Colorado recall election

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New Recall Effort Begins In Colorado

October 8, 2013 by 4 Comments

Following the successful recall efforts against Senate President John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) and Sen. Angela Giron (D-Pueblo), a renewed effort has started to recall Sen. Evie Hudak (D-Arvada). An earlier effort started soon after she voted for gun control fizzled out for lack of signatures.

The new effort is called Recall Evie, Too. Backers have 60 days to gather 18,900 valid signatures. Recall Evie, Too was certified by the Colorado Secretary of State’s office on Friday which started the clock.

Hudak, you may remember, achieved notoriety for her dismissive comments to rape survivor Amanda Collins who was testifying in favor of concealed carry on campus. Hudak told her that statistics were not on her side and that if Ms. Collins had a firearm it probably would have been used against her. You can see Hudak giving her lecture starting at about the 2:30 point in the video below.

With the Democrats holding a one vote majority in the Colorado State Senate, Hudak’s recall would shift the balance of power to the Republicans. Despite this, GOP State Chairman Ryan Call is against this recall effort saying it undermines their efforts for 2014. It should be remembered that neither the GOP nor major gun groups initially supported the successful recall efforts against Morse and Giron. They were grassroots efforts from the get-go.

Despite the much higher signature requirement for this district, if backers do get enough signatures they stand an even better chance of ousting Hudak according to the Washington Post.

But if recall organizers can collect enough signatures in Hudak’s district, they will have a strong chance of showing her the door. Despite outspending recall proponents by wide margins, and despite influxes of campaign cash from gun control advocates such as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Morse and Giron both lost their bids to keep their seats.

And Hudak’s district is more conservative than either Morse’s or Giron’s. Hudak’s suburban Denver district gave President Obama 52 percent of the vote in 2012, according to a breakdown compiled by the liberal Daily Kos blog. Obama scored nearly 60 percent of the vote in the other two seats. Hudak won reelection over Republican Lang Sias by fewer than 600 votes of 80,000 cast in 2012, while a Libertarian Party candidate took more than 5,000 votes.

I will be keeping an eye on their efforts over the next two months. If you want to volunteer to help recall Hudak, you can get more information here as well as directions to the group’s office in Arvada.

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Ginny Simone On The Colorado Recall Elections

September 13, 2013 by 2 Comments

In the piece below from Ginny Simone of NRA News, you can hear the grassroots activists like Victor Head of Pueblo Freedom and Rights explain what they did on Tuesday. They organized, they worked, and they overcame a tidal wave of outside money to recall two state senators who not only ignored the wishes of their constituents but didn’t even want to hear them.

If you want to hear more from the organizers of the recall, listen to Shooter Ready Radio this afternoon/evening. I know a number of the organizers will be guests on the program. You can listen live on the radio as well as the internet. Details are here.

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Dave Kopel’s Take On The Recall Election Results

September 11, 2013 by

Second Amendment attorney Dave Kopel has a very interesting analysis on the results of the Colorado recall elections at the Volokh Conspiracy. He, like I, thought Giron might survive and Morse ousted given the nature of their districts.

So why did Angela Giron lose in her heavily Democratic, blue collar, union stronghold of a district? According to Dave, it is because she crossed the double-red line of Colorado politics. It wasn’t just that she voted against gun rights but that she, as chairperson of the Senate State Affairs Committee, shut out the testimony of many of those who wanted to testify. Colorado has a tradition of letting everyone who wants to speak on a bill the chance to testify, if only for a few moments.

Dave concludes:

The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was the secondmost important reason why Morse and Giron were removed from office. The first reason was the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment principle of Due Process of Law. The opportunity to be heard is the fundamental to Due Process of Law, and not solely in adjudications. When Morse and Giron squelched the testimony of law-abiding citizens and of law-enforcing Sheriffs, they grossly abused their constitutional office of being law-makers. And so, 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.

Read the whole analysis here. It is well worth reading and worth sending to your representatives as a warning of what happens when they won’t even take the time to listen.

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Oh, My God! They Did It In Colorado

September 11, 2013 by 4 Comments

When I went to bed last night here in the East, it was early in Colorado and the recall votes were still being counted. Sen. Angela Giron (D-Pueblo) was slightly ahead with just a few votes in and Senate President John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) was behind with a total of about 12,500 votes counted. I fully expected to wake up this morning to hear it ended up as a split – Giron surviving and Morse out.

The news was so much better – both Giron and Morse are out of office.

Not only was I surprised that both were gone but Giron lost by a larger margin in her heavily Democratic district than did Morse in a district where he had only marginally won in earlier elections.

With 100% of the vote in, the results were as reported in the Denver Post:

Ballot Issue State Senate 3 - Recall Giron
100% reporting

Yes     56.0%          (19,355)
No      43.9%          (15,201) 

Ballot Issue State Senate 11 - Recall Morse
100% reporting

Yes     50.9%          (9,094)
No      49.0%          (8,751)

The results are a clear win for the grassroots, for gun rights, and for basic freedoms. They are also a loss for Mayor Bloomberg, in particular, and for the elites in the press, politics, and the gun prohibition movement, in general. None of this would have to come to be if Morse and Giron had not so arrogantly dismissed the concerns of their own constituents which, in turn, pissed off the Victor Heads and Tim Knights of Colorado enough to do something about it.

This historic recall was grassroots politics at its finest.

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Quotes Of The Day

September 10, 2013 by

The Gazette of Colorado Springs seems to get Senate President John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) and his motivation. At least that is the impression I get from reading this editorial in yesterday’s edition. The editorial discusses Morse and his purported liberal leanings. They note that the Marijuana Policy Project, a leading organization pushing for the legalization of pot, has named Morse their “#1 worst state legislator in the United States” for trying to sneak a bill through the legislature that would have, in effect, repealed Colorado’s voter-approved initiative on marijuana. The Gazette says that Morse is not a liberal but an authoritarian politician.

Liberals in Colorado’s 11th Senate District should understand that Morse is not a genuine liberal. Rather, he governs as an equal-opportunity authoritarian.


That’s why he may become the first state politician in Colorado history to be recalled.

And the second quote from the editorial which really summarizes what this recall election is all about.

This recall isn’t a battle of right versus left, conservative versus liberal. It’s a citizen effort to end the reign of a politician who views the public – even his most liberal constituents – as fodder for the elite political class in Washington, Denver and New York.

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Quote Of The Day

September 9, 2013 by

Charles C. W. Cooke of the National Review sat down with Tim Knight and Luke Wagner to talk about the recall elections in Colorado. They are two of the leaders of the Basic Freedom Defense Foundation which is spearheading the efforts to recall Senate President John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) and Senator Angela Giron (D-Pueblo).

I am the first person from the national press that Knight has spoken to directly. “This is not about us,” he explains. “The new gun laws were just the catalyst. A lot of people are very upset about being ignored, so finding vocal moral support hasn’t really been a hard sell. There’s a lesbian couple that’s been very happy in helping us.” I raised my eyebrows at this. “I start there,” he adds, “because people say to me, ‘Well, they couldn’t possibly be interested in helping you.’ Well, sure they can! They care about protecting themselves, too.”

A desire to protect ones’ self is not limited to white, conservative, male heterosexuals. Likewise, being ignored by those that supposedly represent you in the various legislatures pisses people off including more than just gun rights advocates.

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Tomorrow Is The Day

September 9, 2013 by

While the recall elections in Colorado Springs and Pueblo are actually under way, tomorrow is the official election day. It will be the day where the rest of America will see if Bloomberg can successfully buy the legislatures of western states to further his anti-gun jihad and whether there will be any accountability for those legislators who traded the Constitution for money.

Ginny Simone reports for in a special for NRA News on the recall elections. She has interviews with many of the average guys who said enough was enough. People like Victor Head of Pueblo who is a plumber and Rob Harris of Colorado Springs along with El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa who is a plaintiff in the Federal lawsuit against the new gun laws.

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Quote Of The Day

September 8, 2013 by 1 Comment

The Colorado Springs Gazette estimates that Colorado Springs along with Pueblo have gotten a 500% return on their investment. The investment to which they refer is the cost of holding the recall elections for Senate President John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) and Senator Angela Giron (D-Pueblo). The return comes from all the out of state money donated to their campaigns by the likes of Michael Bloomber, Eli Broad, and others of their ilk that is being spent on campaign advertising. The editors note that these donors want Morse to continue his ideological agenda which is “averse to community interests”.

After pointing out that the recall proponents are operating on a shoe-string budget, the contributions from the NRA and Americans for Prosperity notwithstanding, they conclude:

Despite his enormous advantage in out-of-state money from special interests and left-wing billionaires, the “Whole Lot of People for John Morse” Facebook page asks us to “fight back against the NRA and Koch Brothers!”

Don’t be fooled. If big out-of-state money buys our community’s elections, Morse wins by a landslide. The good news: Either way, the election is not an expense to Colorado Springs. It is more like manna from heaven, even when Morse defenders ship cash to the best political operatives Chicago’s political machine can provide.

Remember – the only reason there is even a recall is because Bloomberg bought the votes of the Democrats in the Colorado legislature on gun control through a combination of money and the threat of primaries.

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As If Coloradans Needed Another Reason To Vote For Recall

September 6, 2013 by 3 Comments

If Coloradans needed another reason to vote to recall the odious Senate President John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) and his anti-gun compatriot Sen. Angela Giron (D-Pueblo), here is one you’ve probably not considered. If either or both survive the recall elections, they are each eligible under Colorado law to collect 10 cents per vote cast.

If everyone registered to vote in Morse’s El Paso County Senate District 11 actually voted, then Morse — with a victory — could be reimbursed $6,901.For Giron, whose Pueblo Senate District 3 has 81,846 registered voters, she could receive $8,100 in reimbursement cash.

Morse and Giron, who face recalls for their support of Colorado gun laws passed this year by the Democrat-controlled legislature, would have 60-days after the date of the recall election to file a request with the state.

“It’s just not something we’re going to look to do,” said Kjersten Forseth, a consultant to both the Morse and Giron recall campaigns. “The taxpayers are already being forced to pay for these unnecessary recalls, and we’re not going to look to punish them.”

Given the amount of money that the incumbents have received from the likes of Mayor Bloomberg and LA billionaire Eli Broad, it is pocket change.

Their consultant did say it might be different if the money was coming from the organizers of the recall petitions. However, she went on to add, “that’s not at all democratic.”

I find that last comment rather rich considering Sen. Morse’s own comments to Rachel Maddow shown below in which he told Democrats in the State Senate to ignore their constituents when it came to voting to abridge their Second Amendment rights.

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We Do Raffles; They Have Billionaires

August 28, 2013 by 5 Comments

If there is anything that can illustrate the difference between the forces that want gun control and those of us who believe in freedom, it is these two stories regarding campaign money in the recall election in Colorado.

First, KVDR Fox 31 Denver reports that billionaires Eli Broad and NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg contributed a combined $600,000 to Taxpayers for Responsible Democracy. This is the committee fighting to keep Colorado Senate President John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) and Senator Angela Giron (D-Pueblo) in office.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote a personal check for $350,000 to Taxpayers for Responsible Democracy, the issues committee fighting the recalls targeting Senate President John Morse and Sen. Angela Giron.

FOX31 Denver is first to report the group’s contributions report, filed Tuesday with the Secretary of State.

Bloomberg’s contribution reportedly came just last week, according to multiple sources close to the campaign.

Billionaire Eli Broad also wrote a $250,000 check to the organization, which raised a total of $708,000 in contributions between April and Aug. 22.

The article also reports another $95,000 came from two other contributors. According to a spokesperson for the anti-recall effort, they have had 17,000 contributors. Doing some quick math, four contributors put in $695,000 and 16,996 contributors contributed an average of 75 cents each. That doesn’t quite add up to me.

Morse’s anti-recall group, A Whole Lot of People for John Morse, has raised over $450,000 while Giron’s anti-recall group, Pueblo United for Angela, has raised $586,187.

The second story involves a raffle being organized by AR maker CMMG to raise money for Colorado Citizens Protecting Our Constitution.

CMMG, a popular manufacturer of AR-pattern rifles, and the most delicious tactical bacon a person can buy, is raffling off a custom, one-of-a-kind Mk4 D special Colorado Citizens Protecting Our Constitution-edition rifle to raise money for the upcoming recall elections of pro-gun control Colorado senators.

Anyone donating at least $5 to Colorado Citizens Protecting Our Constitution fund with the donation code “CMMG” will automatically be entered into the raffle. It’s that easy.

 Missouri-based CMMG had this to say on their Facebook page about why they are doing this.

In July, Colorado had sweeping legislation aimed at disabling their citizens’ Second Amendment rights go into effect and CCPOC wants to recall the biggest supporters of the legislation, Senators Giron and Morse. With your help, CCPOC can send a message to the state of Colorado – and the country – that laws like bans on magazine capacity over 15 rounds and background checks for every firearm transfer are not tolerable.

The recall effort is and has always been a grassroots effort.  It is symbolized by Victor Head and his fellow plumbers who organized the effort against Giron. I don’t see big donations coming from Kohler and American Standard to them unlike the donations that Bloomberg has made to his arrogant puppets John Morse and Angela Giron. With it likely that voters will have to vote in person rather than by mail, it will come down to whomever has the better ground game. Money can buy a lot of things but it really can’t buy passion and passion may be what wins these recall elections. Passionate voters will get to the polls and I hope that helps our side in this David versus Goliath contest.