For GOP to have chance at 2010 governor's race, Kasich and party must work to regain gun owners' trust

By Gerard Valentino

A lot has been made recently in Ohio's pro-gun community about Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich's congressional vote in favor of the 1994 Clinton Assault Weapons ban. As it stands, Mr. Kasich refuses to disavow the vote on the record, and will only go so far as to state the bill didn't have the intended effect.

To pro-gun advocates, that response is simply not good enough, because it implies that if another gun control law came along that he believed in, he might support gun control again.

The sad truth is without that one bad vote in Congress, and his unwillingness to disavow it, Mr. Kasich is a near perfect conservative gubernatorial candidate. His record is nearly flawless and he seemingly would make a great governor.

Kasich's gun problem is another in a long line of issues that Republican governors and gubernatorial candidates have with the gun community, and conservatives as well. The last two Republican governors, George Voinovich and Bob Taft refused to support legal concealed carry, and Ken Blackwell was repeatedly beat to the punch on the gun issue by current governor Ted Strickland during the 2006 campaign.

Voinvich's vote against national CCW reciprocity yesterday in the U.S Senate is likely to damage Kasich's chances with gun owners. It may not be fair to tarnish Mr. Kasich with previous GOP sins, but it is an undeniable fact that this vote opens new wounds with Ohio gun owners who already felt scorned by prominent Ohio Republicans. That doesn't bode well for any Republican at the head of a statewide ticket, let alone one with a gun ban vote on his record.

Taft's actions after being elected to his second term were particularly galling. During the election he repeatedly told Ohio's gun community that he was in full support of legal concealed carry. Once elected, he flip-flopped on the issue. He even went so far as to claim gun advocates didn't properly understand his campaign pledge and the disagreement was their fault and not his.

Everyone remembers that it was Taft alone who poisoned the original law as a way to make it impractical for honest Ohioans to legally carry a gun. The sad fact is conservatives haven't forgotten the GOP's past sins, and the Tea Party movement has brought the parties recent liberal tendencies back to the forefront.

We can't forget Betty Montgomery was an avid gun grabber and the GOP's electoral rock star for several election cycles. It took a pro-gun Democrat to bring her down, and a pro-gun Democrat to finally put his party back in the governor's mansion - a lesson the GOP still hasn't taken to heart.

Mr. Kasich has to recreate good will between Ohio's pro-gun voters and the GOP if he wants to beat Ted Strickland, a prospect which is seeming more and more possible given the state of Ohio's economy and unemployment rates.

Making this task more difficult is the fact that former Brady Campaign endorsee Mike DeWine has announced his decision to run against strong conservative and pro-gun advocate Dave Yost in the Republican primary for Attorney General. Yost is currently the Delaware Prosecuting Attorney and is on the record as a friend to the Second Amendment.

Running a noted gun grabber like DeWine for the seat that interprets Ohio's gun laws is going to hurt the GOP with die-hard conservatives. In his past elections, Ohio's gun rights groups endorsed "anyone but Dewine" - a strong indicator of how they are likely to treat his candidacy.

DeWine's choice to run for a high profile seat, and Voinovich's anti-gun vote on Tuesday, reminds conservatives of previous anti-gunners in the GOP, who would never have voted for a pro-gun reform bill Ted Strickland signed into law - legislation which the National Rifle Association called it the most sweeping pro-gun reform passed in any state, ever.

If, in the current uncertain climate, the Republican leadership does to Yost what they did to Ken Blackwell in 2006, there is likely to be another mutiny. Whether true or not, conservatives believe that the GOP refused to fully support Blackwell's candidacy for governor because he was too conservative and because he actively campaigned against the GOP-controlled legislature's many tax and spending increases. We do know that high-ranking GOP strategists were on the record as saying it was Blackwell's conservative agenda that cost them the election, which further angered the base.

The simple fact is too many bigwig Republicans in Ohio think guns are a fringe issue, despite the fact that in our dismal economic times guns are selling at a record pace. While Americans are worried about losing their jobs, they are still willing to spend their precious funds on firearms because they think President Obama will try to destroy the Second Amendment.

If the gun issue was on the fringe, people who are worried about economic disaster wouldn't spend precious resources on firearms.

Conservatives statewide are largely on the Kasich bandwagon, and for good reason. He is the first conservative the Ohio GOP has supported in recent memory. By overcoming the GOP's bad record on guns, and his one bad vote on the issue, Kasich is likely to give incumbent Ted Strickland a run for his money.

Mr. Kasich holds the key to the one glaring hole in his conservative pedigree in his hands. All he has to do is make it clear to gun owners that he won't support new gun control schemes, and he is likely to win back their support.

If he doesn't, there will always be that nagging question in the mind of Ohio's gun voters. And keep this in mind - Ohio's gun vote is one of the largest in the country, and was likely the difference between President Bush and President Gore or President Kerry.

After ten years in the pro-gun movement, there has never been a time that gun owners were as disillusioned with the Ohio GOP as they are now. Even during the fight for the original concealed carry law they saw the problem as Bob Taft. Now, many see it as epidemic at the highest levels of the Ohio GOP.

If they hope to reclaim the governor's mansion and other state-wide offices, leaders within the Republican party, and the Kasich campaign, should look to the past to predict the future. Ignoring the gun issue, or claiming that it isn't a priority, isn't what Ohio history suggests is a successful strategy. Instead, the past says Ohioans see guns as a key issue and therefore, statewide elected officials should as well.

Candidates do otherwise at their own peril.

Gerard Valentino is the Buckeye Firearms Foundation Treasurer and writes for the ValentinoChronicle.com.

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