Thompson gets access to Fla. gun shows
Posted on Fri, Sep. 14, 2007
By MARC CAPUTO
CELEBRATION --
Fred Thompson's presidential campaign has hit a conservative bull's eye: The exclusive rights to advertise at some of Florida's largest gun shows.
Pasco County Republican chairman Bill Bunting said he has engineered the deal for the former Tennessee senator and Law & Order star because he's the best person to trust when it comes to the right to buy, sell and own guns.
In a state with 435,000 concealed-weapons permit holders, the arrangement all but guarantees that thousands of voters who care deeply about the issue could identify Thompson as their man heading into the Jan. 29 primary, in which the other Republican candidates' gun-toting credentials are viewed as suspect by many.
''The other candidates just aren't as clear in their support of the Second Amendment,'' Bunting said. ``There are good Democrats who own guns, but that party doesn't put the right to bear arms in their political platform. The Republican Party does.''
Bunting plans to make his announcement this evening at his county GOP's Reagan Day Dinner, where a Colt .45 will be raffled off.
GOP campaign guru David ''DJ'' Johnson, who's not connected to the Thompson campaign, said the deal is ''huge.'' He should know. Bunting made the same arrangement for Charlie Crist's successful governor's race last year, flummoxing Johnson's candidate, Tom Gallagher. Gallagher even tried to get some gun-show promoters to allow him to pass out fliers, but he was rejected.
''There are people who vote guns and only guns, and they're Republicans,'' Johnson said. ``These are the people you see at the polls.''
The state's biggest gun-show promoter, Victor Bean, of the Florida and the Southern Gun and Knife shows, said he has 11 shows left until the primaries and estimates that 11,000 people will see Thompson's signs.
In addition, he said he has an e-mail list of 70,000 politically active gun owners he plans to contact on Thompson's behalf.
''Going into this campaign, I was concerned,'' Bean said. ``We feel Fred is our best hope.''
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