Lesson learned: Hickenlooper warns gun control groups to stay out of recall

Lesson learned: Hickenlooper warns gun control groups to stay out of recall

By USA Today October 14, 2013 12:25 pm


http://www.gopusa.com/news/files/201...ol-300x180.jpg Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper suggests national gun-control groups stay away from a looming recall battle that could switch control of the state Senate to the GOP. The groups poured money into an unsuccessful defense of two state lawmakers recalled over their gun votes earlier this year.
"Colorado is a state that people like to be themselves and solve their own problems," the Democratic governor said in an interview with Capital Download, USA TODAY's weekly video series. "They don't really like outside organizations meddling in their affairs, and maybe the NRA gets a pass on that.
"But (it is) probably not a bad idea" for gun-control groups, such as the one established by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to curb their efforts if gun-rights activists force a recall vote on state Sen. Evie Hudak, a two-term Democrat from a suburban district north of Denver, he said.
If Republicans succeed in gaining her seat, Democrats would lose their 18-17 edge in the state Senate.
Petition organizers have until Dec. 3 to collect 18,900 signatures. "They're well-funded and there's a lot of energy behind this, a lot of frustration," Hickenlooper said. "I'm going to guess it's probably 50-50" that they will be able to get the recall vote on the ballot.
But, he noted, "I didn't think they'd get enough signatures for the first two."
The recall campaigns have been aimed at legislators who voted in favor of requiring universal background checks for gun buyers and limiting magazine clips to 15 rounds. The laws, pushed by Hickenlooper, were enacted in the wake of a mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., last year.
In September, Senate President John Morse and state Sen. Angela Giron -- both Democrats -- were ousted from office by recall votes. Bloomberg's group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, contributed $350,000 to the anti-recall campaign, but the efforts by groups from outside the state became an issue itself.
"We have this tradition of the Second Amendment and people's rights to self-defense and a certain suspicion that the government can't be trusted," Hickenlooper said. "I think any progress in terms of even universal background checks will be slow."
The governor was interviewed while in Washington for The Daily Beast's Hero Summit, discussing crisis leadership after Colorado's devastating floods last month.
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CO governor to gun-control groups: Don’t come around here no more

POSTED AT 8:41 AM ON OCTOBER 14, 2013 BY ED MORRISSEY

Video at the Page Link:

It’s not because John Hickenlooper doesn’t support their cause, mind you, but that their presence has backfired in a big way in Colorado. The governor tells USA Today’s Susan Pagethat it might be a good idea for Michael Bloomberg and his allies to stay out of Colorado:

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper suggests national gun-control groups stay away from a looming recall battle that could switch control of the state Senate to the GOP. The groups poured money into an unsuccessful defense of two state lawmakers recalled over their gun votes earlier this year.
“Colorado is a state that people like to be themselves and solve their own problems,” the Democratic governor said in an interview with Capital Download, USA TODAY’s weekly video newsmaker series. “They don’t really like outside organizations meddling in their affairs, and maybe the NRA gets a pass on that.
“But (it is) probably not a bad idea” for gun-control groups, such as the one established by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to curb their efforts if gun-rights activists collect enough signatures to force a recall vote on state Sen. Evie Hudak, a two-term Democrat from a suburban district north of Denver, he said.

Page asks Hickenlooper whether Hudak opponents will get enough signatures for a recall, and Hickenlooper predicts not — but notes that his prognostication track record hasn’t exactly built confidence:

“I’m going to guess it’s probably 50-50″ that they will be able to get the recall vote on the ballot. But, he noted, “I didn’t think they’d get enough signatures for the first two.”

Coloradans don’t take to people coming in from out of state to tell them how to live. That’s also apparently true of ObamaCare, which is the first topic of discussion in the video. The new health-care paradigm is still very unpopular among Colorado voters, and Hickenlooper notes that the state exchange has had “its share of challenges” in the first two weeks. Maybe Hickenlooper should have just stuck to marijuana legalization.
The “no thank you” from Hickenlooper to Bloomberg may be amusing, but it’s also probably too late. Hickenlooper and his allies overreached on gun control, believing that the Boulder and Denver elite represented the political temperature of the rest of the state. Two key Democratic state legislators discovered belatedly that they had miscalculated, especially in the heavy-handed manner in which they had imposed their new gun-control regulations. Now Hickenlooper wants to talk about the beneficence of simple universal registration, but Democrats went way beyond that in Colorado and Washington and exposed their real end goals — banning weapons and curtailing access to firearms for law-abiding citizens. This backpedaling isn’t likely to convince Coloradans to lighten up on their pursuit for political accountability.


http://hotair.com/archives/2013/10/1...-here-no-more/

Colorado gun-rights advocates going in for recall, round two

POSTED AT 8:01 PM ON OCTOBER 9, 2013 BY ERIKA JOHNSEN

Barely a month ago, some Second-Amendment supportin’ Coloradoans successfully mounted a grassroots campaign to recall two state senators that helped to pass Colorado’snew rash of gun-control laws earlier this year — and the Left did not take it well. They haphazardly threw around wild and outraged excuses like “voter suppression” and big-money spending by the likes of the pernicious Koch brothers and the NRA (never mind that progressive groups outspent pro-gun groups by a whopping 7-to-1 margin), and as DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz so helpfully reminded us, the entire exercise was basically useless anyway, since “ultimately, the NRA did not get what it wanted. The recall results will do nothing to change the Democratic control of the Colorado House, Senate and Governor’s office. And the commonsense gun laws that were passed by popular vote in Colorado will remain intact.”
It sounds like a new group of Colorado recallers are taking that piece of probablyunintentional advice to heart in another district, via Fox News:

Gun-rights advocates in Colorado have started gathering signatures in support of another recall effort against a Democratic state senator following two successful recalls of lawmakers over votes in support of gun control laws.
Recall organizers received certification Friday from the Colorado Secretary of State’s office to gather signatures in the effort to recall Sen. Evie Hudak, a Democrat from Westminster, Colo., who backed the controversial gun measures, the Denver Post reported.
“She has infringed upon our constitutional right to keep and bear arms. She has voted to make all citizens less safe and to drive hundreds of jobs from Colorado,” Mike McAlpine, a spokesman for the group behind the recall effort, said in a statement emailed to the Denver Post.
In May, a different group suspended a separate recall effort targeting Hudak after they were unable to collect enough signatures. The group must gather 18,900 valid signatures within a 60-day time frame to force the recall question onto the ballot, the newspaper reported.

Hey, why not? Everybody and anybody insisted that the odds were against them in September’s recall, and its success certainly helped to scoot the issue onto the broader national stage — and as WaPo adds, the district looks like it’s ripe for the taking:

And Hudak’s district is more conservative than either Morse’s or Giron’s. Hudak’s suburban Denver district gave President Obama 52 percent of the vote in 2012, according to a breakdown compiled by the liberal Daily Kos blog. Obama scored nearly 60 percent of the vote in the other two seats. Hudak won reelection over Republican Lang Sias by fewer than 600 votes of 80,000 cast in 2012, while a Libertarian Party candidate took more than 5,000 votes.

And this time, the control of the entire legislative chamber does hang in the balance.


http://hotair.com/archives/2013/10/0...all-round-two/

https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net...90711713_q.jpgGun Rights Across America

Too late. Hickenpooper has shown his true colors. Vote for Greg Brophy so we can get CO back!

https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net...82206348_q.jpg National Rifle Association

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper suggests national gun control groups stay away from a looming recall battle that could switch control of the state Senate to the GOP. The groups poured money into an unsuccessful defense of two state lawmakers recalled over their gun votes earlier this year.

GUN-CONTROL SHY: Hickenlooper worried MAIG could cost Democrats control the Colorado Senate

Posted by Bob Owens on October 14, 2013 at 9:28 am

Governor John Hickenlooper seems terrified that outside gun control groups could cause Democrats tolose control of the Colorado Senate:

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper suggests national gun-control groups stay away from a looming recall battle that could switch control of the state Senate to the GOP. The groups poured money into an unsuccessful defense of two state lawmakers recalled over their gun votes earlier this year.
“Colorado is a state that people like to be themselves and solve their own problems,” the Democratic governor said in an interview with Capital Download, USA TODAY’s weekly video newsmaker series. “They don’t really like outside organizations meddling in their affairs, and maybe the NRA gets a pass on that.
“But (it is) probably not a bad idea” for gun-control groups, such as the one established by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to curb their efforts if gun-rights activists collect enough signatures to force a recall vote on state Sen. Evie Hudak, a two-term Democrat from a suburban district north of Denver, he said.
If Republicans succeed in gaining her seat, Democrats would lose their 18-17 edge in the state Senate.

Miniature Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other national gun control fanatics from outside Colorado outspent recall candidates by 6-1 in the recent recall elections, and Colorado Senate President John Morse and Senator Angela Giron were still thoroughly trounced and thrown out of office, effectively killing gun control in the United States.
Hickenlooper is worried that “iPad Evie” Hudak will be the next anti-gun Democrat to fall in a recall election, giving control of the Senate to pro-liberty conservatives, and making his own stance on gun control a serious obstacle to his own reelection in 2014.

Tags: Colorado, Evie Hudak, Gov. Hickenlooper


http://bearingarms.com/gun-control-s...lorado-senate/