A report at MyNorthwest.com says President Donald Trump may be heading back to the belly of the beast with a possible campaign rally in Washington State, due to what appears to be “an uptick in engagement” by Evergreen conservatives.
There have been “more donors” showing up in Washington state, according to Trump 2020 Senior Advisor John Pence, a nephew to Vice President Mike Pence, the online news organ reported.
Three months ago, a column in the Seattle Times indicated the same thing. Columnist Danny Westneat reported what must have been alarming to Seattle liberals: “The latest federal-election reports show that Trump is doing surprisingly well getting backers in this bluest of blue places. With nearly 15 months to go before the 2020 election, he already has drawn more donations from Seattle addresses than he did during the entire 2016 campaign.”
Perhaps some of the momentum is due to the grassroots efforts aimed at beating back gun control in a state where Seattle is the headquarters of a billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying group, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. That’s the organization responsible for pushing through three anti-gun citizen initiatives, including last year’s I-1639, now being challenged in federal district court by the Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Second Amendment activists across the Evergreen State are scrambling to get 300,000 signatures on Initiative 1094 to the State Legislature. The measure would repeal all of I-1639, which passed by just under 60 percent of the vote last year. Almost from the moment the measure was adopted, there were complaints that voters had been misled about the initiative’s multiple provisions. Anger has turned into activism, as petitions are available for signing in more than 250 gun shops and other businesses around the state.
This coming weekend, volunteer signature gatherers will be busy at the Washington Arms Collectors gun show at the Evergreen Fairgrounds in Monroe.
According to MyNorthwest.com, Pence was in Washington for “campaign volunteer training.” This week’s impeachment proceedings in the Democrat-controlled U.S. House have evidently energized Trump voters, who had previously kept their politics underground.
But faced with overbearing liberal pushiness, conservatives appear to be coming out of the woodwork. Whether this continues for the next 11 months, up to the November 2020 election, remains to be seen.
One thing that will pour kerosene on the fire is if the Democrat-controlled Legislature with a new anti-gun House Speaker will attempt to shove more gun control down the throats of an estimated million-plus gun owners, including more than 645,000 who are licensed to carry concealed handguns.
The gun control issue might provide the catalyst, along with anti-gun Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee’s decision to run for a third term when his vanity campaign for president tanked this past summer. Washington voters are furious over another initiative—I-976, which mandates $30 car license plate tabs—that has been stalled by a lawsuit filed by the City of Seattle, and an injunction upheld this week by the liberal State Supreme Court.
In short, Washington’s typically lethargic conservatives have suddenly come alive like the proverbial sleeping giant, and they’re in a grouchy mood.
A measure of that surliness is found in Westneat’s August column, in which he noted Trump’s approval rating in Washington was “28 points underwater” at the time, yet he was still pulling in more campaign contributions than the top six Democrat challengers. Indeed, Westneat wrote, “Trump, of all candidates, has nearly three times as many donations from Washington state as Bernie Sanders does. The Vermont senator has 8,080 itemized donations here, while Trump has the most ever recorded at this point in an election, by any candidate in either party.” More than 21,000 donations had been reported when Westneat penned the column three months ago.
Not that Washington State is going to miraculously flip next year, but the mere prospect of wrestling back at least part of the legislature, and maybe electing the first Republican governor in more than 35 years, has conservatives salivating.
————————————————
If you haven’t checked out and liked our Facebook page, please go here and do so. You can also follow us on Twitter at @co_firing_line and be sure to check out our MeWe page here and our new PatrioticSpace group here.
If you appreciate independent conservative reports like this, please go here and support us on Patreon.
And while you’re at it, be sure to check out our friends at Whatfinger News, the Internet’s conservative front-page founded by ex-military!
