AFL-CIO Joins The Gun Wars With Targeted Mail Blitz Defending Obama On Gun Rights
By Greg Sargent - October 14, 2008, 9:27AM
Micro-targeting is the name of the game in this election, and the AFL-CIO is about to unleash one of its most micro-targeted pushes yet -- a blitz of mailers defending Obama on gun rights that's aimed strictly at union households made up of gun owners.
Here is the first mailer, a piece going to some 80,000 gun owners in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It offers a stout defense of Obama on gun rights and ties it directly to an economic message (click on the images to enlarge):
"I want to protect two things: My job and my gun," union member Mike Day says in the mailer. "That's why I'm supporting Barack Obama."
The union's decision to depart from a strictly economic message and to edge into the culture wars is driven in part by a stepped up campaign in the battlegrounds by the National Rifle Association, which has run ads accusing Obama of conspiring to take away people's guns.
The new mail piece is the latest in a broad effort by the AFL-CIO to reach very specific voting blocks in the swing states. Last week the union unleashed a wave of mailings targeting union households with veterans, and union officials promise an intensified -- and targeted -- campaign of mailers, phone calls and door-knocking in the race's final stretch.
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