When Andy Beshear, who is currently leading the gubernatorial race in Kentucky by a few thousand votes, makes his thank-you calls, one of the first should be to Albany, New York. After all, one of the reasons he will be governor (should the lead hold up) will be the governor of the Empire State.

How so, you might ask? Well, Andrew Cuomo has been waging an abusive campaign against the National Rifle Association. Cuomo has pushed banks to stop doing business with the gun-rights group, and his regime has launched an investigation as well.

The legal fees are costing the country’s oldest civil-rights group millions of dollars, and those fights have been a major factor contributing to the infighting that has beset the organization. The result? The NRA has been crippled during the 2018 and 2019 elections, and that may well have been the difference in a number of races.

Cuomo has used this tactic to try to “win” the gun-control debate before. If you can’t beat the arguments, silence the opposition with the threat of bankruptcy via legal fees. This is not a wild accusation. Cuomo has admitted this is his plan. Elizabeth Warren has openly declared she will seek to emulate Cuomo’s thuggery.

This is not an isolated incident. We can go back to the IRS targeting the Tea Party during the Obama administration for one example. Then there were the “John Doe” investigations in Wisconsin, the state attorneys general who sought to use RICO against those who opposed certain environmental policies, the entire Spygate controversy, and Joaquin Castro doxing Donald Trump donors in his district.

The NRA’s “crime” of course, is nothing more than using its First Amendment rights to oppose the unjust infringements on the Second Amendment rights of Americans who had nothing to do with mass shootings or other misuses of firearms. Yet somehow, freedom of speech, the right to peaceably assemble, and the right to petition for the redress of grievances somehow morphed into pretexts for abuses for the “crime” of being non-“progressive” in terms of politics.

Those five controversies, combined with Cuomo’s actions, paint a disturbing pattern of a party that is willing to use the power of the government to intimidate, suppress, and punish political opponents. In one sense, it is not surprising, given the rhetoric we’ve seen over the years directed at Republicans. Even John McCain and Mitt Romney have been on the receiving end of smears when it was beneficial for the advancement of “progressive” policies or politicians.

There are those, a number of whom are running for president, who regularly denounce Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp for allegedly cheating Democrat challenger Stacey Abrams out of the governorship. These accusations come on a regular basis with no evidence whatsoever that Kemp did anything wrong, in fact, as Georgia’s secretary of state, Kemp only followed the law. Meanwhile, those who condemn Kemp on flimsy evidence remain silent while Andrew Cuomo brazenly declares his intention to silence his political opponents via the abuse of government power.

Cuomo’s actions may be helping the Democrat Party in the short term, but in the long run, they are an existential threat to our republic.