It was America’s first mass shooting at a school. And it deeply affected Democrat Jim Florio, a South Jersey congressman who was running for governor of New Jersey. Florio won, and as he told Stockton University students in March 2020, he decided to do something about semiautomatic assault weapons.

“Stockton, Calif. In early 1989, we had a crazy fellow in a schoolyard shooting people with an assault weapon, shooting children,” Florio told political science students in the university’s Campus Center Events Room.

“I became the governor at the end of 1989. And I said to myself, this is something we want to try to avoid. We should get some laws passed to try to control some of the use of guns, especially these types of guns, military assault weapons,” said Florio, who died in September 2022.

Florio’s election had brought in a Democratic majority in both legislative houses. Within four months of taking office, votes were scheduled on a bill to ban ownership in New Jersey of semiautomatic rifles. But former Sen. Dan Dalton of Gloucester County recalled that his party had a problem. Republicans opposed the bill, and Democrats could afford to lose support from only two of their members. They were short by three. Democrats needed 21 Senate votes to pass the ban.

“Just the simple math put us at 20 votes. And so we understood that we had to reach across the aisle or get somebody from across the aisle to support the ban,” Dalton said.

Enter Republican Sen. Bill Gormley.

Gormley never mentioned his military service to score political points. After all, he had not seen combat. But he relied on his experience as a Marine to help him decide the issue.

“I had been a member of the United States Marine Corps from 1972 to 1975. Even though I was a lawyer, you have to qualify as a platoon commander,” Gormley said.

“And after I graduated from law school, you go to basic for six months. And during that time, and a lot of people did, but I qualified as an expert on an M16. Okay? So that was my experience.

“So it was 1990, and I had had this experience in the Marine Corps, and it seemed like a no-brainer to me. And I wasn’t doing anything to hunting in the state of New Jersey,” Gormley said, adding: “I was a marine. I fired M16s. Wait a second. It seemed pretty logical to me.”

During the Senate vote, Gormley ignored the GOP party line against the bill and provided the only Republican vote to ban assault weapons in New Jersey.

It was the 21st vote, and it put the bill over the top to pass.

“I personally wasn’t shocked when he voted with us on the assault weapons ban,” Dalton said, “because I knew he had that sort of political gumption, and he was willing to take tough stands.”

“Gormley never put himself into one column or the other. He was his own man,” said David Wildstein, New Jersey Globe editor. “He was the, you know, sort of the epitome of a guy who marched to his own drummer and didn’t always care what people thought of him because he was able to build this organization where he led Atlantic County.”

As Ginny Gormley had said, Gormley was not the go-along, get-along kind of politician his father was in the Farley machine. He would be his own man, she said.

Former Gov. Tom Kean called Gormley’s vote an act of principle, but one that carried risk.

“He’s got a lot of courage and he wants to do what’s right,” Kean said. “And sometimes that gets him into trouble, because sometimes what’s right requires some politically difficult choices. And he’s generally put good government ahead of politics.”

The ban — and Florio’s success in vetoing a later Republican effort to repeal it — enraged the National Rifle Association, long one of the toughest lobbying groups in America. New Jersey’s ban became a rallying cry, and the NRA — whose affiliate in the state was the Coalition of N.J. Sportsmen — spent freely to get revenge in the 1991 state legislative elections.

“Well, I knew that would just, you know, you were really poking the beast as far as the NRA was concerned,” Dalton said.

Former Sen. Robert Martin of Morris County was a Republican assemblyman during the gun ban battles. An Army veteran, he also saw no use for assault weapons in hunting or home defense and supported the ban. The NRA targeted Martin.

“I was told by an NRA zealot that they had a national convention in California. And among their activities was a fundraiser in which they identified five politicians around the country who they detested the most, put a label on them, and then had a pig shoot,” Martin said.

“They take rifles and go out and they shoot these pigs with certain names on them. And I heard where I was one of the pigs that was shot in the fundraiser,” said Martin, a Seton Hall University law professor.

The worst experience, though, was when NRA supporters called the Martin home.

“I had three daughters at home. And the oldest was a young teenager at the time. And they received a couple phone calls that — the guy said that they were gonna shoot me,” Martin recalled.

He called the local police department but there was little they could do about an anonymous call. Florio heard about it and called the assemblyman to the Governor’s Office.

“I’d never spoken to Florio about this at all. But he caught wind of it, you know. He said, ‘I will give you protection. I’ll have the state troopers monitor your home for a while. Do you want that?’

“And I asked my wife,” Martin said. Gee, wonder what her response was. “She said yes.”

But the NRA’s biggest prey in the ’91 election was Bill Gormley.

“It was a rough campaign because — I don’t want to get into particulars,” said Gormley, ever the stoic marine. “But they have no boundaries in terms of when they’re doing stuff like this.

“They obviously deny, deny, deny the whole time. And it was hard. It’s harder on the family than it is on the candidate. I enjoy the rigors of a campaign,” the hyper-competitive Gormley said. “But for family members, it can be quite distressing. And the tactics that are used are designed many times to have an impact on the family and make it hard on them.”

Ginny Gormley revealed only slightly more.

“Going head to head with the NRA, that was rough. That was rough on him. It was rough on me. It was rough on — we had two teenagers at that point. … And we got, I got some weird phone calls, and the children were being followed, two of our teenagers,” she said.

Consultant Roger Stone was and is known in political circles as a practitioner of the dark arts. Before he was associated with Donald Trump and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Stone worked often on New Jersey election campaigns — usually against Democrats.

But former Judge Nelson Johnson, author of the book “Boardwalk Empire,” recounted a surprising proposal that he said Stone offered to him in late 1990 or early 1991. A mutual friend set up a meeting at Stone’s Margate condo.

“He said, ‘I’m here to offer you a quarter of a million dollars’ — and I’m listening to this — ‘from the National Rifle Association if you will run against Bill Gormley,’” Johnson said. “And I said, ‘Roger, you didn’t do your homework.’ And he says, ‘What do you mean?’

“I said, ‘I happen to like Bill Gormley. I like him a lot. We served together on the county board of freeholders, and I came to admire his political talent. And so I wouldn’t be inclined to run against him.'”

He said Stone pressed him to consider.

Johnson said he replied: “‘Look, you really don’t know me. First, I wouldn’t run against Bill Gormley. But second, I wouldn’t take a nickel from the National Rifle Association. They’re not my kind of people.’

“And he was like, ‘Oh, well, I guess this is going to be a short meeting.’”

At the time, Stone denied involvement in the attempt to take out Gormley, although the late former Atlantic City Committeeman Edmund Colanzi also claimed that Stone had recruited him to join the NRA’s primary challenge to Gormley. His claim was backed by a city school board member who said he attended the meeting between Colanzi and Stone. Colanzi said he declined the offer, according to Press of Atlantic City reporting.

Gormley’s opponents settled on a political unknown, a resort shuttle bus driver named Domenic Cappella, who was also president of the Jitney Association, to run in the 1991 Republican Senate primary.

“They came up with a candidate named Domenic Cappella, who was a jitney driver. I mean, it may be fair to say he was the Ed Durr of the 1991 Republicans,” Wildstein said, referring to an unknown truck driver who defeated former Senate President Steve Sweeney in 2021.

His opponents figured they couldn’t beat Gormley straight on, so they quietly funneled NRA funding through a complex scheme involving PACs started by Camden County Republicans who, like Stone, backed Christie Whitman to run for governor two years later. Whitman denied any knowledge of the plan.

It’s interesting to note that over the years, Gormley frequently battled Camden County Democrats to limit their influence in Atlantic County. It was highly unusual that Camden Republicans went after a member of their own party.

The Camden County GOP was just one piece of a complicated campaign finance maneuver. But former Press of Atlantic City Statehouse reporter Joe Donohue exposed the scheme right before the primary vote.

“What nobody realized at the time was that some of the supporters of Christie Whitman decided to launch a sneak attack on Bill and try to take him out in the primary because nobody really expected any (serious challenge),” Donohue said. “The guy they ran, Domenic Cappella, was a jitney driver from Atlantic City, not well known. I don’t think anybody thought there would be any kind of contest.

“Well, they used the classic Watergate technique of moving money through one PAC in Camden County to two PACs in Cape May County. And then they rolled the money into Domenic Cappella’s campaign,” he said.

A total of $73,500, including nearly $40,000 provided by the NRA, was funneled from Camden County through the two Cape May County PACs, according to Press reporting at the time and N.J. Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) records.

Donohue said the funds were hard to trace because the PACs didn’t file finance reports before the primary election, effectively hiding the war chest Cappella would use to beat up on Gormley. ELEC later fined the Camden PAC, Committee for Sensible Government ’91, for violating a campaign finance disclosure law.

“Some of the money was spent on Cappella’s behalf. Like, the NRA did polling and mailings. There were a lot of anonymous attacks. There was a series of really scurrilous newsletters that were put out about Bill (alleging) all kinds of dirt,” Donohue said. “It was like a whisper campaign.”

Cappella blanketed the airwaves with ads attacking Gormley. As he returned from a West Coast conference, Gormley was surprised to learn a virtually unknown opponent could afford sophisticated attack ads.

“I land in Philadelphia, get in my car, I hear this radio ad. ‘Bill Gormley’s taking away guns.’ You know, it’s awful. I said, wait a second, I didn’t do anything to hunting in the state of New Jersey,” Gormley said.

Other ads hit Gormley for voting for Florio’s $2.8 billion in increased taxes, which he had actually opposed.

“The NRA was funding races but not talking about gun issues,” Wildstein said. “Their objective was to defeat Gormley, not to convert Atlantic County voters to the beliefs of the NRA. So they used that money to talk about taxes, about Gormley’s record.”

“They alleged that I voted for Governor Florio’s income tax and sales tax, which I voted against,” Gormley said. “But it didn’t matter.

“That was my primary opponent. Then I had two general election opponents, and they were all conveying the same false message,” he said.

It’s been mentioned Gormley didn’t always have a gentle bedside manner, and some local Republicans embraced the chance to knock him down a peg. Gormley won the primary by only about 800 votes. But he wasn’t out of the woods.

A local Republican state assemblywoman, Dolores Cooper, ran as an independent Senate candidate. Former City Committeeman Colanzi claimed that Stone had also recruited her, which Stone and the Cooper campaign denied. Though both Republicans were on the same legislative team, there was little love lost between the late Cooper and Gormley.

“Assemblywoman Cooper was a big personality also, and those two in the room together, there wasn’t a whole lot of oxygen left,” Wildstein said. “So eventually they came to blows.”

Press of Atlantic City reporters during that campaign noticed similarities between the Cappella and Cooper campaigns. Attack press releases put out by Cooper were identical to those done by Cappella in appearance, style and tone, filled with the same personal insults and unusual misspellings. Cooper received $20,000 in direct contributions from the NRA, according to ELEC records. Gormley supporters suspected Stone’s work; he and Cooper denied it.

Cooper eventually dropped out but moved her campaign funds to a new PAC and spent them on ads attacking Gormley. Her campaign said the transferred money was to be spent on behalf of Democratic Senate candidate Meg Worthington, meaning all three candidates Gormley faced received or benefited from at least some NRA funding.

Worthington’s campaign said Cooper made a mistake in saying she would spend her funds on Worthington’s behalf, but a recent check of ELEC records found no amendments to Cooper’s filing.

The NRA endorsed Worthington in the general election.

In the end, Gormley won the general election, 53% to 47%. Two years later, Governor Florio wasn’t so lucky. A similar dynamic played out.

Florio’s opponents focused on $1.8 billion in tax increases he had approved. An anti-tax group, Hands Across New Jersey, campaigned hard against the tax hikes and were aided by anti-Florio rhetoric on the statewide 101.5 FM radio station. Florio lost one of the closest elections in state history to Christie Whitman in 1993.

It came out later that Hands had been supported with rally expenses and organizing help by the NRA.

Even though Gormley won his election, many agree the episode damaged his viability to run for higher office. He had been seen as a rising star, having placed fourth in the crowded 1989 Republican gubernatorial primary. But he lost a South Jersey congressional primary against Frank LoBiondo in 1994. And the late Congressman Bob Franks squeaked by Gormley in a 2000 Republican U.S. Senate primary.

Some say the assault weapons vote underscored for Republican critics that Gormley was not a doctrinaire conservative.

“I think it hurt his higher ambitions. It caused some damage,” said Donohue, currently deputy director of ELEC.

The late Carl Golden, a political pundit and spokesman for governors and the state Supreme Court, noted that South Jersey has long leaned to the conservative side. The assault weapons ban did not sit well with rural voters.

“That was a tough vote. I mean, you’re coming from an area of the state where as somebody from Wyoming once said, gun control means being able to aim steady,” Golden said.

“So that was a tough vote for Bill with a Democratic governor. But that was one of those where I think we could legitimately say that it was really a vote of conscience, knowing what the pushback would be.”

Former Governor Kean said Gormley and New Jersey were probably better off that he didn’t go to Washington, but he speculated on what might have been.

“This is a guy who, in retrospect, was right on so many issues. That’s true. That’s absolutely true. But it’s a shame he never got elected to higher office,” Kean said. “He would have had a fine governor.”

“I think some of those positions that he took over those years made that task, made that road impossible,” Kean said.

Wildstein put a finer point on it.

“I always thought Bill Gormley was a better general election candidate than a primary candidate. You know, he never kowtowed to the right. He was very much, I’d say — I don’t want to call him a liberal Republican, but either a moderate or slightly to the left of center.”

Gormley supporters have said he probably would not have been happy as one of 435 House members, and the state would have missed his behind-the-scenes leadership, where he was often most effective.

The senator has come to terms with his record.

“I wouldn’t say that my votes over the years were ideal for primaries, to say the least. They certainly had a limiting effect on some of the other times I ran for office,” Gormley said.

As for the specific assault weapons ban vote?

“It obviously infringed on my political aspirations in elections in other years, but I would still vote the same way,” he said. “And in retrospect, I think a lot of people around the country would probably agree with the vote I made.”

In classic Gormley style, he expressed mock sympathy and understanding as he unsheathed his dagger for his 1991 critics.

“Unfortunately, some of the people who opposed me who were pro-NRA, they didn’t have the experience of having served their country. So I guess they didn’t get a chance to fire an assault rifle and realize what it did,” he said.

As a post-script, Bill Gormley never speaks badly of Roger Stone; it was just politics. He even made peace with Dolores Cooper, sponsoring a bill to name a local bridge after her.

And Stone apparently held no grudges against Joe Donohue, the reporter who exposed the NRA sneak attack on Gormley. In fact, the two met for dinner sometime after the 1991 election.

“I walked into the restaurant and as I was sitting down,” Donohue said, “Roger signaled to the waitress and said, ‘Waitress, could you get some strychnine for my friend?’”

It’s a battle royale between casino moguls Donald Trump and Steve Wynn with Bill Gormley trying to salvage a new casino in our fifth chapter, “Neon Light at the End of the Tunnel.”