Big-name national gun-control organizations with deep pockets spent large to help pull off wins for their candidates and issues at the polls on Tuesday.
These elections impact law-abiding gun owners up and down the East Coast, where Americans' Second Amendment rights have long been under siege from anti-gun politicians and gun control advocates.
Virginia
In Virginia, former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D) defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears to flip the polarity of the state's Governor's Mansion starting in 2026. Spanberger, 46, a former CIA officer, represented the Old Dominion state's Beltway area 7th Congressional District from 2019 to 2025, where she was a reliable vote for gun control on Capitol Hill. She pledged during her gubernatorial campaign to move toward enacting a statewide ban on the manufacturing, sale, and transfer of "assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines" should she win office.
A former volunteer for the Bloomberg-backed Moms Demand Action anti-gun organization, Everytown, ran a $1 million paid media campaign to elect Spanberger as Virginia’s next governor and reportedly reached out to 250,000 Virginia voters in battleground counties.
"This is a banner day for both Virginians and Moms Demand Action, which played a crucial role in helping one of their own win the Governorship," John Feinblatt, president of Everytown, said Tuesday night in a statement, with the group going on to acknowledge it widely outspent the NRA in the race.
Along with celebrating their gubernatorial win, anti-gun groups Everytown, Students Demand Action, and Moms Demand Action cheered the addition of 13 Moms Demand Action volunteers to the state’s General Assembly.
The wins are part of a growing ambition to create a “Gun Sense Majority” in the legislature. Everytown dumped $400,000 into key battleground districts to float the candidates to their electoral wins, which now makes 20 percent of the Democrat majority in the House MDA volunteers.
New Jersey
Meanwhile, in the Garden State, U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D), currently in her fourth term in Congress, beat Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli, a former state legislator endorsed by Trump. Sherrill, who sits on the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, has been outspoken in her support of stricter nationwide gun control while in Congress, including advocating for universal background checks, red flag gun seizure laws, banning "high-capacity" magazines, and expanding mandatory gun lock laws.
She was backed in her race against Ciattarelli by all the big-name anti-gun groups, including Giffords and Everytown. As with Spanberger, Sherrill ran for governor on a "tough on guns" platform, and there is no indication that she won't keep her promises.
Everytown, allied with Greater Garden State, launched a $500,000 streaming and digital ad campaign to elect Sherrill as New Jersey’s next governor.
Maine 'Red Flag' Ballot question
In the Pine Tree State, voters on Tuesday weighed in on Question 2, with a winning "Yes" vote approving the establishment of a process for obtaining an Extreme Risk Protection Order, or ERPO, "allowing family members, household members, or law enforcement to petition a court to restrict a person’s access to dangerous weapons."
Both Gov. Janet Mills (D) and former Gov. Paul LePage (R), as well as the Maine State Police, opposed Question 2. Meanwhile, gun control groups and progressives supported the initiative.
Some 21 states and the District of Columbia have enacted similar "red flag" laws, which are increasingly controversial. Pro-Second Amendment groups point out that there is little concrete evidence showing such laws have any effect on crime prevention, while at the same time, they set an almost ridiculously low bar to strip one's gun rights and create an adversarial and expensive process to have them restored and seized property returned.
"Red flag laws are also inherently discriminatory because of the disproportionate burden on the poor; respondents are often buried in legal costs while attempting to recover property that was rightfully theirs to begin with," notes the Firearms Policy Coalition.
In 2016, Maine voters rejected a ballot initiative to expand background checks to include most gun transfers – a $5 million effort paid for in large part by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
