Fred Thompson counting on gun owners in South Carolina

By Chad D. Baus

The Politico.com is reporting that Fred Thompson is looking to gun owners to deliver a high-profile victory to boost his presidential campaign.

The article observes that Second Amendment advocates have struggled to find a champion of their own in the Republican presidential primary field, and says that with the Jan. 19 South Carolina primary fast approaching, gun owners appear to be lining up behind their ally, Thompson.

Click 'Read More' for the entire commentary.

Thompson chose to skip the New Hampshire primary in order to give early and heavy focus on South Carolina. The former Tennessee senator returned to South Carolina to campaign on Tuesday, January 8 (even before the polls closed in the Granite State) and won’t leave until Saturday's Palmetto State primary.

From the story:

"Early, I aligned myself with the McCain campaign based on the total package of issues, including his military experience," said Republican state Rep. Mike Pitts, the local gun advocates' go-to legislator in the state capital.

But now, "if I were to actively campaign for someone, it would either be Fred Thompson or Mike Huckabee."...

...According to a study conducted for Pitts, roughly 40 percent of the state’s population have hunting or fishing licenses or belong to a Second Amendment advocacy groups in the state.

Most of those voters also count themselves as Republicans, so they “make up a large part of the voting population in the primary,” said Jeff Sadosky, a Thompson campaign spokesman.

A visit to the annual Ellett Brothers gun show offers easy evidence of the gun advocates' unease and what Thompson hopes is his last, best opportunity to stay in the 2008 race.

The sprawling show on the state fair grounds outside Columbia drew more than 300 gunmakers from as far away as China and hundreds more attendees who are gun dealers and shop owners.

F. Hewitt Grant, the grandfatherly president of Ellett Brothers gun manufacturing, lords over the event as he strolls through a crowd of more than 800 people attending a post-show beef and ham dinner and silent auction.

They’re clad in jeans and vests and concealed weapons, a fact casually noted by several diners.

Grant told Politico that he’s leaning toward Thompson, hasn’t completely ruled out Huckabee, and "laughed at" an overture from Giuliani, who as mayor backed a lawsuit against New York gun manufacturers that is still in litigation and remains an unforgivable sin among gun advocates.

Again, from the story:

McCain, who wandered off the pro-gun reservation in the late 1990s by supporting gun control but has now come back to the fold, “wavers” too much, says Grant.

As for Romney, who signed gun control legislation while governor, Grant playfully loads on the Southern drawl and simply says: "He's from Massachusetts."

Grant likes Thompson because of his support for the Second Amendment and his foreign policy experience, a depth of experience that Grant thinks Huckabee lacks.

Beyond those two contenders, though, "I don’t see any other candidate, point blank," he adds.

Gerald Stoudemire, president of the Gun Owners of South Carolina, has made a similar assessment.

He met with Thompson in late November and early December when the presidential hopeful campaigned at a gun show and several gun shops. "He’s been so solid as the Second Amendment person," said Stoudemire.

At his Little Mountain Gun & Supply store, Stoudemire talks up the Thompson candidacy to his customers, and he's likely to take a more public position in support of him.

The gun owners' association vice president, Neil F. Beers Jr., is also a Thompson supporter, although he’s still sizing up Huckabee.

As for the other candidates, Stoudemire ticks their names off and comes to the same conclusion with each: "He’s off my list."

The article reports that the Thompson campaign is hoping to marry the gun owners’ support with backing from social conservatives and pro-military activists.

The story concludes:

The calculations being made in South Carolina by gun rights advocates follow similar deliberations that went on among gun owners in Iowa and New Hampshire.

The rank and file has been left largely on their own because the NRA, itself, is struggling with how to manage a field filled with front-runners with tainted records.

The NRA weeks ago released a Democratic voter guide that made clear that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson had the best record on gun issues.

But they have yet to offer a similar guide for the Republican field, even though all of the first primary states are home to significant numbers of Second Amendment activists.

“We are inching towards making some kind of determination,” said spokesman Andrew Arulanandam.

UPDATE: According to RasmussenReports.com, Fred Thompson has pulled into a statistical dead-heat for second-place in South Carolina with just under one week to go until polls open.

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