A new super PAC led by former National Rifle Association strategist Chris Cox is jumping into the Georgia runoff elections with plans for a $1 million campaign to turn out gun owners for Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
Gun Owners Action Fund launched Friday with a radio advertisement warning voters President-elect Joe Biden will curb Second Amendment rights if Democrats win in Georgia on Jan. 5. Loeffler and Perdue are facing stiff challenges from Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively. Democratic victories in both races would deliver the Senate to Biden’s party, with each party holding 50 seats and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris breaking ties.
With full control of Congress, the president-elect’s White House agenda would be received more hospitably on Capitol Hill.
The prospect of being shut out of power in Washington sparked an all-hands-on-deck response from prominent Republicans and several groups aligned with the GOP. But Cox told the Washington Examiner that Gun Owners Action Fund believes there is an opportunity to make a critical difference in the Georgia contests by spending big money to motivate voters who prioritize gun rights to support Loeffler and Perdue.
“We plan on communicating the importance of this election, the consequences of a Jon Ossoff-Raphael Warnock win, and what it would mean to the destruction of the Second Amendment in every way possible,” Cox said.
Cox left the NRA in early July 2019 after spending years as the organization’s top lobbyist and chief campaign strategist. He took the helm of Gun Owners Action Fund after being approached by wealthy Republican donors “who wanted to make sure we leveraged one of the most powerful groups in American politics — in this case, it’s gun owners in the state of Georgia.”
Cox said the group plans to raise and spend more than $1 million on digital, direct mail, and radio advertising, plus direct contact with voters as part of a targeted turnout operation. The first spot from Gun Owners Action Fund claims Biden is hiding his plans to defund the police and implement strict gun control regulations (the president-elect opposes the former but supports the latter.)
“Joe Biden has a secret, and you won’t know about it until after Jan. 5. It’s defunding the police. But Biden can’t talk about it till after Jan. 5,” the voiceover says as the spot opens, before playing comments from the president-elect leaked from a conference call he held with civil rights leaders that was first reported by the Intercept.
“I don’t think we should make that a big issue going into — before Jan. 5, when the election takes place down in Georgia,” Biden is heard saying in the spot.
The voiceover then returns: “Biden’s afraid. If Georgians know he’s preparing to defund the police, you’ll reject Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock … If Warnock and Ossoff win, you lose. First, they defund the police. Then they take away your gun rights. How will you protect yourself?”
Cox declined to reveal the financial backers behind Gun Owners Action Fund, saying they would be disclosed with the group’s regularly scheduled Federal Election Commission filings.
