NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s candidacy has driven away throngs of Republican elected officials, donors and policy experts. But not the National Rifle Association.
With Trump increasingly isolated and hobbled by controversies of his own making, the powerful gun-rights group has emerged as one of his remaining stalwart allies in the Republican coalition, still aggressively committed to his candidacy.
The association has spent millions of dollars on television commercials for Trump, even as other Republican groups have kept their checkbooks closed and Trump’s campaign has not run ads of its own. The NRA’s chief political strategist, Chris Cox, gave a forceful testimonial for Trump at the Republican convention; Trump has repeatedly praised Cox and the association’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre.
And on Tuesday, when Trump roiled the race anew with a rough comment — his critics interpreted it as a suggestion that “Second Amendment people’’ could attack Hillary Clinton or the judges she would appoint if elected president — the association rushed to defend his remark as no more than an attempt to rally gun enthusiasts to vote.
Allies of Trump and the association describe their political alliance as a marriage forged out of urgent necessity: an unlikely pairing of a former gun-control proponent who lives in a Manhattan skyscraper with an advocacy group typically seen as speaking for gun manufacturers and the hunters and sportsmen of Middle America.
But Trump has effectively reached out to the pro-gun community with a message of fierce support for Second Amendment rights. And the NRA, spurred by concern about Clinton’s power to nominate Supreme Court judges, has reciprocated his overtures with enthusiasm.
Helping to establish that connection have been Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, avid hunters with ties to the NRA. Donald Jr., Trump’s oldest son, spoke about the importance of gun rights on a visit to Capitol Hill in the spring.
On the campaign trail, Trump makes a show of embracing the association and its leadership, while accusing Clinton of seeking to do away with the Second Amendment.
“We’re going to help the NRA, who are great people,’’ he said Tuesday in Fayetteville, N.C. “They’re fighting hard, they’re fighting hard. Chris and Wayne and all their people at the NRA, these are people that love our country.’’
The alliance with Trump comes at a moment of peril for the NRA and its agenda, as Democrats threaten to take control of the Senate and polls show the public increasingly supportive of at least modest new limits on the sale and possession of firearms.
Clinton and other Democrats have run explicitly against the NRA in this election, attacking the gun lobby for opposing laws intended to restrict gun sales to people with mental illnesses or whose names are on the federal terrorism watch list. They have held up the NRA as a uniquely sinister organization and cast themselves as opponents of the group rather than of gun owners in general.
In her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention last month, Clinton said the country could not have a president “in the pocket of the gun lobby.’’
The NRA has spent nearly $6 million this year on advertising supporting Trump, focusing its latest efforts on the swing states of Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, where Trump and running mate Mike Pence have been campaigning heavily. That sum — a tiny fraction of what has been spent on commercials backing Clinton — is the largest expenditure for ads helping Trump in the general election.
At this point in the last two elections, the NRA had not spent a single dollar on ads backing the Republican nominees, John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012, according to the ad tracking firm Kantar Media/CMAG. In 2004, the association spent just $61,000 aiding President George W. Bush’s reelection bid.
Grover Norquist, an antitax activist who sits on the rifle association’s board, said the 2016 race was uniquely explosive because control of the Supreme Court hangs in the balance and Clinton has spoken critically of judicial decisions that take a broad interpretation of the right to own guns.
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