Colo. lawmakers lose recalls over gun laws support

(AP) Colo. lawmakers lose recalls over gun laws support
By COLLEEN SLEVIN
Associated Press
DENVER
Two Colorado state lawmakers who backed gun-control measures in the aftermath of the mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut last year have been ousted in recall elections.

Pueblo voters in Democratic Sen. Angela Giron’s district approved her recall, with results coming in late Tuesday. Returns earlier showed Democratic Senate President John Morse also lost his seat in Colorado Springs.

In Giron’s race, voters chose Republican George Rivera, a former Pueblo police officer, to replace her.

The firearms legislation package Giron supported this year included size limits for ammunition magazines and expanded background checks for private and online gun purchases.

Her working-class district favors her party but includes Democrats who are big supporters of the Second Amendment.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

The leader of the Colorado state senate lost his job in the state’s first ever legislative recall Tuesday and a second Democratic lawmaker challenged over her support for stricter gun laws after last year’s mass shootings also appeared in trouble in a race seen as a measure of popular support for gun legislation.

Senate President John Morse faced a tough election in the Republican stronghold of Colorado Springs, where he won re-election by just a few hundred votes in 2010.

“We as the Democratic party will continue to fight,” Morse told supporters in Colorado Springs as he conceded the race.

With 94 percent of the projected vote counted, voters in Colorado Springs favored recalling Morse by 51 percent to 49 percent.

Republican Bernie Herpin, a former Colorado Springs city councilman, will replace him.

Sen. Angela Giron was also struggling in Pueblo County. With about 45 percent of projected results in, 56 percent of voters favored the recall.

Angered by new limits on ammunition magazines and expanded background checks, gun-rights activists filed enough voter signatures for the recall elections _ the first for state legislators since Colorado adopted the procedure in 1912.

The recalls were seen as the latest chapter in the national debate over gun rights _ and, for some, a warning to lawmakers in swing states who might contemplate gun restrictions in the future. But gun rights activists’ efforts to force recall elections for two other Colorado Democrats failed this year.

Tuesday’s vote also exposed divisions between Colorado’s growing urban and suburban areas and its rural towns. Dozens of elected county sheriffs have sued to block the gun laws and some activists are promoting a largely symbolic measure to secede from the state.

Morse recall organizer Timothy Knight said voters were upset that Colorado’s Democrat-majority Legislature seemed more inclined to take its cues from the White House than its constituents. The gun laws passed this year with no Republican support.

“If the people had been listened to, these recalls wouldn’t be happening,” Knight said.

Both legislators voted for 15-round limits on ammunition magazines and for expanded background checks on private gun sales after the 2012 mass shootings in Aurora and Newtown, Conn. The legislation was signed into law by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper.

The National Rifle Association and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg lined up on opposite sides of the recalls.

Reported contributions to Morse and Giron totaled about $3 million, dwarfing the amount raised by gun activists who petitioned for the recall, though some independent groups didn’t have to report spending. Both the NRA and Bloomberg contributed more than $300,000 to the pro- and anti-recall campaigns.

Preliminary figures showed roughly 17,000 people _ just 15 percent of registered voters _ cast ballots in Morse’s election, and that more Republicans turned out to vote than Democrats. Turnout in Pueblo, a more Democrat-friendly city than Colorado Springs, was about 30 percent, with more than 32,000 people voting.

Unlike most recent elections, there are no automatic mail ballots, so voters had to cast their ballots in person.

“This is a good, old-fashioned knock and drag operation _ knocking on doors and dragging them to the polls,” said Colorado Democratic Party chairman Rick Palacio, who worked Giron’s district on Tuesday.

Morse, a former police chief in a Colorado Springs suburb, was first elected to the Senate in 2006.

Hickenlooper initially rejected calls for stronger gun control laws after 12 people were killed and 70 injured in an Aurora movie theater in July 2012. The governor changed his mind right before the December 2012 Newtown massacre, in which a gunman killed 20 children and six women at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Hickenlooper, who is up for re-election in 2014, kept a low profile in the recalls. A recent statewide poll by Quinnipiac University suggested that 52 percent of voters disapproved of his gun policy while only 35 percent approved.