The NRA broke fundraising record after Parkland. Will it be enough to sway elections?

Sun Sentinel

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — As students marched for gun control after the Parkland shootings, members of the National Rifle Association reached for their checkbooks.

The NRA’s Political Victory Fund recorded its highest monthly contribution total since 2000 after the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The NRA’s campaign fund collected $2.4 million in March, the highest total in 18 years when adjusted for inflation.

About 80 percent of the contributions were donations of $200 or less.

Will those surge of contributions bring victory to progun candidates in the fall midterm elections? Campaign finance experts say that haul in and of itself won’t sway elections. The bigger question could be whether younger voters inspired by March for Our Lives demonstrations show up at the polls.

“It is not a lot of money in politics these days,” said Robert J. Spitzer, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Cortland who has authored five books on gun control. “It’s a good number for them — no question — but in the political ocean of money that we all swim in now it is pretty much a drop in the bucket.”

The NRA’s greatest strength is viewed as its passionate and engaged 5 million members, said Sarah Bryner, a research director at the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization that tracks money in politics.

“The NRA as a political spender is no slouch,” Ms. Bryner said. “Money matters. Membership matters, but only to the extent you can mobilizeit,whichtakesmoney.”

The NRA’s Political Victory Fund, which provides contributions to NRA-endorsed candidates, is just one component of its political spending. The NRA focuses most of its spending on television advertisements and mailers not directly linked to candidates, rather than making direct contributions to lawmakers’ campaign funds.

The NRA spent $54 million during the 2016 election cycle, while gun control interests mustered only about $3 million, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

It’s the NRA’s membership that politicians fear, said Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State University.

“They are viewed as the voice of gun owners in America,” he said. “That is a constituency that votes at high rates, contacts public officials at higher rates.”