Gubs can be dangerous to politicians

Jack Healy has an article in The New York Times about gub politics:

As he prepared to vote for some of the strictest gun control measures in the country earlier this year, John Morse, a former police chief and president of the Colorado State Senate, knew he would infuriate some constituents. “There may be a cost for me to pay, but I am more than happy to pay it,” he said in a recent interview.
Now, after months of gathering signatures and skirmishing in court, gun activists in Colorado, with the support of the National Rifle Association, have forced Morse and a fellow Democrat, Senator Angela Giron, into recall elections. The recall effort is seen nationally as a test of whether politicians, largely Democrats, outside big cities and deep-blue coastal states can survive the political fallout of supporting stricter gun laws.
“Legislators should be scared,” said Becky Mizel, chairwoman of the Republican Party in the old steel and railroad town of Pueblo, Giron’s home district. “We have a battle here.”
Around his Colorado Springs-area district, Morse has spent the summer in campaign overdrive. He walks door to door, explaining his votes to people in his narrowly divided district.
At first, the recall drive was against four Democrats. But the organizers failed to collect the required signatures against two of them, leaving only Morse and Giron to face a recall vote on 10 September, a first for the state. Voters must decide whether either of the Democrats should be recalled and, if so, who should replace them. So far, only two Republicans— one a former police officer, the other a former city councilman— are expected to be on the ballot to replace the incumbents.
“They’re going to turn out to ride me out of town on a rail,” Morse said. “Symbolically, if you could take me out, that would be a benefit to the special gun interests.”
For Colorado gun-rights supporters and their allies, like the NRA and the Republicans who opposed the gun bills, the recall elections are a chance to send a message to any politician who would support similar legislation. If Morse and Giron survive the recall vote, it might bolster lawmakers in other gun-friendly states to consider more controls on firearms.
The recall campaign began just weeks after the state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature passed Colorado’s first new gun limits in more than a decade— measures that required background checks for private transactions and limited the rounds in ammunition clips.
To supporters, the limits were an overdue response to mass shootings that have haunted Colorado since the Columbine High School attack in 1999. But, in a state where avid support for hunting and sport shooting crosses generations and partisan lines, the measures drew an angry response from many quarters.
Supporters of the new gun laws— including Governor John W. Hickenlooper, a Democrat— said they were tailored for Colorado. Lawmakers increased the proposed limits on clip size to fifteen rounds from ten, and added provisions to allow parents to pass down guns to their children without a background check. Supporters released opinion polls showing they had the support of solid majorities of Colorado residents.
But to Victor Head, a plumber in Pueblo, the new measures were a travesty. One day, Head said, he was chatting with friends on a website for enthusiasts of the AR-15 assault rifle, when the discussion shifted to how they could strike back at their legislators. “You can only write so many emails and go to so many meetings and protests,” Head said. “They have to listen to a recall.”
Democrats criticized the recall effort as a waste of time that would cost taxpayers $200,000. They pointed out that Morse had to step down next year because of term limits, and that Giron, a first-term senator, would be up for re-election.
But gun-rights activists said they needed to act. “We’re sick of saying: ‘Let’s just wait until next year’,” Head said. “We’ve got to send a message.”
In Colorado Springs, supporters of the recall set up a political action committee, the Basic Freedom Defense Fund, and started printing bumper stickers, hiring paid signature-gatherers, and taking donations. They have collected twenty thousand dollars to date, including $250 in ammunition that was donated as door prizes for volunteers. The vast majority of contributions have come from donors around Colorado Springs, though campaign-finance reports say that the NRA provided help with mailers and phone banks.
In Pueblo, Head took a hiatus from his job fixing water heaters, borrowed four thousand dollars from his grandmother, and set to gathering the eleven thousand signatures needed for a referendum on Giron.
Gun advocates set up tables on street corners, and in the parking lots of a Walmart and a Safeway grocery store, waving signs that said Save Our Guns and Recall Giron. They went door-to-door handing out leaflets. They crowded town-hall meetings to condemn the new gun laws and promise political retribution.
“I am tired of seeing our Second Amendment rights trampled on,” said Joe Santoro, a retired military explosives expert who joined the recall effort. “We can beat them.”
Morse was a leading voice in the fight to pass the gun limits, which came in response to the mass shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado last July and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut in December.
Though other legislators were more closely involved in the drafting of the background-check bills and the ammunition bills, it was Morse who lobbied fellow Democrats and rounded up votes. And he was the prime sponsor of a proposal, which he later dropped, that would have made dealers and manufacturers of assault rifles liable for deaths or injuries caused by those guns.
Morse was first elected to the Senate in 2006, and won re-election in 2010 by just 340 votes in a district in the Colorado Springs area that is split roughly in thirds among Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters. He is barred by term limits from seeking re-election next year. But, as the Senate president, he became a high-profile target for gun advocates in the recall vote.
“I just go back to 14 December and 20 July, and think about the families that had to bury their children,” Morse said, referring to the Sandy Hook and Aurora shootings.
Giron was elected to the Senate with 55 percent of the vote, in a Pueblo district that leans heavily Democratic. Only 23 percent of voters are Republicans. She said she could not go anywhere in public without being drawn into a discussion about the recall election. “I’m watering plants in my front yard, and people stop,” she said. “I’m in the grocery store or getting gas, and people are coming up to me.”
Giron has support from powerful Democrats including Lieutenant Governor Joe Garcia, who has campaigned for her, and there is a political action committee supporting her. The PAC has hired a staff member from President Obama’s re-election campaign, Chris Shallow, who handled field operations in North Carolina for the Obama campaign.
Giron and Morse are raising and spending far more than their opponents. Giron’s supporters have raised more than $87,000 and Morse’s more than $153,000, according to campaign disclosures. Each campaign has received thousands from progressive groups in Colorado and $35,000 apiece from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a Washington group that supports liberal and environmental causes, and $3,500 each from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
As they make their case, Giron and Morse are trying to expand beyond the gun debate. He emphasizes his years of public service as a police officer and paramedic. She talks about the forty million dollars in community college funding she helped to secure.
Even if he loses, Morse said, he has no regrets, not after Aurora and Sandy Hook.
“How does that happen and you don’t stand up and say: ‘We have to fix this’?” he said.

Rico says we do need to fix it, but they're not gonna with these laws...