Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

• Both state-senate districts were overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2012, President Obama carried Morse’s district by 21 percentage points and Giron’s by 19 points.
• These were the first recalls of legislators in Colorado history. Nationally, recalls of state legislators, particularly state legislative leaders, has been very difficult. Morse and Giron were only the 37th and 38th state legislators in U.S. history to face recall votes (before this vote, precisely half the efforts had succeeded). Prior to Morse, there had only been four recall elections against legislative leaders, and the legislative leader was retained in three of those four races. Giron was also a powerful senator, serving as vice chairman of the very important, especially for her rural district, Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Energy Committee.
• Not only did getting a recall on the ballot require a number of signatures amounting to 25 percent of all the votes in the previous election, but the Democrats didn’t take even that battle lying down. During the signature-gathering effort, recall proponents were outspent by the groups backed by billionaire Mayor Bloomberg that went in earlier with ads to discourage signature gathering.
• In their last races for the state senate, in 2010, Morse raised $163,972 and Giron $68,710. By the last filing for the recall, on August 29, Morse had raised $658,230 and Giron $825,400. While the NRA had donated $361,700, just two billionaires, Bloomberg and Eli Broad, donated a total of $600,000 between them. Left-wing organizations such as the Daily Kos and MoveOn.org continually bombarded their members with requests for money. Of the $3.5 million spent on the recall election, almost $3 million came from its opponents.

It’s one thing for a deliberately polarizing legislator like Morse to lose a close race in a swing district. It’s quite another for Giron to lose by 12 points in a district that is 47% Democratic and 23% Republican. One reason is that in blue collar districts like Pueblo, there are plenty of Democrats who cling to their Second Amendment rights. As the Denver Post noted, 20% of the voters who signed the Giron recall petitions were Democrats….

For abuse of office, John Morse and Angela Giron have been recalled from office by the People of Colorado, to be replaced by legislators who will listen before the vote.

(Hat tip: Shall Not Be Questioned.)

For starters, the headline writer displays a rather loose grasp on reality: “Colorado recall slows gun-control momentum.”

Uh, what momentum? The gun grabbers have lost every fight since the initial knee-jerk legislation.

Writer Ryan Parker works a bit of rhetorical slight of hand further in: “And while the pro gun-control movement — on both the state and national level — had significant momentum following the Aurora and Sandy Hook massacres of 2012, Thursday night’s history-making recall election may have all but stopped Democrats’ response, Second Amendment supporters claim.”

“Had” momentum being the key word here, and only in the immediate aftermath, and only where it was possible for liberals at the state level, backed by overwhelming in-kind support from their local and national media wing, to exploit the tragedy by pushing rushed, ill-conceived legislation through against the wishes of actual constituents. Did Mr. Parker not notice the crushing defeats the gun-grabbing agenda experienced at the national level? Was he on vacation when that downpayment on the gun-grabbing agenda, Manchin-Toomey, failed to make it out of the Senate? That’s point when “momentum” for the gun-grabbing cause went from “small and slowing” to “non-existent.”

Also, note how Parker reprints one whole sentence from an NRA spokesman, but concludes with three paragraphs from members of the gun-grabbing camp.

Democratic incumbents simply don’t lose in states like Delaware and California unless they have done something very, very wrong. They certainly don’t lose by 12 points. In fact, even in the great GOP midterm election of 2010, only a handful of Republicans won in districts where the president approached 60 percent of the vote (using his 2008 numbers, of course), and most of those were in Illinois, where Obama’s vote share had been somewhat enhanced by his “hometown hero” status. It’s just really difficult to write these results off completely, especially given that these were relatively high-profile special elections, driven by issues rather than personality….

The bottom line is that there is something of a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t aspect to the Democrats’ argument. If this isn’t about turnout, but rather is a reaction to policy, then relatively modest gun-control efforts look pretty radioactive, and an awful lot of Democrats who supported the federal gun-control bill ought to look over their shoulders. This is especially true in Colorado, where nine Democrats occupy seats that are more Republican than the ones Republicans just flipped.

Elected to replace them were Republicans George Rivera in Pueblo and Bernie Herpin in Colorado Springs. They promised to be responsive to and representative of the people. This seemed to strike the right chord with voters who have tired of local legislators joining the liberal metrocentric crowd in Denver.