Category Archives: Colorado Senate

MONDAY UPDATE: As the Colorado Springs Gazette's Megan Schrader reports, organizers of the recall election against Sen. Angela Giron will turn in roughly 13,500 signatures today–a much smaller margin than in Sen. John Morse's race, and less likely to survive validity checks by the Secretary of State's office.

To put the ouster attempt on the ballot 11,500 of those signatures must be valid, which is 25 percent of the number of votes cast in the 2010 election that put Giron in office.

As we've written before, the general rule of thumb for collecting signatures — whether it is for a recall or a ballot measure — is to make sure to turn in about double the amount required. Because many signatures will be invalidated for a variety of reasons (wrong address, signer wasn't a registered voter, etc.), it is always advisable to make sure you have a sufficient cushion to withstand those problems. It's not impossible that the Giron recall could make the ballot with just 2,000 additional signatures than required, but it's statistically unlikely.
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As the Pueblo Chieftain's Peter Roper reports:

Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler warned local Republicans in March that it would be a "brutal" process to recall state Sen. Angela Giron, D-Pueblo, and that recall elections are far more complicated than they appear.

Brutal or not, Giron's critics in the gun-rights community have pressed ahead with their petition drive and predict they will turn in more than the necessary 11,200 voter signatures to Gessler's office on Monday to force that special election later this summer.

Over the last few weeks, we've heard about a renewed push by gun-rights supports to obtain enough signatures to force a recall of Sen. Angela Giron of Pueblo. When the recall petition campaign against Sen. Evie Hudak of Arvada folded, volunteers in that effort indicated they were headed to Pueblo to assist gathering signatures against Giron. It must be noted that, as of this writing, we have no information indicating that a paid petition effort is underway as was the case in Sen. John Morse's recall drive–and directly resulted in that campaign's delivery of over 16,000 signatures, which should be enough to survive validity checking by the Secretary of State.

Sources on the ground in Pueblo tell us that a combination of intra-Democratic infighting–locals can better speak to the nature of this but it appears to fully predate this year's legislative session–and a coordinated effort from local businesses, combined with the volunteer assist from failed recalls elsewhere, has given the petition campaign against Giron a chance of success. What we've heard is that this campaign will not turn in double the signature requirement like the campaign against Morse did, having only announced reaching bare sufficiency a week or so ago. The less pad they turn in, the greater the chance the petitions will not survive validity checks.

The key thing to understand about this is that local political dynamics, having little to do with the debate over gun safety, are at least partly responsible for the signature campaign against Sen. Giron having legs relative to other recall efforts that died on the vine without lavish funding. We expect that, should the petitions be ruled sufficient to proceed to an actual recall election in Senate District 3 this fall, everyone will be getting a crash course in frequently Byzantine Pueblo local politics. And we can tell you that some Democrats in Pueblo, who may have placed personal ambition and petty squabbles ahead of what's good for their party (they most certainly know who they are), might come to dearly regret the can of worms they've helped open down there.

Petitions are due tomorrow–stay tuned.

Full story: Meanwhile, Down In Pueblo…

As the Denver Post's Kurtis Lee reports today, newly filed spending disclosures reveal over $55,000 from a "Colorado Springs-based" (as characterized in most media reports) 501(c)(4) organization called I Am Created Equal to fund a paid petition drive to place a recall of Senate President John Morse on the ballot sometime later this year:

The organization, I Am Created Equal, bankrolled the organizers of an effort to recall Morse, a Democrat, with about $42,500 in May. That’s up from the $14,000 the organization supplied The El Paso Freedom Defense Committee — the group spearheading the Morse recall for his support of stricter Colorado gun laws — in April.

Much of this money has gone toward paying petitioners to gather 7,178 signatures ahead of Monday’s deadline. The group submitted more than double that figure Monday and is confident the secretary of state’s office in the next week will verify the signatures and in turn spark a recall election that could come as soon as September.

As a "501(c)(4)" organization under the tax code, I Am Created Equal is not required to disclose its donors. We had always suspected that the total amount required for this petition drive would be much higher than the $14,000 already reported, but we are perhaps a little surprised that the donations weren't spread out among a few organizations–or something to make this one nonprofit group, I Am Created Equal, less than solely responsible for getting this recall successfully to the ballot as they apparently have.

Because based on publicly available records, I Am Created Equal is anything but "grassroots." 

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Full story: Who Is “I Am Created Equal?”

FOX 31's Eli Stokols reports, as expected, the paid recall petition drive against Colorado Senate President John Morse in retaliation for gun safety bills passed this year in the Colorado General Assembly appears successful:

The group working to recall Colorado Senate President John Morse over the passage of Democratic gun control legislation earlier this year turned in more than 16,000 signatures at the Secretary of State’s office Monday morning.

That’s more than double the number of valid signatures — 7,178, a percentage of voter turnout in 2010 when Morse was elected — that will be needed to force a recall election in El Paso County later this year…

[T]he push to oust Morse has drawn most of the attention from pro-Second Amendment activists within the state, not to mention a lot of financial help from undisclosed groups that have funneled money, through a non-profit called “I Am Created Equal”, to Kennedy Enterprises, which has paid petition gatherers to collect signatures.

16,000 signatures is enough to overcome even a very low "validity rate" for gathered signatures, which is expected as collecting signatures in a state senate district with poorly-known boundaries can be difficult. It's worth noting that for-profit petition company Kennedy Enterprises has never failed to get something on the ballot via petition drive.

Lynn Bartels of the Denver Post follows up today with more reports of deception from petition gatherers, in addition to video of similar false statements from a Morse petition gatherer that surfaced last week. There is some recourse for individuals who realize they have been deceived by a petition gatherer, allowing them to have their names removed–we'll be watching to see if anything develops with that possibility. 9NEWS:

Morse has several options available to challenge the signatures, including court action. Deadlines for the various challenges are spelled out in state law.

"Thousands of those signatures were obtained inappropriately," Morse said. "Now, will we be able to prove that? We'll have 15 days to figure that out. That's going to be tricky."

As of now, it does appear the first-ever recall of a sitting Colorado legislator is headed for the ballot.

Full story: Morse Paid Petition Recall Campaign Turns In 16,000+ Signatures

UPDATE: AP has now posted a major correction to the story this post is based on:

In a story May 28 about Democrats facing recall efforts, The Associated Press reported erroneously that a conservative consultant said out-of-state donors helped fund her donation to a potential recall of the president of the Colorado State Senate. Laura Carno was misquoted; she said donors from other states have contributed to one of her organizations that will help in the recall but that her main donation to the recall effort to date came from a separate group funded by Colorado donors…

The corrected version of the story now reads:

The recall group's main funding comes from a $14,000 contribution from a nonprofit run by a local conservative consultant, Laura Carno. She said donors from other states have contributed to one of her organizations that will help in the recall but that her main donation to the recall effort to date came from a separate group funded by Colorado donors.

Obviously we're obliged to bring this correction from the AP to our readers' attention, as the question of whether the recall effort against Colorado Senate President John Morse is being "locally" funded, and the answer seemingly provided in this story, is an important point of messaging for both sides. Of course, since Springs-based GOP operative Laura Carno isn't required to disclose the source of the contribution in question at all, even this correction boils down to taking her word for it–and the fact of the NRA's involvement has been separately reported and confirmed. Original post follows. 

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Full story: The Morse Recall: A New NRA Proxy War

With a H/T to Kurtis Lee of the Denver Post, supporters of Senate President John Morse are circulating a new video, reportedly shot this week, of a paid circulator for the recall petition against Morse attempting to convince someone to sign it.

Pretty much entirely by making stuff up.

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Full story: Yes, The Morse Recall Petition Circulators Are Lying Too