Avoiding Recall: Colorado's "You Don't Need a Gun to Prevent Rape" Evie Hudak Resigns

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11-27-2013, 06:09 PM
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Avoiding Recall: Colorado's "You Don't Need a Gun to Prevent Rape" Evie Hudak Resigns

Avoiding Recall: Colorado's "You Don't Need a Gun to Prevent Rape" Evie Hudak Resigns

Katie Pavlich | Nov 27, 2013

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After seeing two of her Colorado colleagues recalled over anti-gun votes, Democratic State Senator Evie Hudak, will submit her resignation.

Hudak will hold a news conference Wednesday morning at the Arvada Library.

"By resigning I am protecting these important new laws for the good of Colorado and ensuring that we can continue looking forward," Hudak wrote in her resignation letter in regard to her gun votes, which led to the recall effort.

Proponents of the recall have until early next week to submit about 18,900 valid signatures to the secretary of state's office. If enough signatures are valid, Hudak would be the third Colorado lawmaker to face a recall election this year because of her support for tougher gun laws.

Earlier this year, Colorado State Senator Angela Giron and Senate President John Morse, both from blue districts, were recalled and replaced with Republicans. Hudak was likely pressured into her resignation. If she had lost her recall election (which was likely), Democrats in Colorado would lose a majority in the legislature. Now, Democrats will be able to appoint Hudak's replacement, further ignoring constituents while allowing Democrats to avoid the consequences for anti-gun votes.

As a reminder, Hudak is the woman who told rape survivor Amanda Collins back in March during a hearing about concealed carry on campus that a gun wouldn't have helped her when she was attacked and lectured her by saying, "statistics are not on your side." Collins was raped at gun point in a gun free zone in 2007 while walking to her car at the University of Nevada-Reno. Due the University's no weapons policy, Collins was in possession of her concealed carry permit at the time of the attack, but not her firearm. Her assailant went on to rape two more women and killed one of them, Brianna Denison, who was just 20-years-old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...;v=zl0MS7Z-Sjc

You can learn more about Amanda's story here.

UPDATE: Compass Colorado, the group helping to lead recall efforts, has released a statement.

“This is yet another indicator that the tides are changing in Colorado politics,” Executive Director of Compass Colorado Kelly Maher said in a statement. “Coloradans are sick of the extreme Democrats trying to control their lives. These “progressives” have overreached so far on so many issues that Colorado families are now ready for a new vision.”

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepa...campaign=nl_pm
11-27-2013, 09:25 PM
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Colorado Democrat Resigns to Forestall Recall On Gun Control Stance

Centennial State has some of the most draconian anti-2nd Amendment laws in the nation.

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
November 27, 2013

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Colorado Democrat State Senator Evie Hudak.

Colorado Democrat state Senator Evie Hudak’s constituents are hopping mad about her stance on the Second Amendment.

On Wednesday, the embattled politico threw in the towel ahead of a recall effort in the state.

“By resigning I am protecting these important new laws for the good of Colorado and ensuring that we can continue looking forward,” Hudak wrote in her resignation letter.

The resignation comes as a surprise. Political observers in Colorado believed Hudak would survive a recall effort by Second Amendment advocates and their supporters.

Hudak and Democrats in the state passed laws requiring background checks on all firearms sales, the outlawing of magazines capable of taking more than 15 rounds, and a ban on so-called assault weapons within Denver, the state capital.

Two other Democrat legislators, Sens. John Morse of Colorado Springs and Angela Giron of Pueblo, were thrown out of office earlier this year in response to their efforts to undermine the Second Amendment.

In March, Hudak took heat for callous comments she directed at a rape victim who testified against a bill to ban concealed-carry firearms. Faced with outrage from the public and bad <acronym title="Google Page Ranking"><acronym title="Google Page Ranking">PR</acronym></acronym> for her insensitive comments, the senator later attempted to backtrack. Hudak said she “didn’t mean to be insensitive” in the exchange with Amanda Collins.

The Colorado Senate passed the law banning concealed-carry on college campuses.

This article was posted: Wednesday, November 27, 2013 at 1:47 pm
Tags: constitution, domestic news, gun rights

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http://www.infowars.com/colorado-dem...ontrol-stance/
11-28-2013, 02:56 AM
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http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/ass...-story-top.jpgColorado state capitol

November 27th, 2013 02:43 PM ET
10 hours ago

Pro-gun control state lawmaker resigns before recall deadline

http://cnnpoliticalticker.files.word...hot-4.jpg?w=27 Posted by CNN's Ashley Killough
Updated 3:12 p.m. ET, 11/27/2013

(CNN) - A Democratic, pro-gun control state senator who faced a potential recall in Colorado abruptly resigned Wednesday, less than a week before the recall petition was due.
Sen. Evie Hudak's surprise resignation means a Democratic committee can appoint a new state senator in her place. Had she stayed in office and possibly faced a recall election, she would have gone up against a Republican, thus risking the Democrats' slim one-seat majority in the state Senate.
"In the interest of preserving the progress made over the last year, I am resigning as State Senator for District 19," she said in a letter to the secretary of the Senate.
After the successful recalls in September of two Democratic state senators who supported the state's unpopular, restrictive new gun control laws, a group of voters began to organize a recall effort against Hudak. (Voters had tried collecting signatures to recall Hudak earlier this year when similar efforts were waged against the other lawmakers, but the campaign against Hudak never made it to the recall level.)
"By resigning, I am protecting these important new laws for the good of Colorado and ensuring that we can continue looking forward," Hudak said in the letter.
The deadline to submit the 18,900 signatures needed to start a new recall election would have been Tuesday, December 3.
With her resignation, however, that effort is over. And her opponents aren't happy.
"This is not a victory," said Dave Palm, a registered Democrat and a small business owner who helped organize the grassroots campaign to collect signatures. "It's not a victory for the voters. It's not a victory for us."
Palm did not have an exact count of the signatures they had collected so far, but said they were 92% of the way toward their goal as of last Saturday, with the goal being more signatures than needed to ensure enough were valid.
He speculated the state's Democratic Party pressured her to resign, out of fear of possibly losing the majority in the Senate. Of the 35 seats, Democrats have a narrow 18-17 advantage over Republicans.
Palm, who says Hudak is a poor legislator for more reasons than simply her position on gun control, was still not satisfied with the fact that she would no longer be in office.
"If she had stayed with it and we had a chance to kick her out, that would be one thing. But at this rate we have no control over who's going to represent us," he said.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee said the Jefferson County Democratic Party would appoint a new senator, who will serve until an election next November.
Michael Sargeant, executive director of the DLCC, said Hudak's "decision cannot have been easy," but added he was "confident the Jefferson County Democrats will appoint a new senator every bit as dedicated as Evie to carry on her legacy in the Senate majority caucus."
Being in her second term, Hudak was term-limited and unable to run for re-election in 2016. She narrowly won re-election last year with less than half her district's vote in a three-way race against a Republican and a Libertarian.
Her district covers Arvada and Westminster in the metropolitan area of Denver.
Hudak became a controversial figure during the gun control debate earlier this year. Most notably, she received sharp criticism for her reaction to a rape survivor who said she wished she had been able to use her concealed-carry permit to protect herself.
"I just want to say, statistics are not on your side, even if you had had a gun," Hudak told the woman, adding that even if she had a gun, her attacker "would have been able to get that from you and possibly use it against you."
Hudak later apologized, saying she "didn't meant to be insensitive," according to the Denver Post.
The new laws in Colorado, which took effect in July, limit firearm ammunition magazines to 15 rounds and require universal background checks on all firearm sales.
Responding to Hudak's surprise announcement Wednesday, Colorado Republican Committee chairman Ryan Call said her move was nothing but a political ploy.
"By side-stepping the recall process and not allowing the voters to choose a senator who will represent them, Evie Hudak's resignation shows that Democrats are much more concerned about holding onto political power than in being held accountable," he said.

– CNN's Jennifer Buesinger and Adam Levy contributed to this report.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...call-deadline/
11-29-2013, 12:38 PM
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http://www.alipac.us/f19/colorado-de...2/#post1382229
11-29-2013, 05:18 PM
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Official Quits in Backlash Over Colorado Gun Vote

By JACK HEALY
Published: November 27, 2013

DENVER — A populist backlash against Colorado’s new gun-control laws claimed its third political casualty on Wednesday as a Democratic state senator resigned her seat rather than face a recall vote that could have cost her party control of the chamber.

Ed Andrieski/Associated Press

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Evie Hudak

For Democrats in this swing state, the resignation of the senator, Evie Hudak, was a sign of the growing political cost of their votes last winterto expand background checks and limit the size of ammunition magazines — measures once hailed as breakthrough victories in the effort to respond to mass shootings.
Polls show that voters embrace aspects of the new laws. But the measures have infuriated gun advocates and Republicans, and have become political liabilities in a state where the gun debate is shaped by traditions of hunting and sport-shooting, as well as by the shadows of mass shootings at Columbine High School and the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora.
In September, two prominent gun-control supporters were ousted in recall elections, reducing the Democrats’ edge in the State Senate to one seat. Ms. Hudak, who represents the suburbs northwest of Denver, would have been the third to face a recall vote, and she and state Democrats acknowledged that neither she nor the party’s 18-17 majority was likely to survive it.
“By resigning, I am protecting these important new laws for the good of Colorado,” she wrote in her resignation letter, referring to the slate of gun restrictions, including one she sponsored that seeks to keep guns away from domestic-violence offenders.
Ms. Hudak’s decision averts another potentially humiliating recall vote and allows a panel of county Democrats to choose her temporary successor, ensuring that Republicans cannot immediately take control of the Senate and force vulnerable Democrats into uncomfortable votes to repeal the gun laws or new regulations on rural electricity providers.
But Floyd Ciruli, a political analyst in Denver, said Ms. Hudak’s resignation amounted to a surrender before the fight began and was another sign of trouble for state Democrats. It comes weeks after voters overwhelmingly rejected a $1 billion tax increase to reform Colorado’s schools, a measure championed by Gov. John W. Hickenlooper and other prominent Democrats.
“When you add all that in together and stir in the collapse of the national brand, the congressional Democrats, the president and the Affordable Care Act, it’s close to panic,” Mr. Ciruli said.
In recent weeks, as the recall efforts against Ms. Hudak gained momentum, she discussed her options with supporters and Democratic leaders, according to Morgan Carroll, the incoming Senate president. It quickly became clear that resignation was the least bad choice.
“She really, really struggled with it,” Ms. Carroll said. “She felt this was a necessary sacrifice to protect these things that were so important to her.”
Such tactical surrenders are not uncommon, said Joshua Spivak, a senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College in New York who tracks recall elections. There were at least 168 recall elections nationwide last year, he said, and in 26 cases, officials resigned before the vote.
Democrats, gun-control supporters and gay-advocacy groups offered thanks to Ms. Hudak on Wednesday, while her opponents expressed a mix of elation and outrage that she had left office before a vote could take place. A pro-recall Facebook page stamped the word “Coward” on her photograph.
“We all know that this is about control and power and the gun-grabbing, citizen-ignoring Democrats elected to the Colorado State Legislature,” some opponents wrote on the“Recall Hudak Too” website.
In Ms. Hudak’s district, her critics said they were thrilled. For weeks, they have been gathering signatures to force a recall vote, putting up “Recall Hudak” lawn signs and writing blog posts outlining the case against her. Gordon Allison, who helped gather signatures, said that weeks of knocking on doors and chatting with neighbors had paid off.
“This is just a politician who needs to be gone,” he said.
But others felt shortchanged and said they were angry that Ms. Hudak’s successor was likely to share many of her views.
“She walks away, the Democrats get to appoint another Democrat,” said Dave Palm, who has helped circulate petitions and run the pro-recall website. “They saw the writing on the wall.”
Ms. Hudak, 62, a former teacher and member of Colorado’s Board of Education, faced an uphill fight against a passionate opposition in a low-turnout election. She was re-elected in 2012 by 584 votes. Her opponents failed to gather enough valid signatures to force a recall vote in their first effort this spring, but they believed they were within reach this time.
Colorado is one of 19 states that allow recalls of state officials, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Voters can oust officials for any reason if they collect enough signatures and win a special election.
Until this year, no state lawmaker here had been removed in a recall vote. That changed in September, when John Morse, the State Senate president, and Senator Angela Gironlost their seats in an election that was funded heavily by the National Rifle Association and by gun-control advocates like New York’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg.
On Wednesday, Ms. Hudak’s supporters gathered at a library to offer words of support and thanks. Her opponents attended, too, offering more criticism. Ms. Hudak did not attend.

A version of this article appears in print on November 28, 2013, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Official Quits In Backlash On Gun Vote In Colorado.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/us...ado.html?_r=2&