Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Politics / Woods Haslam's Guns-and-Gas Problem
Posted by Jeff Woods on Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 12:57 PM
Bill Haslam may be "a Bredesen with charisma," as Frank Cagle suggests in this Metro Pulse column. But in what's certain to become a bloody GOP primary, Haslam isn't without exploitable faults--the most obvious being his membership in Michael Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns. The National Rifle Association, not surprisingly, claims Bloomberg's really waging war against legal gun ownership. To the right, see the cover of the April 2007 NRA magazine depicting Bloomberg as a crazy octopus. According to the article:
"Beholden to nothing except his own ambitions, the mayor has established himself as a kind of national gun-control vigilante. ... Bloomberg's tentacles reach throughout the country to foist N.Y.C.-style gun control on you, your friends and neighbors."
Zach Wamp and Bill Gibbons are certain to go after Haslam on guns. Cagle points to another possible Haslam weakness (and this one could hurt the Knoxville mayor even if he wins his party's nomination.)
I'm sure it did not escape Wamp's notice that an organizational/listening session for Haslam was held at Pilot Corp.'s headquarters this week. No one knows what gas prices will be during the heat of the primary campaign, but it could be the voters are not going to be feeling warm and fuzzy toward oil and gas vendors. And you can probably expect an ad pointing out that Knoxville had the highest gas prices in the nation at one point.
Update: Calls for Haslam to renounce Bloomberg have already started.
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