Virginia Beach Democrat Senate Candidate Invokes May's Mass Shooting in Campaign Ad

The Virginia Mercury has the story here.

“I walked out of the bathroom and saw the gunman on the other end of the hallway,” she says in a political ad released at the end of September. “I saw a coworker in the middle, and he looked at me and he yelled, ‘Go.’ So I was lucky, but not everyone was.”

Missy Cotter Smasal, Democratic candidate for the 8th State Senate District, sponsored and released the ad. She’s one of the first candidates in Virginia Beach to explicitly mention in campaign materials the mass shooting that left 13 people dead, including the gunman, and injured four more.

Cotter Smasal is challenging Sen. Bill DeSteph, R-Virginia Beach, who has served in the General Assembly since 2014. Both are former naval officers.

The article goes on to give opposing views of the impact of this past May's shooting on the election.

Joshua Zingher, a political scientist at Old Dominion University, said other states that have experienced mass shootings haven’t had huge political upheaval afterward.

“The effects of mass shootings can be very short-lived. I don’t anticipate some anomaly in Virginia Beach either as a function of guns or gun reform or lack of gun reform or the mass shooting specifically,” he said.

Quentin Kidd, a political scientist at Christopher Newport University, said he thinks the shooting and gun policy will motivate a key voting bloc — white suburban women, who are “driving politics in Virginia Beach” and areas outside of Richmond. Those are also the areas where the Democratic Party is hanging its hopes to win a majority in the statehouse.

One thing is for sure, the gun ban lobby and their financial supporters from outside Virginia are pouring millions into the Commonwealth to try and influence the election and flip the assembly. And remember what we shared earlier this week regarding what former Governor Terry McAuliffe said at a fundraiser in Richmond last week.  If we don't want to become California or New Jersey, get out and work for the pro-gun candidate in your district and get as many gun owners to the polls in November as you can.