Gun rights groups have spent more than $2.16 million to sway Georgia voters in federal campaigns since President Barack Obama took office in 2009, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of campaign spending reports found.
The June 12 massacre in Orlando, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, has hurtled the long-simmering and highly emotional debate over access to guns back to the national forefront.
But the nation’s two major political parties remain as divided as ever over the appropriate course of action, and that division has brought renewed attention to the gun rights and gun control groups attempting to influence the debate.
An AJC examination of eight years of Federal Election Commission data found that three major gun rights groups, the National Rifle Association, Safari Club International and the National Association for Gun Rights, have poured money into Georgia on both sides of the aisle in order to keep the issues they care about salient among the state’s voters and their elected officials in Washington.
Much of that money went to so-called independent expenditures, such as attack ads on radio and television, and phone bank offensives aimed at boosting mainly Republican candidates committed to maintaining access to firearms and sinking the candidacies of those who weren’t.
The vast majority of those gun-focused independent expenditures in Georgia over the past four election cycles — about 98 percent — originated from the NRA’s Political Victory Fund and its Institute for Legislative Action.
A smaller amount of money, roughly $234,000, was donated directly to the campaigns of Georgia candidates on both sides of the aisle who supported gun rights. The AJC analysis, which also examined data from the Center for Responsive Politics, did not count money given to the parties and political action committees of lawmakers and other prominent individuals that then dole out money to other races.
The AJC also examined data from five prominent gun control groups: Everytown for Gun Safety, Sandy Hook Promise, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Americans for Responsible Solutions and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. The organizations have ramped up spending in recent years, but the AJC’s survey found that none was allocated to Georgia races.
Where the money went
The Georgia race that far and away prompted the most interest from firearms groups was the 2014 U.S. Senate race for the seat vacated by Saxby Chambliss.
Gun rights organizations sunk more than $1.65 million into independent expenditures aimed at defeating Democrat Michelle Nunn.
On the Republican side of the aisle, the major firearms groups mentioned above spent more than $160,000 boosting the candidacy of then-U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston of Savannah in his runoff against David Perdue for the party’s nomination. Once the latter dispatched Kingston, however, the money flowed to the Sea Island businessman and he benefited from more than $338,000 in spending from those groups.
The race was a high-profile statewide contest, which helps explain the significantly higher levels of outside money when compared with House campaigns. But it’s also illustrative of how such independent expenditures have exploded in popularity since the Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens United case in 2010 allowing outside money to pour into races. Such groups legally can spend unlimited amounts to support or oppose candidates, as long as the efforts are not coordinated with any candidate’s campaign.
Separately, many members of Georgia’s congressional delegation supportive of gun rights have received direct contributions from those big gun rights groups, including several Democrats. Groups that favor gun control did not contribute a dime to Georgia candidates, the AJC analysis shows.
The NRA, Safari Club International, Gun Owners of America and the National Shooting Sports Foundation largely favored Republican candidates, although the NRA gave nearly $30,000 to former U.S. Rep. John Barrow, D-Augusta; $7,450 to U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Albany; nearly $7,000 to former U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, D-Macon; and $1,500 to former Democratic candidate Vernon Jones of DeKalb County.
Barrow, in fact, is the single largest direct recipient of gun rights money in Georgia since 2009, according to the analysis.
Barrow, the centrist Democrat whom the GOP targeted for defeat for years, lost his re-election bid in 2014 to now U.S. Rep. Rick Allen, R-Evans.
“Campaign contributions are like bringing a nice bottle of wine to the party,” said Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who has written extensively about guns and lobbying.
Groups are limited in how much they can give directly to a campaign, which means one organization’s donation isn’t likely to mean much for a candidate’s balance sheet. But at the same time, Drutman said, “You don’t want to be the person who shows up without a bottle of wine.”
Former U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Athens, who volunteered as a lobbyist for Safari Club International before running for Congress, received the second-largest haul from those groups, with slightly more than $30,000. Broun’s successor, U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Monroe, came in third.
U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Cobb County Republican, has received more than $20,000 from those groups, including $13,400 from the NRA’s Political Victory Fund, during the past eight years.
“Senator Isakson has a consistent and unwavering record of voting to protect the Constitution and support the thousands of Georgians who have contacted our office asking Senator Isakson to defend their Second Amendment rights,” Isakson spokeswoman Amanda Maddox said in a statement.
Voting behavior and political muscle
It would be easy to look at all the firearms-related money spent in Georgia and deduce that it directly affects lawmakers' voting behavior — Congress has been in a stalemate for roughly two decades about whether any major changes to gun laws are needed — but several political observers interviewed by the AJC cautioned against doing so.
Drutman said money is only one part of the political picture.
“The power of the NRA does not primarily come from its campaign spending,” he said. “It comes from the fact that it has a large number of passionate, organized, single-issue voters who make their voices heard in many ways.”
The NRA Political Action Fund did not respond to a request for comment.
Drutman said that while gun control groups operating on the political left have ramped up spending in recent years, they have yet to match the grass-roots organizational prowess of gun rights groups such as the NRA. He attributed the difference to the fact that gun control is not embedded in the ethos of the Democratic Party in the same way that gun rights is with GOP voters. The politics are also regional.
“For gun owners, it’s very personal,” said Robert J. Sptizer, a political science professor at the State University of New York at Cortland.
“They went hunting with their father when they were kids. Guns were around the house, and for many of them it’s more than just a thing you buy. … It has a series of values attached to it that are very important to the owners,” Spitzer said. “But on the other side of the issue, the vast majority of Americans support stronger gun laws, which we’re seeing in the polls right now, but for most of them, it’s not a top-tier issue.”
About the Author
