UPDATED: While Firms Flee From Blood Soaked Sponsorships – Hall Long Donates NRA Money to Shooting Victims
UPDATE: Bethany donated the money she received from the NRA in 2015 to the Stoneman Douglas victims fund yesterday.
The radical organization continues to lose corporate sponsorship, but still no word from Bethany Hall Long on whether she intends to maintain her affiliation.
Several US companies have cut ties with the National Rifle Association (NRA) amid calls for a boycott of businesses linked to the powerful gun lobby in the wake of the Florida school shooting.
The firms include car rental giants Hertz and Enterprise, which had offered discounts for NRA members.
There is simply no reason for any politician to continue to be affiliated with the NRA. The organization is far more radical than its actual members. Most Delawarean’s, want stricter gun control. That cuts across party lines, and includes NRA members.
Individual NRA members favor barring gun purchases by people on federal no-fly lists and the mentally ill. While the NRA opposes barring gun purchases by people on federal no-fly lists and the mentally ill n the grounds that ANY gun control is an anathema.
It is not a grassroots force, but a corporate front for the arms and ammo manufacturing industry. It has been that for a long time now.
I forgot to mention that we also now know the NRA is also a money laundering operations for Russian donations to the GOP.
Bethany, Just give that money back already.
If she doesn’t, she’ll never be governor. And you know she wants that.
She is also the kind of pol that wants EVERY vote. That means she still thinking about how the her hayseeds will take it.
She’s the kind of pol who needs to be drummed out of public office, if you want to know the truth.
It is a shame. A huge motor, big political skills – little vision.
Big ambition, though.
In politics, ambition and ability are inversely proportional. And “ability” without vision is no ability at all. It’s the ability of a carnival barker.
I rarely chime in here, however, it amazes me sometimes how this blog rips pols. She gave back the money. Great. Why did she accept it? Did you see her old district? Plenty of Dems in the district love gun rights. There’s never going to be a liberal utopia any more than we will ever have a far right dystopia. BHL isn’t perfect – what politician is? I’ve been around her for years & find her to be one of the rare, ass-busting & genuine faces in DE politics. I’d take her over Carney any day. She’s renlentess, tenacious, and actually tries to move proposals through the horrendous power trip in the DE House. I have only actively campaigned for three politicians in my life, and it’s not because I agree with them on every aspect. I do it because they genuinely care, and will wrk exhaustingly to try and create change.
Get out of here with that shit. This isn’t about who works hard. It is about NRA being as poisonous as it should be. Anyone getting money from them should do what BHL did, and soon. BHL getting that money off her books makes it something EVERY Dem, and every politician should do.
If she looked through her donations and saw one from the KKK, do you think she’d take care of that situation?
Of course she would.
“There’s never going to be a liberal utopia any more than we will ever have a far right dystopia. ”
That’s your problem right there, Peter. We already have a far-right dystopia. Sorry you haven’t noticed, but then, I’m gonna guess you live in a nice neighborhood where it’s easy to miss that.
I’m not interested in helping politicians who tailored their views to their constitutents’. If a person has to hide her real views to get elected, then she is by definition dishonest. If those were her real views all along, then she only gave the money back because of the outside pressure.
She can’t have it both ways, but having it both ways is what Bethany is all about, isn’t it.
This blog rips pols because that’s the only way to make them listen. You probably never noticed that running Cathy Cloutier’s campaigns, either.
I’ll tell ya what else I don’t like: Politicians giving the money back but doing it on the down-low so the gun-humpers don’t desert them. They want our votes, but they don’t want to be seen with us.
And FWIW I stand by my longstanding critique of BHL: “It is a shame. A huge motor, big political skills – little vision.”
Oh, she has a vision. Woodburn is in it.
Peter! Out of the woodwork they come.
You’re scared. We aren’t. Fuck politicans. You’ve lost the plot. It’s a scam and we’re calling it out.
I don’t care how you think it works. It won’t work like that anymore. That’s over.
You so still want to dictate terms. Get over you’re nostalgia. It wasn’t really that great anyway.
To me, the big story is how universally toxic the NRA brand has become almost overnight. Pretty much their only supporters now are the Trump dead-enders. Time to capitalize on the momentum.
I want to see an assault weapons bill ready to go the first day the General Assembly reconvenes. That day is Tuesday, March 6. And no burying it in a committee for weeks while D ‘leadership’ negotiates with the blood merchants. Let’s take the roll and see who stands where.
“The Bloody Five” still need to get right with the Lord.
D Pete Schwartzkopf: $250
D Bruce Ennis: $500 (two checks)
D Nicole Poore: $100
D Andria Bennett: $500
D Larry Mitchell: $200
She should be forever known as “Bethany Hall- Wrong !”
Put up signs that say that, Chris, and her husband will just steal them.
I’ve reconsidered, folks. This is all a purity test. In poor taste!
Can’t we go back to polite conversation?
Folks, so sorry. I was right the first time.
Pistol Pete’s Bloody Five should be mocked on the internet and shunned in public.
Shame!
Why do you take money from a gun fetishist cult, Pistol Pete?
Wait. I bet I know.
So what’s that make you in this scenario, then?
Buy seriously R – this is an issue of ideological purity for me. All these Dems give bipartisan cover to the NRA’s operations. If the all elected Dems come around then we’ll have finally unmuddied the waters.
We will never move this country onto a move progressive track by playing the game of electing centrist Democrats and calling it a day.
Daily Kos, that basket of mewling pukes, wants me to donate to Conor Lamb, who’s running in that special election in western Pa. Mr. Lamb is pro-military, pro-gun, etc. — but he makes the right noises about women, which is enough, I suppose, along with the fact that he’s a legacy. But it’s not really that. They actually headlined an article something along the lines of “Trump want to win this seat, let’s not let him”. Pure, unadulterated team blue bullshit.
I don’t want these people on my team. Those who do, go ahead and donate, but don’t piss down my leg and tell me it’s raining. He’s a “Democrat” because they have to call the less-insane people there something.
Why does Trey Paradee get all compliments for giving his donations to Parkland and Bethany still get slammed for it?
If you read the thread more closely, she is being “slammed” for being the style of politician she is, not for turning back the donation.
Because he’s running for state Senate this cycle, and she’s running for governor in 2024, and while I’m willing to live with a centrist Democrat in a central Delaware Senate seat, especially with control of the chamber in the balance, I’m not willing to live with a centrist in the governor’s office.
Or were you hoping it was sexism?
Huzzah! For disowning the NRA money! Hurrah Bethany!
And I’m not even going into the incredible — by which I mean not believable — skein of bullshit she unspooled when her husband was convicted of what amounts to dirty campaigning.
But then, I suppose if you’re a woman, you go girl, amirite?
Hey, wait a second here: Who sez she gave the money back other than Peter? Trey Paradee came here himself to announce it.
If Bethany Hall-Long gave back the money but does it silently, it’s useless to the anti-NRA movement. In fact, it would be two-faced, which is even worse than doing nothing at all.
Alby, it was the famed sign-stealer himself, Dana Long.
Not saying that it’s true. But that’s what he claimed.
Well he’s certainly a credible source.
If they only announce it here, it amounts to two-facedness. IMHO, of course.
Whew! Break out the pitchforks. It’s all good, I can withstand your personal attacks. Maybe if we all invested the amount of time sitting behind our keyboards attacking people, and spent it on the Harris campaign, we’d see a shift in Delaware.
For what it’s worth Alby, I was an avid listener of you for many years, and it be an honor to grab coffee with you & chat all things DE politics. We’d get to know each other a little better. At least then you when you hurl insults at me, you’ll be able to accurately attack what who I am and what I stand for!
I’m honestly sorry I shared my two cents! Didn’t mean to waste everyone’s time.
I don’t know Alby, do you only vote for bitter old men living out their rage behind a key board?
@Peter: I said I guessed you live in a nice neighborhood and work on Cathy Cloutier’s campaigns and took them as signs you hadn’t noticed we already live in a dystopia. Those are insults?
I don’t do campaigns. Never have and never will. But I’d be happy to catch coffee with you next time I’m in Lewes. Send me your email through the tipline.
@AQC: Every election is unique. I don’t vote for dishonest centrist women unless the alternative is worse, which is why I voted for Hillary. I skipped over lieutenant governor.
Mine is a more constructive use for rage than any other I’ve found. Certainly leaves me freer to say what I want than taking a state paycheck leaves one, no?
Honey, there’s nothing you can say to me that would make the top 100 insults list. My wife does better than that three times a week.
Heard BHL today at the Eastern Sussex Dems meeting. She said she did not accept any money from the NRA during her run for LTG and that she donated the $ that the NRA gave to her Senate PAC to the Stoneman Douglas Victims Fund. She also talked about her ongoing work with mental health care and also talked about her and other Dems voting records on gun issues. She said that she voted for more expansive background checks, voted in favor of the bill that keeps guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, supported the Charleston Loop Hole & that she was 1 of a handful of senators that voted in favor of the original mental health bill by former AG Biden. It was also really cool when she shared about her meeting with high school students this past week from Brandywine School District where they talked about gun violence among other things.
Glad to hear that, Trish. Thanks for the report.
I know I just posted a similar sentiment in a comment on another post. But spare me this crap about BHL or Pete taking a check from the NRA when their voting record is better than Townsend’s on this issue. He didn’t support HB 88 in 2013. Pete and BHL did. I’m sorry but y’all need to look at all of the facts.
Just as I posted elsewhere, I don’t much care about voting records. Gun people look at those lists, not voting records, and they know it even if you don’t.
Had to look up the bill, because only rank insiders walk around with bill numbers from five years ago in their heads.
HB 88 wasn’t well written, was voice-voted through the House 40-1 and only got 6 votes in the Senate, which had only three days to deliberate IIRC. It sought to better codify circumstances for having police confiscate weapons from individuals banned by mental illness — mostly those with a legal determination of such. Gun groups opposed it reflexively, as did all Republicans plus two gun-money recipients, Bushweller and Ennis. But so did Marshall, McBride and McDowell. I doubt they’re NRA patsies — but when they vote together like that as the Dinosaur Caucus, it indicates something was going on behind the curtains.
The real profiles in courage were Poore and Townsend, who hid in their respective rest rooms, figuratively speaking.*
Those are the facts to the best of my recollection. If you think that makes her a profile in courage, so be it. Makes me think she must have her charms if she’s got you fooled.
*The late, great Ralph Moyed used to tell a great story about the two years he spent working for the GOP in the ’70s. Mike Castle, who was in his short House stint at the time, was well know to leadership for trying to skip tough votes, and they used to send Ralph out looking for him. Ralph soon figured out that the rest room, and not the closest one, was a good place to check first. One day he couldn’t find Mike anywhere — until he thought to check what looked like empty stalls. He found Castle standing on a toilet so his feet wouldn’t show.
so she gave money to the fund that she received in 2015? and she just donated it now, but was ok taking it after sandy hook?
You have a point, but I’m setting the date for the beginning of the modern gun sanity movement at Wednesday February 14th, 2018.
Any affiliation with the NRA after that date is grounds for removal from office effective the next Election Day.
jason – every shooting is a new beginning. hell, there are articles about how schools are implementing safety procedures for an active shooter. you would think after columbine that would be enough. that was nearly 20 years ago and guns have proliferated and schools still dont have adequate safety measures. in 5 months itll all be forgotten and everyone will be enraged when it happens again.
Sure I think after columbine that should have be enough. Maybe I wasn’t clear. I think 2/14/18 marks the beginning of the modern gun sanity movement. That’s the date I take as the date after which no Democrat has any excuse for not viewing the NRA as a menace to public health.