I have a problem with candidates who don’t respond to NRA questionnaires. Regardless of how you might feel about individual legislative and political decisions by NRA, the fact remains that they are a known major interest group with hundreds of thousands of members who vote in Pennsylvania. An unwillingness to even acknowledge questions from such a grassroots organization doesn’t speak well for for their responsiveness to constituents – especially those with whom they might disagree.
So, imagine my surprise when I browsed the NRA-PVF grade listings last night and discovered that almost none of the races had grades for both candidates.
In the PA-13 Congressional District, I have 3 State Senate races and 14 State House races. Of the Senate races, only one has a challenger to the incumbent and the Republican refused to return the questionnaire. In the 14 House races, 11 feature challengers. In 3 of those 11, neither candidate was willing to respond to gun owner questions. In 1 of those 11, the GOP candidate alone remains ungraded. In 6 of the remaining races, the Democrats refused to answer questions. In only one race is there a grade for both candidates.
In the PA-8 Congressional District, Sebastian has 1 State Senate race and 14 State House races. His Senate race is the same as the one in PA-13, so it’s the same situation with the GOP candidate refusing to answer questions about his positions. In his 14 House races, only 10 have challengers. In those 10 races, only 2 of the races feature candidates who both earned grades. In the remaining 8, 1 race has both candidates refusing to answer questions. The final 7 are broken down in failures to be graded as 2 Republicans who refuse to answer and 5 Democrats who won’t be held accountable.
This is a rather disturbing trend of politicians who feel they don’t need to worry about answering to constituents.
If you’re in either of these Congressional Districts (or another area where you see the same trend), get in touch with the candidates at the local level and let them know that their refusal to answer even basic questions of policy disturbs you. Trust me, it makes an impression when voters let candidates know that they won’t support candidates who refuse to answer NRA questionnaires. Even going into his third election, our state representative has never forgotten to respond to NRA ever since his campaign manager screwed up his questionnaire in his first race. He did actually meet a voter who walked out of the polling booth and said he refused to vote for him because he wouldn’t even give a response to NRA. Now, that representative is always responsive to us as gun owner constituents, and he also happens to be A- rated and endorsed.
