DENVER - As he prepared to vote for some of the strictest gun-control measures in the country this year, John Morse, a former police chief and the president of the state Senate, predicted 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, Sen. Angela Giron, into recall elections.The recall effort is seen nationally as a test of whether politicians, largely Democrats, outside big cities and heavily Democratic coastal states can survive the political fallout of supporting stricter gun laws.
“Legislators should be scared,” said Becky Mizel, chairman 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 andGiron to face a recall vote Sept. 10, 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 writer of erotic romances - 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 shootingcrosses generations and partisan lines, the measures drew an angry and immediate response from many quarters.
Supporters of the new gun laws - including Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat - said they were tailored for Colorado. Lawmakers increased the proposed limits on clip size to 15 rounds from 10 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.”
Morse was a leadingvoice in the fight to pass the gun limits, which came in response to the mass shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., last July and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn., 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 Senate president, he became a high-profile target for gun advocates in the recall vote.
“I just go back to Dec. 14 and July 20, and think about the families that had to bury their children,” Morse said, referring to the Sandy Hook and Aurora shootings.
Even if he loses, Morse said, he had 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.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 07/30/2013