Recalls against Colorado Dems can go forward

Recall efforts against two more Colorado Democrats have received the official go-ahead to begin.

On Friday afternoon, the secretary of state’s office approved petitions for groups seeking to recall Sens. Brittany Pettersen, D-Lakewood, and Pete Lee, D-Colorado Springs. They now have 60 days to gather the required number of signatures for each district.

The group hoping to recall Lee needs 11,304 signatures from registered voters in Senate District 11, which mostly covers Colorado Springs.

In its petition, the group wrote that Lee should be removed from office before the end of his term because he supported legislation to create a paid family leave program and because he voted for bills on sex education, oil and gas reform and gun control.

“I think the process when you disagree with a legislator is to put up a candidate and take them up on the issues,” Lee said. “Recalling someone because you don’t like the way a person voted on a couple of issues disrespects the electorate and undermines the democratic process.”

The Pettersen recall effort needs 18,376 valid signatures.

The law requires people attempting a recall to collect signatures equal to 25 percent of the district’s voters in the last general election.

In addition to the reasons given for recalling Lee, the people working to oust Pettersen listed her support for standardizing vaccine exemption forms and supervised injection sites.

These two recall efforts are part of a larger effort to oust Democrats since the 2018 election pushed Republicans out of power in Colorado. Democrats won the Colorado House, Senate and every statewide office for the first time in years. Two groups are collecting signatures to recall Gov. Jared Polis, and another unsuccessfully attempted to recall state Rep. Tom Sullivan, DCentennial.

“This is misguided. I ran on the issues that I championed in the last session,” Pettersen said.