My experience in Chicago's NW Suburbs, and in updating our database, is only slightly different. I find the pro-gun people more willing to be part of multi-issue coalitions. In the O'Malley campaign, pro-gun people did not question his committment to the 2d amendment when he ignored the topic to speak on some other issue.
But when O'Malley raised any topic other than pro-life. the pro-life people questioned whether he was really pro-life and they were just being used. They insist on making their candidate a one issue candidate, as Jill Stanek made herself in her race, and as they did in making O'Malley a one issue candidate, which was neither the intent of either Dan Proft, nor of strategists in the O'Malley camp not close to Proft.
In short, the one issue obsession of the pro-life activists hurt O'Malley.
You mean SINGLE ISSUE pro-lifers. Big difference, Bob. I am a solidly pro-life voter and I don't attack candidates who quietly agree with me on the issue over abortion. I do tend to attack candidates who are too wimpy to tell people WHERE THEY STAND on the issue at all, but that's a whole difference story. (I also go after candidates who CLAIM to be pro-life but have a record of OBVIOUS, solid support for the pro-choice cause, like when Jim Oberweis said he supported keeping the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, but somehow we're supposed to believe he was "pro-life")
Contrast this to single-issue drug legalization people. If you say you're against the WoD but it's not a top priority, they tell you to drop dead. If a Republican candidate told me he was publically against Roe v. Wade, but didn't think he would be able to get it overturned, my responce would be "You have my vote and my complete support, sir. Good luck".
It's very unlikely that I will vote for a pro-abortion Republican in the primary, but since I am NOT a single issue pro-lifer....I WILL vote for a pro-abortion Republican in the general election over an ultra-liberal Democrat. Witness my support for Kris Cohn. I didn't think she was the best choice the GOP could have gotten in the primary so I cast a write-in vote against her. But when it comes to her vs. Jesse White, she needs all the support she can get.
When you see the single-issue gun people for Skinner, the single-issue drug legalazation people for Skinner EVEN THOUGH HE DOESN'T SUPPORT THEIR CAUSE, and the single-issue pro-life for Jim Ryan as the "least of three evils", I think it's a good example of who's the most pragmatic. The real LPers abandon their "principles" just to get a famous name on the ballot. The single-issue pro-gunners find 99.999999% of candidates "unacceptable" since they don't agree with him on EVERY SINGLE ISSUE, and the single-issue pro-life people, though stubborn, are the most pragmatic.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.