Marti Coley and Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson.
After that, the NRA still regularly donated $10,000 once or twice a year to the Republican Party of Florida and campaign committees tied to maintaining House and Senate majorities for Republicans. But after 2010, those checks stopped, as well.
As the campaign contributions fizzled out, spending on mailers and ads skyrocketed, up to a high of about $1.6 million for television, radio, Internet and mail ads independent of any political campaign in just the five weeks prior to the 2014 midterm and governor elections. Since then, the numbers have been less stratospheric — about $400,000 in 2016.
“In all my career, I have never seen a dollar bill walk into a voting booth and vote, but people do,” said Marion Hammer, the NRA’s lobbyist in Tallahassee. “The NRA has people and we vote.”
It’s those votes, not donations, that the NRA counts on for its political clout. The group lets members know where politicians stand through a rating system, published annually, based on their votes, public statements and responses to a questionnaire.
The NRA’s national political committee continues to give to federal elected officials from Florida, including U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and at least a dozen of the state’s Republican congressmen. And the NRA Foundation gives in other ways, including $126,000 to the Broward County School District for its JROTC program, an Associated Press report found. After the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting, the district said it would no longer accept money from the group. According to Hammer, donations at the state level stopped for pragmatic reasons.
“We stopped giving cash contributions because every time we gave a contribution to a candidate, the media accused NRA of buying legislators,” Hammer said. “Of course, when the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the Florida Retail Federation, the Florida Association of Realtors, the Florida Medical Association, Teachers Union, or the AFL-CIO gave the same amount or more, they were never accused of buying anybody.”
That’s not the case in other states. Campaign finance re-