New York Mayor Makes Pro-Guns Pay

Michael Bloomberg is just annoying. The billionaire founder of the financial information firm that bears his name and mayor of New York has decided to make the four Democratic senators who voted against the proposed bill on gun control — and therefore contributed to its failure in Congress — pay; an interesting idea, but one that should worry the Democrats.

When you have $27 billion in your bank account and earned $5 billion more in 2012, nothing is impossible. Not giving a minimum of $150 million to various philanthropic organizations, nor influencing election results. At least, that’s what Michael Bloomberg has decided. Recently, the tycoon gave $350,000 to a campaign against Mark Pryor, a Democratic senator from Arkansas. The Democrats are furious: Pryor’s reelection is far from assured, and this campaign could cause them to lose a seat.

This week, Bloomberg wrote thousands of large checks to Democrats, asking them not to contribute financially to the campaigns of the four renegade Democrats. The president’s party is livid. Their spot-on argument: If the Democrats lose their majority in the Senate, they will have no chance of getting their laws passed in Congress.

But the mayor, whose term expires in a few months, is not only concerned with Democrats. If a bill requiring criminal background and psychiatric history checks again comes before the House of Representatives, he has threatened to lobby against Republicans who oppose it.

For now though, he is concentrating on the four unhappy senators who have opposed the recent bill — Mark Pryor, Mark Begich of Alaska, Max Baucus of Montana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. If these four lose their seats as a result of his efforts, Congress could well shift to the right.* The mayor would then be the one in tears: Congress would not be close to passing any laws on gun control.

*Editor’s Note: Max Baucus has already announced that he will not seek another term in the Senate.