A top official with the company that owns some of the nation’s leading hunting and firearms magazines has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to leading anti-gun candidates and political groups, according to an examination of campaign funding disclosure documents conducted by Grand View Outdoors.
Leo Hindery, co-Managing Partner of InterMedia Partners, LP based in New York, has helped bankroll the Democratic National Committee, a Democratic senate political action committee and several top Democratic Senate candidates — including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chuck Shumer and Ed Markey — Federal Election Commission data show.
In 2013 and 2014, Hindery donated $5,400 to the campaign of Sen. Ed Markey, the former Massachusetts congressman who won a special election to take over a vacant senate when John Kerry was appointed Secretary of State for the Obama Administration in 2013. Markey has historically been hostile to firearms ownership, recently introducing a bill in the Senate that would mandate so-called “smart gun” technology on all handguns nationwide, and another bill that would give $10 million per year to the Center for Disease Control to study “gun violence prevention.”
Hindery also donated $5,000 to the Friends of Hillary campaign committee for Sen. Clinton’s 2003 run for her New York senate seat, as well as another $2,300 to the Hillary for President campaign chest in 2007. Hindery also gave $2,000 to the Friends of Harry Reid campaign committee in 2003.
Both Clinton and Reid have been staunch proponents of gun control, with Clinton recently saying in a speech “we have to rein in what has become almost [an] article of faith that anybody can own a gun anywhere, anytime. And I don’t believe that.”
Hindery gave nearly $5,000 to the Friends of Chuck Schumer campaign committee in 2010. Schumer has been a vocal supporter of reinstituting an national “assault weapons ban.”
InterMedia Partners is one of the largest owners of outdoor publications and media properties, including Guns & Ammo magazine, Shotgun News and North American Whitetail. The group also owns the Sportsman Channel, which broadcasts shows like Bowhunter TV, Guns & Ammo TV — as well as segments from the National Rifle Association’s “Cam and Company” talk show.
But InterMedia’s holdings are much broader than just outdoor publications, the company says, with ownership stakes in Universal Sports, Soul Train Holdings and the Magic Johnson-founded Aspire network.
Controversy over Hindery’s politics surfaced after Guns & Ammo editor Dick Metcalf was fired after penning a column seen by many pro-gun readers as advocating too-strict mandates on gun ownership. Rumors swirled that Hindrey had acquired the InterMedia Outdoors portfolio to use them to advocate gun-control causes.
Though there is no evidence Hindrey had any influence on Metcalf’s piece and he has publicly denied any attempt to advocate gun control through his publications, the media mogul’s donations to leading anti-gun candidates have some in the pro-Second Amendment world worried.
InterMedia did not respond to a request for comment from Grand View Outdoors.
In an interview with The New York Times last year, Hindery said he “believes in the Second Amendment,” but that he supports “appropriate restrictions” on gun ownership, adding that his publications cover issues surrounding hunting and fishing.
“The NRA is an appropriate advertiser,” he told The Times, referring to the gun rights advocacy group’s sponsorship on the Sportsman Channel. “They represent 4 million people who hunt and fish.”
Aside from it’s hunting and fishing portfolio, InterMedia Outdoors publishes five gun-related magazines, including Handguns magazine, which features stories on its web site titled “Best Carry Guns for 2014,” “9 Great Concealed Carry Belts” and “Support Charity & Win a Nighthawk Custom 1911.”
