Colorado Recall Votes Send A Signal To The Elected Class: Representation Matters

by Ben Bullard
On Tuesday, both of the Colorado State Senators who faced a voter recall — a culmination of massive public backlash over their support of new, unConstitutional gun control legislation — lost their jobs.
Senate President John Morse, a Democrat, was ousted by a slim margin, 9,094 to 8,751 (50.9 percent to 49 percent). Fellow Democratic Senator Angela Giron received 19,355 recall votes (56 percent), compared with 15,201 votes (43.9 percent) to retain her.
Democratic leaders (or in Morse’s case, former leaders) quickly demonstrated they’d learned absolutely nothing from the grassroots-bred ouster, going full extrovert in their post-recall public comments. Every factor leading up to the recall’s successful outcome was flawed except the actions of the two Senators themselves; every recall proponent was just a misguided obstructionist fool, upending a well-tuned process that was supposed to empower Morse, the State Legislature and Governor John Hickenlooper to help save people from themselves.

“The loss of this Senate seat is purely symbolic… You’re not judged by how you got knocked down, but rather by how you got back up,” said a very Howard Dean-like Morse in his teeth-clinching, staccato-paced concession speech. “Our last [legislative] session was phenomenal!”
“I’m a little perplexed,” said Giron, as she conceded. “This is what I know: I know that I have not one iota of regret from what I voted on… This is only going to make us stronger and better. We will win in the end, because we are on the right side.”
Then there’s Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who took to the Internet Wednesday to declare the whole recall effort a sham.
Why? Because mail-in ballots hadn’t been allowed for the special election.
“The recall elections in Colorado were defined by the vast array of obstacles that special interests threw in the way of voters for the purpose of reversing the will of the legislature and the people,” offered Wasserman Schultz, taking a page from Barack Obama’s playbook. “This was voter suppression, pure and simple.”
The races drew a lot of money from out of State, both from the National Rifle Association and the gun control lobbying group Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG). Most of the ridicule over outside influence, in the aftermath, was targeted at MAIG — a personal endeavor of New York City’s billionaire liberal mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who has a track record of advocating for expanded government controls — rather than the NRA, which has a long history of advocating for the 2^nd Amendment rights of individuals.

In late August, Giron herself told New Republic the political stakes were extremely high for Bloomberg, who continues to use MAIG as a funnel for campaign funds in support of gun control-minded liberals in State and Congressional-level races Nationwide.
“For Mayors Against Illegal Guns, if they lose even one of these seats, they might as well fold it up. And they understand that,” she said.
Bloomberg had donated at least $350,000 to the losing side in the Colorado recall.
Recall supporter Laura Carno told CBS Denver that the Morse recall sends a clear signal to elected leaders, both in Colorado and nationwide, with visionary legislative schemes that alienate voters: “It is a message to elected officials: You need to pay attention to what your constituents say — not the Vice President, and not Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York — and that’s who he’s been listening to, and not his constituents.”
Morse will be replaced by Republican Bernie Herpin. George Rivera, also a Republican, will replace Giron. The two swing seats will not affect the Democratic majority in the Colorado Legislature.