September 9, 2004
Springfield News Sun

WASHINGTON — Large populations of hunters and gun owners in Ohio and other battleground states could provide critical support in the close presidential election, the National Rifle Association’s chief executive said Wednesday.

Candidates’ stances on protecting gun rights could help attract enough voters to sway the election, NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“This issue is worth several percentage points,” he said. “It’s a powerful issue at the polls on Election Day.”

About one-fourth of the NRA’s 4 million members live in West Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Missouri and Pennsylvania — all battleground states with 101 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

It’s this membership that the NRA plans to target through rallies, drives to register voters and a $400,000 weeklong television ad buy in several battleground states, LaPierre said.

The half-hour ads will begin running this week on Dayton stations WBDT and WKEF, according to a list the NRA provided to The AP. They will also run in TV stations in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida, South Carolina, Wisconsin and Georgia.

The ads, which mock Democrat John Kerry’s attempts to portray himself as a hunter by highlighting his voting record, feature scenes from Ohio towns and interviews with Ohio Democrats who support Bush, such as Maple Heights, Ohio, councilwoman Barbara Lee Miami.

“I just don’t have faith that Kerry can do the job,” she said.