When the smoke cleared at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in the wee hours of a Friday morning last July, 12 people were dead, 58 were injured and Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in New York, readying an assault of his own.
The campaign that Mr. Bloomberg and his “gun team” came up with in the hours and days after Aurora involved carpet-bombing Washington with millions from the mayor’s immense fortune and a media blitz that would be deployed following the next massacre.
“He was so frustrated by the lack of conversation around this issue … that he decided to force the conversation himself,” Howard Wolfson, deputy mayor for government affairs and communications, told Politicker.
By 5 a.m., just a few hours after the shooting, Mr. Bloomberg was emailing members of his staff, preparing a media offensive against President Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and what he perceived as their campaigns’ silence on gun control.
At 8 that morning, the mayor came out swinging during his regular appearance on WOR’s John Gambling Show.
“Maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “No matter where you stand on the Second Amendment, no matter where you stand on guns, we have a right to hear from both of them concretely, not just in generalities. Specifically, what are they going to do about guns?”
A coordinated p.r. effort, coupled with political donations, to force "consensus" on an issue near and dear to the mayor's heart.
The article warns that gun control is not the only issue near and dear to Bloomberg:
In many ways, the anti-gun violence strategy hatched by the mayor and his advisers after Aurora was uniquely Bloombergian. Both of his gun control initiatives are extraordinarily well-financed and, as a result, are backed by top political consultants. Demand a Plan—which was redubbed Demand Action this month after the president revealed his Bloomberg-friendly gun control plan—is also driven by data, with all of its legislative recommendations backed by extensive polling and research.
Whether or not Congress passes the president’s gun control plan, Mr. Wolfson described the mayor as “in this for the long haul.”
Mr. Bloomberg is currently headed into the home stretch of his 12 years in City Hall. Though he and his close aides have remained tight-lipped about his future, it seems clear he will be substantially engaged in advocacy on the issues closest to his heart, which, in addition to gun control, include immigration reform, gay rights, climate change and education reform. Mr. Bloomberg won’t say where or how he will strike next, but his gun control initiative provides a blueprint for the type of effective, expensive approach he could bring to this post-mayoral political activity.
“Look, the mayor has an enormous platform and will continue to have influence on the issues he cares about,” Mr. Wolfson said of the mayor’s future plans. “He spent roughly 10 million dollars last November. He described that as sticking his toe in the water.”
This is more of that p.r. offensive Bloomberg and his propagandists are engaging in to write the history of his 12 year mayorality before anybody else does.
Interestingly enough, no one ever mentions in these gun control articles how if Bloomberg hates gun violence so much, why does his police force shoot and kill so many unarmed black men?
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