AUSTIN — Texas is a top target for gun safety groups that helped flip Virginia's state House blue last year — and they're planning to go big here, with one group announcing Wednesday it will spend three times what it spent in Virginia — at least $8 million — supporting candidates and buying ads.

Everytown for Gun Safety, a Michael Bloomberg-backed group that pushes for expanded background checks, red flag laws and other measures, is plotting what its political director calls an “unprecedented financial and grassroots effort” to flip the Texas House, defend vulnerable freshmen Democrats in Congress and help Democrats take congressional seats in the suburbs. A memo detailing the plan, the group’s biggest state investment to date, was shared exclusively with Hearst Newspapers.

“We believe that Texas, as it becomes younger and increasingly diverse, can be the next emerging battleground state with gun safety as the tipping point,” Chris Carr, the group’s political director wrote in the memo. “We believe there are opportunities to elect gun sense candidates up and down the ballot, from the statehouse to the U.S. Congress — and potentially even statewide.”

It’s part of a broader national strategy by the group that includes spending at least $60 million, twice what it spent during the 2018 elections.

“Texas is definitely the big target,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Mom's Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a group of activists affiliated with Everytown. The group has 400,000 volunteers on the ground in Texas already, Watts said.

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The groups point to polling indicating broad support among Texans for the types of laws they advocate. Eighty-seven percent of likely voters in Texas said they support background checks on all gun purchases, while 80 percent support red flag laws, according to a poll commissioned by Everytown and shared with Hearst Newspapers. It follows a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll released this week that found 79 percent support background checks for all gun purchases.

They say it’s clear state leaders are out of step with voters, especially in the suburbs where gun safety laws are especially popular. Voters are motivated two mass shootings in Texas last year, they say.

Texas gun rights groups are mobilizing, too. The Texas State Rifle Association sent an email to supporters earlier this month warning of the type of spending Everytown is now planning. The rifle association declared an early victory in Fort Bend County when Republican Gary Gates beat Eliz Markowitz, a Democrat backed by gun safety groups, in a closely watched special election for state House last month.

“Though gun control advocates and gun-grabbing politicians failed to lay down a marker in this particular contest, the amount of resources they invested in this race demonstrates their commitment to turn Texas ‘blue’ and make the Lone Star State their next target after Virginia for passing radical restrictions on our rights,” the email said.

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Gun safety groups are planning to follow the same playbook they used in Virginia — the state that is home to the National Rifle Association. Guns emerged as a top issue for voters there after a mass shooting in Virginia Beach in 2019, especially for voters in the suburbs around D.C. and Richmond. Democrats claimed control of the state legislature for the first time in 26 years.

“I would say anyone running for office in Texas should look to Virginia,” Watts said. “Six months after a shooting in Virginia Beach, all of the elected officials who refused gun sense were voted out of office.”

The groups plastered TV, internet and radio with ads and flooded voters with mailers for candidates they backed in Virginia, and Everytown is planning to do the same in Texas. The ads will be aimed specifically at suburban women, a constituency that Democrats are focusing on in Texas in 2020, as well as young voters. They’ll buy Spanish language ads, digital ads specific to African-American voters and ads targeting the state’s rapidly growing Asian-American communities. Majorities of those groups all strongly supported new gun laws in the polling commissioned by Everytown.

Among the candidates who may benefit is U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, a West Houston Democrat who flipped a longtime Republican House seat in 2018 with backing from gun safety advocates. She is now considered one of the most vulnerable members of Congress as she seeks re-election.

Everytown is also planning to go on the offensive against Republican U.S. Reps. Dan Crenshaw, Michael McCaul, Chip Roy and John Carter, and it’s planning to spend big in districts left open by retiring Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Will Hurd.

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But the state House — where Democrats need to flip nine more seats to gain control — is the biggest goal, as it was in Virginia, and most of the group’s targets are in the Houston and Dallas suburbs.

Everytown has a list of more than 20 Republican House districts, and plans to spend to fend off challenges against Democrats in a half dozen others.

Molly Bursey, who leads a Moms Demand Action chapter in New Braunfels north of San Antonio, says the group’s volunteers, a regular presence at the state capitol during the legislative session, felt like they were largely ignored by lawmakers.

“That’s why we’re more fired up to get to work, and we welcome them to change their mind and their stance … and if they’re not willing to do that, then we will work our hardest to elect their opponent, who will,” she said.

The group’s hundreds of thousands of volunteers statewide are ready to begin vetting candidates, knocking on doors and registering voters.

Bursey said she believes they’ll be greeted by voters open to their message.

On Sept. 1 last year, the day after the mass shooting in Midland-Odessa, six new Texas laws loosening weapons restrictions went into effect, including lifting a ban on firearms in places of worship and allowing unlicensed handgun owners to carry their weapons — openly or concealed — for up to a week in places where a natural disaster is declared.

“People can’t really believe that … instead of passing laws that most Texans agree with, they’re really just loosening restrictions on who can carry a gun and where, and that’s not what Texans want,” she said. “I think people have had enough. They’re paying attention.”

ben.wermund@chron.com