After Virginia Beach Shooting, This Democrat Is Focusing on Guns to Unseat Firearms Dealer Incumbent

The day after a disgruntled city employee killed 12 people inside the Virginia Beach Municipal Center, Karen Havekost visited Missy Cotter Smasal’s campaign office and told her what had happened. Havekost recalled walking out of the bathroom and seeing the gunman at the other end of the hallway. A co-worker turned to her and yelled, ‘GO!’ and she was able to run out of the building, unharmed. “She told us the story and we all were just in tears,” Cotter Smasal says.

Nearly four months later, Havekost tells the same story in a television campaign ad for Cotter Smasal, who is running for the state Senate seat in the district of the Virginia Beach shooting. Virginia holds its state elections in odd number years, and with just two weeks to go until Election Day the debate over strengthening gun control laws has emerged as the leading issue for voters. That’s especially true in the 8th district where Cotter Smasal, a former Navy officer, is locked in a close race with Bill DeSteph, the district’s incumbent Republican state senator who’s also a Navy veteran, as well as a gun collector and licensed firearms dealer with a cozy relationship with the National Rifle Association.

Many eyes are already glued to Virginia’s state elections, which are drawing unprecedented national attention as the state’s GOP fights to maintain its razor-thin majority control of both the House of Delegates and Senate. But after the May 31 shooting, this tight Virginia Beach race has become a bellwether not just for the state elections, but a look into how gun control could play out in the 2020 presidential race.

Cotter Smasal first became interested in local politics in 2017, when her daughter started at a public school and she learned that none of the local schools locked their entrance doors. “One morning I walked into the school and there’s no adults in sight, no one knows who’s in the building,” she recalls. After that, she complained to the school’s administrators and principal, who rebuffed her concerns and assured her that “everything is safe.” So she started a petition and quickly gathered 2,500 signatures asking the school board to start locking school doors and vetting visitors before they entered. It took a few months, but the petition was successful and schools across the city started requiring locked doors.



https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/10/after-the-virginia-beach-shooting-this-democrat-is-focusing-on-guns-to-unseat-the-firearms-dealer-incumbent-republican/