Gun rights group “not confident” about recall
Colorado gun rights advocates who successfully recalled Democratic state lawmakers over gun legislation in 2013 may be running into difficulty this time as national gun control groups converge to defend a suburban Denver seat.
Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund and Giffords, an organization started by former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, are donating a combined $110,000 to stave off efforts to recall Colorado Rep. Tom Sullivan, D-Centennial, the groups are announcing Tuesday morning.
Colorado-based Moms Demand Action also pledged volunteers to go door-to-door and canvass on behalf of Sullivan, a freshman lawmaker whose son, Alex, was killed in the Aurora theater shooting.
“Voters knew exactly who they were electing when they sent Representative Sullivan to the general assembly … ,” Everytown President John Feinblatt said in a statement.
“We are proud to stand with Representative Sullivan in the face of this cynical effort to undermine the will of the people.”
In 2013, two Democratic state senators were successfully recalled for their votes on gun control legislation while a third resigned to avoid a recall election. But this year’s effort appears to be sputtering.
“We’re not confident,” Rocky Mountain Gun Owners Executive Director Dudley Brown said Monday when The Post asked whether the recall will get onto the ballot. “It’s been tough work.”
The official recall committee
hasn’t raised any money, according to online campaign finance records.
RMGO, however, recently advertised a Centennial office dedicated to Sullivan’s recall, and Sullivan supporters have reported running into paid signature gatherers outside local grocery stores. It’s not clear how much money they’ve spent on the campaign because the group’s political action committee doesn’t have to file a new financial report for a few more weeks.
And a few more weeks is all they have left. The deadline to submit 10,035 valid signatures from House District 37 voters to the Secretary of State’s Office is July 12.
Sullivan ran for office in 2018 with a promise to push what he described as laws that would help protect other Colorado families from the pain of gun violence. He defeated the incumbent Republican by 8 points.
He sponsored Colorado’s “red-flag” bill during the 2019 legislative session and told The Denver Post he planned to frame one of the pens Gov. Jared Polis used to sign it into law. The law, which goes into effect in January 2020, gives judges the power to issue extreme risk protection orders temporarily removing firearms from people believed to be a high risk of harming themselves or others.
Groups such as Moms Demand Action and Everytown celebrated the bill signing. The latter began a national campaign earlier this year to educate Americans about red-flag laws in different states and to push state legislatures to consider adopting them.
But some conservatives and gun rights groups see Colorado’s new law as a threat to the Second Amendment as well as a potential violation of due process rights. The law will allow judges to order the initial seizure of firearms without the gun owner’s knowledge. Nearly half of Colorado’s counties have passed resolutions giving their local sheriffs permission not to enforce the order — and in some cases urging them not to do so.
“Sullivan has already made a difference at the state capitol and that has his opponents resorting to desperate tactics,” Giffords Executive Director Peter Ambler said in a statement. “We are standing with Rep. Sullivan in this fight to make sure that the demands from the majority of Colorado voters for gun reform will not be silenced.”