Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, Jr. was the target of a $150,000 ad campaign by anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg as Clarke sought to retain his seat in a recent Democratic primary. After defeating his opponent—and Bloomberg’s money machine—Clarke is expected to roll to reelection in his race to become sheriff, as there is no Republican running against him for the position.

Clarke has now taken to the pages of the Washington Times to savage Bloomberg’s outside interference in an op-ed that takes no prisoners.

Two years ago, I ran a series of self-defense local radio ads advising residents that they are the first line of defense in their own safety. I told them to consider taking a firearms-safety course so they could defend themselves and their families from imminent attack. In April, I spoke at the National Rifle Association’s convention in Indianapolis, and that brought me into Mr. Bloomberg’s cross hairs. According to one Democratic Party source, Mr. Bloomberg said of his attempt to knock me off in my re-election primary for sheriff, “This one is personal with me.” That is a sign of desperation. Yes, even billionaires can be greedy. Surely, Mr. Bloomberg saw me as an easy win that he could parade around the country as a warning to other pro-gun candidates to either get in line with his anti-gun movement or face defeat at the polls. He saw picking off a big-city, pro-gun sheriff as a prize worth landing. So in parachuted billionaire Mr. Bloomberg, dropping $150,000 on my opponent in a weekend TV blitz that depicted me as a gun nut, hell-bent on arming every law-abiding citizen in Milwaukee County. The TV ads he financed depicted me telling residents to forgo calling 9-1-1 and to handle local policing themselves, which is as contorted a view of my personal-defense radio ads as one could imagine. Mr. Bloomberg’s plan didn’t work. People here are smarter than he thought, and they did not like this outsider rolling into town trying to oust Wisconsin’s only black sheriff…. … This was no ordinary defeat for Mr. Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against the Second Amendment” group. Losing to a local sheriff in a county dominated by Democratic Party voters just might have set his futile movement back to a point of no recovery. Some people might generally be in support of changes that make it more difficult for criminals to acquire guns, but they also recognize and reject the true objective of Mr. Bloomberg, which is to obliterate the right to keep and bear arms. Here in Milwaukee County, you cannot buy votes; you have to earn them.

While it would be nice to think that Bloomberg would be driven to despair and stop his attempts to destroy the Second Amendment because he suffered another stinging defeat, I’m afraid that Former Mayor Better Than You is hardly done in his drive to tell Americans how to live. He’s too arrogant, and too convinced that he knows better how you should live your life than you do to give up easily.

We’ll have Bloomberg and his astroturf gun control groups at least through the 2014 elections.

After that is anyone’s guess, as Bloomberg’s gun control groups don’t tend to have a very long shelf life.