Colorado Legislators Elected In Anti-Gun Control Recall Elections Defeated In Re-Election Bids
Two Colorado state legislators who were voted into office just over two years ago as part of recall elections directed against two of the people who were behind the gun control laws that Colorado enacted in the wake of the Sandy Hook and Aurora shootings ended up being defeated last Tuesday:
DENVER — After two Colorado lawmakers who supported strict new gun-control laws were voted out of office in a special recall election last year, the National Rifle Association and its allies celebrated their huge win in the battle over gun laws in state capitols. But that particular victory did not last.
Even as Coloradans elected a Republican senator for the first time in a dozen years and handed Republicans control of one chamber of the state legislature, voters did an abrupt about-face when it came to the recalls. The two pro-gun Republicans elected during the recalls were handily beaten this month by Democratic candidates — one of whom once worked for the gun-control group founded by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City.
“It was vindicating,” said Angela Giron, who lost her State Senate seat in the old steel town of Pueblo in the September 2013 recalls, which also took down the Democratic president of Colorado’s Senate, John Morse.
(…)
Two years ago, a desire to curb gun violence after mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and an Aurora, Colo., movie theater prompted Colorado Democrats to pass legislation to expand background checks for private gun sales and limit the size of ammunition magazines to 15 rounds.
Those 2013 laws passed over unanimous Republican objection and opposition from many county sheriffs, and they elicited a furious backlash. Republicans tried and failed to repeal them in the legislature. Dozens of sheriffs and gun shops sued unsuccessfully to overturn the laws, and the National Rifle Association and gun-control groups poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the recall elections. After those votes, a third Democratic state senator resigned rather than face a recall challenge.
But this November in Colorado Springs, State Senator Bernie Herpin, a Republican — who won the recall election that Mr. Morse lost — said that guns simply did not come up that much as he fought a Democratic challenge to reclaim the seat. “It really was not much of an issue,” he said.
Mr. Herpin got an “A” rating from the N.R.A. and tried last winter to pass a bill repealing the 15-round magazine limits. During the debate, he said it was “maybe a good thing” that the Aurora gunman had had a 100-round drum magazine, because it had jammed during the shooting. (Mr. Herpin later apologized for the remarks.)
His Democratic opponent, Michael Merrifield, a retired teacher and former state representative, had been a Colorado coordinator for Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the advocacy group bankrolled by Mr. Bloomberg.
(…)
“Those were very inexperienced incumbents trying to hold moderate-to-liberal districts, which was always going to be a tall order for them,” said Seth Masket, an associate professor of political science at the University of Denver.
Mr. Morse, the former Senate president who was ousted from his Colorado Springs seat, said he was surprised by the Democrats’ margins in the race, but had expected that the recalls’ effects would be fleeting and that the Democrats would regain the seats.
“You got to claim victory for a few hours, but you didn’t get to claim it for long,” he said from his apartment in Denver, where he moved two weeks after the election to resume his career as an accountant.
But those seats were not enough for Democrats to keep their narrow majority in the State Senate. Republicans gained enough seats in the Denver suburbs — including one that went to a candidate backed by a fiercely pro-gun group, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners — to take control of the chamber, 18 seats to the Democrats’ 17.
In the end, the result here is really more of a demonstration of the impact that turnout has on races and why elections that occur at odd times of the year, whether its because of the death or resignation of the person holding office or because of a recall in those states that allow them. The fact that one side or the other was able to pull off a win in a non-regular election isn’t entirely surprising because, typically, turnout for those types of elections will be lower than it would be for a regular General Election. The result is that a winning party in one of these elections often has a very ephemeral hold on their seat. Another example of that, of course, can be seen with former Senator Scott Brown who won a Special Election to fill the seat held by the late Senator Ted Kennedy that was held on January 19, 2010. Brown won that election in part because Martha Coakley ran an exceedingly bad campaign, but also because turnout for the election was lower than what you would typically see in Massachusetts, and brought out a different electorate. Brown won the 2010 race quite handily, but ended up losing to Elizabeth Warren on Election Day 2012, and when you look at the results for the two races you see that there nearly 1,000,000 fewer voters in 2010 than there were in 2012, and the vast majority of those voters went to Warren. Something very similar happened in Wisconsin when Democrats were able to oust a handful of Republican State Senators in recall elections in 2011 and 2012, only to see those seats fall back into the GOP’s hands in the next General Election. Much like those Wisconsin districts were tilted toward the GOP and ended up going back that way in the General Election, the districts at issue in Colorado leaned Democratic so it’s not surprising that they went back to their natural state this year.
In the end, none of this will have any impact on the gun debate in Colorado, though. Indeed, even the two victories in the recall elections did not result in any changes to the laws that were the focus of the recall. Even with the newly Republican State Senate in Denver, the laws are unlikely to change due to the fact that Governor Hickenlooper was re-elected. If nothing else, this should teach us that not every election victory means as much as it appears at the time it happens.
So the NRA isn’t this magic doomsday machine that always crushes gun control opponents. Gee, its almost if the only time the NRA wins is one where the gun nuts form an outsize portion of a shrunken off year electorate…
@stonetools:
The NRA was shown to be powerless because Democrats ran on the National conversation on Guns.in the 2014.elections.
These can be recalled also if they didn’t get the message !
@Paul L.: Nationwide pro liberty, freedom to choose, gun owners voted anti gun democrats out ! One of the biggest midterm election turnouts ever, because of gun owners not just the NRA or it’s 5 MILLION members, and there are 110 million non NRA gun owners in America, 1/3 the population ! Had the democrats and Obama, followed Clintons advice in early 2013, and not went after gun rights and the 2A, they would have won seats in the house and gained control of the senate ! Sucks to be a disarmocrat and a right destroying group .
@stonetools: 2016 will make your head spin ! Remember I told you this . There is still time for you to educate your self on gun rights, not just taking rights away from law abiding citizens you have no idea about, like myself . Remember, destroying the 2A will result in you loosing the rest of your rights, do you really want that ? Take some serious time and study the results of the history of gun control, you will be sickened at the results to the people of the entire world . Thats a challenge from myself to you . Do you believe education are the keys to freedom ? I most certainly do ! And I’m a life member of the NRA !
@tim: @stonetools:
He’s right, you know. Guns are the only thing keeping the rest of the rights around. Want proof? Iraq had a brutal dictator named Saddam, but since the population was among the most heavily armed in the world, all of their freedoms were secured throughout his reign, and liberty was the law of the land.
Does the love of guns make you boring, or is it just that boring people tend to love guns?
This is only clear retroactively, but the recalls were not about gun control. They were about control of the state senate.
No, it’s unlikely to change because the Republicans are spending no political capital changing them.
@tim:
You’re a lifetime member of the arms manufacturers primary lobbyist?
Which manufacturer are you? I’ve never heard of “Tim Armaments” or “Tim Ordance”.
It’s curious because something like 90% of gun owners are in favor of background checks. But the NRA fights against background checks. So it’s clear the NRA is only representing arms manufacturers. So what are you a member of????
@tim:
Not to ruin a good rant, or pop your echo chamber bubble, but turnout in the 2014 midterms was at the lowest level seen since WW2
@Paul L.: I There is no “national conversation on gun rights”. Just traitors trying vainly to take my rights…
@tim:
Disarm? There are over 300M guns in this country, the odds that we will disarm are about equal to the probability that Ted Nugent and Rush Limbaugh enlisted to fight in Vietnam.
@Paul L.:
Will you please stop riding that damn hobby horse? You’re getting as bad as sd.
@Neil Hudelson: I see your point, but what I was wondering was where this “one of the largest turnouts ever” thing was happening. I must have missed the reports of the election results in Timsimaginationistan.
@tim: But it was the lowest voter turnout in 72 years
@Neil Hudelson: Neil has the simple facts figured out! The NRA is nothing more than a fear whipping lobbyist group that scares a bunch of poor white folks to go out and buy another gun for their arsenal with their latest pay check. Trust me, I know a lot of these guys and having 20-40 or more guns is a mark of pride for them. There is no feasible way to disarm the american public with so many guns already out there, and no one is talking about disarming the citizens either. But the NRA’s a gun for every terrorist ideology is just stupid. Background checks are easy, …..if you aren’t a criminal.