A coalition of gun rights advocates and others are forming a new political movement, to get what they say are disaffected and disenfranchised New Yorkers to vote.
The leaders of the new group include the state’s Rifle and Pistol Association, but the group’s President Tom King, says it goes beyond the state’s recently enacted stiff new gun control legislation .
“It’s the whole spectrum of constitutional rights that are being infringed in New York State,” King said. “This is for the everyday person who feels disenfranchised”
The coalition includes a land owners group that wants permission to lease their land to gas drilling companies for hydro fracking, an advocate for urban schools and several conservative elected state lawmakers, including Rochester area Assemblyman Bill Nojay.
Nojay, a former talk radio host, says he’s disturbed by the swift passage of the gun laws, known as the SAFE Act, which he says illustrates a bigger problem in Albany. He says the “top down leadership” forced through the complex bill for a vote in just 45 minutes.
“Nobody had read it,” Nojay said. “That’s not a functioning legislature.”
Ayesha Kruetz, a Christian minister, is head of the Frederick Douglass Foundation of New York, a conservative African American group. She says her concerns include the deterioration of upstate’s inner cities, and a failed education system. And she says school board votes routinely attract just one quarter to one third of eligible voters.
“We have a 9% graduation rate for black males,” Kreutz said. “That’s a crime.”
The groups are modeling their efforts on the successful Democratic Party initiative of the 1990’s, known as Rock the Vote, which resulted in the registration of hundreds of thousands of young people.
They also plan a fundraiser, featuring country musicians, at the Altamont Fairgrounds near Albany at the end of the summer. They say they chose the location because all of upstate’s major highways intersect just a few miles from the site.
But Assemblyman Nojay says for now, they aren’t going to promote any specific candidates, though they hope primary challengers will emerge to run against incumbents in the state legislature all the way down to offices for local county sheriff and county clerk.
He says a primary may be needed to “send a message” , to Democrats that the coalition disagrees with, or Republicans who voted for the new gun laws.
While most Republicans in the Assembly voted against the gun control laws back in January, many of GOP members of the Senate voted for it. A spokesman for Republicans in the Senate expressed concern that the new group would divide the Republican Party, and help the “circus” he says the Democrats have created.
“We wonder if Bill Nojay understands that by working against Republicans he will only serve to help the Democratic Party and its candidates, including sex trafficker Eliot Spitzer, serial molester Vito Lopez and disgraced former exhibitionist Congressman Anthony Weiner,” said spokesman Scott Reif, in a statemen