We did a poll last weekend in Colorado Senate District 3 and found that voters intended to recall Angela Giron by a 12 point margin, 54/42. In a district that Barack Obama won by almost 20 points I figured there was no way that could be right and made a rare decision not to release the poll. It turns out we should have had more faith in our numbers because she was indeed recalled by 12 points.
Granted, the NRA had a best case scenario in the recall vote, but it's a vote they won by double digits. Both Giron and Colorado State Senate President John Morse were sent packing.
The National Rifle Association, which donated about $360,000 to support the recalls, hailed Morse's loss, telling The Denver Post it "is proud to have stood with the men and women in Colorado who sent a clear message that their Second Amendment rights are not for sale."
But it wasn't just the NRA that warned Democrats about messing with gun rights.
Sen. Lois Tochtrop, an Adams County Democrat and longtime Second Amendment activist, opposed five of the seven gun bills initially introduced in the session, including a lightning-rod proposal by Morse.
That proposal would have assigned liability for assault-style weapon damages to manufacturers and sellers, but Morse killed it at the 11th-hour because he didn't have the votes to pass it through the Democratic-controlled Senate.
"I feel like all these gun bills have done — to quote the last words in the movie 'Tora! Tora! Tora!' — is to awaken a sleeping giant," Tochtrop said during the debate.
And that's true. All across the country, the NRA has crushed gun control laws and limited victories to Pyrrhic ones. It's one thing to defeat somebody in an election, but to knock them off in a recall over legislation, well, Democrats were told that was un-American in Wisconsin. Guess it's okay now.
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