Joe Huffman asks the question:Â what happened to Colin Goddard, The darling of the Brady Campaign? Â Good question. Taking a look myself, I notice his dad has been in the news more than he has. I think the biggest question is what happened to the Brady Campaign? It’s pretty obvious that there was some major turmoil over there, with several key long time people no longer working for the organization. While Colin still says he’s working for Brady, we don’t really know what happened, exactly, in that shake-up. I’ve been singularly unimpressed with Brady’s new leadership, even looking at it objectively.
Post Newtown, the face of gun control became Mayor Bloomberg and Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and Shannon Watts, of Moms Demand Action. The Bradys were second fiddle, which is representative of the fact that we know from the MAIG emails that they were attempting to snatch the limelight from Bloomberg on celebrity PSAs. I’d actually argue that Brady was smart for attempting to use one of its core strengths (celebrity relations) to snatch the narrative back from MAIG, but it seems clear someone decided they needed to be a junior partner in all this. So I don’t think it’s clear whether Colin was a victim of the massive shake-up at the Brady organization, or whether he’s just not on the media speed dial anymore when they are looking for a quote.
I suspect that Colin, much like the organization he aligned himself with, is yesterday’s news. Why would they want a 20-something guy man whose tragedy is now seven years in the past to be the face of this issue when they have dead elementary school children and their grieving families to use? Why call Colin or Dan when one of the Demanding Moms can give you a juicier quote? Even Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has had better game lately, if you go by press attention.
It’s hard for me to see how the Brady organization survives long term, especially given that Bloomberg is throwing his money and organization behind Shannon Watts. It’ll be very interesting to see their form 990s in a couple of years, so see what their finances are doing. I have no doubt that someone will probably step up to keep some skeleton of Brady afloat, lest the news cycle begin to speak about the death of gun control, but it will be an organization severely diminished in stature and effectiveness from its glory days in the 1990s as Handgun Control, Inc.
Notice these figure heads change every few years but Wayne has been at the NRA for more than two decades? Just saying.
I went to college with Colin and knew him before the shooting. His Facebook page list him as a “Senior Policy Advocate at Mayor’s Against Illegal Guns”. He list’s his past employer as Brady Campaign.
Interesting. I wonder what he’s doing now, that MAIG has merged into MDA.