Media omission: GOP recall spokeswoman says she fought Republican Party more than Morse

(Schadenfreude – Promoted by Colorado Pols)

In an interesting Spot Blog Post Sunday by The Denver Post's Kurtis Lee, Republican State Chairman Ryan Call defends himself against recent accusations from Republican activists that he did not support the recall campaigns of Democratic State Senators Angela Giron and John Morse. Call told The Post that the State GOP, in fact, supported Republican recall candidates with cash, legal backing, get-out-the-vote activities, and other ways. The Post also reported:

"In an e-mail exchange, Call offered to attend a news conference in support of the recalls, but he was turned down by a spokeswoman for the recall organizers."

The spokeswoman for the recall organizers was Jennifer Kerns, and she was apparently not given the chance respond to Call's allegation. Either that or she deferred to Victor Head, the Pueblo activist, who was quoted in the article, slamming Call. But, in any case, on KLZ radio Friday afternoon, Kerns said:

Kerns: "This is my first time speaking out as the spokesperson for the recalls, and I'm doing it right here first on Grassroots Radio to say that the [Republican] Party blocked us every step of the way, whether it was phone calls into Pueblo from Ryan Call to suggest that they shut down those recalls, and they not aid and assist the guys from Pueblo Freedom and Rights, or if it was our chairman calling into Pueblo again the night of the elections telling George Rivera that he ought to prepare a gracious concession speech before the polls even closed…." "I've often said to my colleagues, and I'll say it first here publicly. As much as we fought John Morse and Angela Giron, the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and OFA, I have to say I actually fought my own Republican Party more, and I'm so sad and disgusted that I actually have to say that. But it's the truth." [BigMedia emphasis.]

Partial transcript of comments by Jennifer Kerns and KLZ host Ken Clark on KLZ's Grassroots Radio Colorado, Friday, Sept. 20:

Jennifer Kerns: This is actually my first time publicly peaking out about this, in regards to the [Republican] Party. But the fact that Ken is taking his vacation time to call in about this. One person inspires another. Ken is exactly right. We just came off a very historic recall. Both of those recalls were driven by the grassroots and people who had never been involved in politics. And I have to say this. This is my first time speaking out as the spokesperson for the recalls, and I'm doing it right here first on Grassroots Radio to say that the Party blocked us every step of the way, whether it was phone calls into Pueblo from Ryan Call to suggest that they shut down those recalls, and they not aid and assist the guys from Pueblo Freedom and Rights, or if it was our chairman calling into Pueblo again the night of the elections telling George Rivera that he ought to prepare a gracious concession speech before the polls even closed…. I encourage everyone who's listening to get involved or else there will be no Party…. I've often said to my colleagues, and I'll say it first here publicly. As much as we fought John Morse and Angela Giron, the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and OFA, I have to say I actually fought my own Republican Party more, and I'm so sad and disgusted that I actually have to say that. But it's the truth. We have to stay involved in the fight. And, again, it's the Party that has to make peace with us…. They need us more than we need them, and we just proved it in two different races. Ken Clark: We are all Andrew Breitbart. And we understand one thing that I don't think the Republican Party understands at all: We are at war. And we will not back down. We understand what's at stake in the United States of America. We understand what's at stake in Colorado…. Republicans are supposed to stand for something. When I was a kid, they did. It was called the Reagan revolution. And Ronald Reagan was able to articulate his principles in such a manner that the entire country wanted to follow him. And follow him they did…. As a Republican, I stand for principles. What the Hell do you stand for? I really want to know. Do you stand for the Party itself? Is it the Party that you're trying to protect. Is it your own power that you're trying protect? Or is it principle? Is it fighting for the very life of this country? Because that is what is at stake, ladies and gentlemen, that is what is at stake.

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Last-Minute New Registrations Key in Morse Recall

We've been taking a look at the various voter turnout and registration statistics related to the Sept. 10th recall election, and a few numbers stick out as, well…interesting.

According to the Secretary of State's office, there were 83,782 total registered voters in SD-11 (Sen. John Morse's district) as of Sept. 1, 2013. In SD-3 (Sen. Angela Giron), the SOS office counts 97,186 registered voters as of Sept. 1. The last day to register online to vote in the recall election was Sept. 2, but residents could register in person up until Election Day on Sept. 10.

According to the turnout figures posted by the SOS for the recall election, there were 84,029 registered voters in SD-11 and 97,260 in SD-3. If these numbers are correct, and we have no reason to believe they are inaccurate, then a total of 247 new voters were registered in SD-11 in 10 days — most of them likely in person at the El Paso County Clerk's office. That doesn't seem like a high number by itself, but when you do the math in SD-3, only 74 new registrations were counted since Sept. 1 — but almost twice as many people voted in SD-3 as in SD-11. We understand that the Morse recall was more intense than the Giron recall, but statistically-speaking, those numbers don't make a lot of sense.

Why does this all matter? Because Sen. Morse was recalled by a total margin of 343 votes. Maybe those 247 new registered voters split their ballots on the recall, but from what we hear, Democrats did not put a lot of effort into a new voter registration program. For the sake of argument, if most of those 247 voters supported the recall, then they made the difference between an outright YES on the recall and a margin close enough to trigger an automatic recount.

For clarity's sake, here's those numbers again in a table format:

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A Few Words About Morse and Marijuana

The Colorado Springs Gazette's editorial page blared a nasty headline yesterday targeting liberal support for Senate President John Morse, perfectly timed with robocalls going out to Democrats in Senate District 11:

It's a safe bet many of the students who rallied for Morse last week would also rally for more marijuana rights. That's not to pass judgment on Colorado College. It's just a young, liberal college thing to advocate marijuana freedom.

Morse claims to favor legalization, but advocates of that cause do not favor authoritarian Morse.

Don't ask us. Ask the Marijuana Policy Project, the country's largest and best-funded organization working toward legalization of pot. The organization feels so threatened by Morse – a purported advocate of their cause – they named him this year's worst legislator in the United States…

If Morse could tax the air we breathe, he probably would. So at the end of the last legislative session, he co-sponsored a bill that would have suspended Colorado's Amendment 64, the law that legalizes marijuana, unless voters approve a giant tax increase on pot.

Our readers will recall coverage of the resolution in question here, which had the shortest lifespan of any legislation we can remember–about three hours from introduction to demise as alarmed marijuana activists descended on the capitol. That has apparently (we didn't actually know this) led the Marijuana Policy Project, a respected pro-legalization thinktank, to label Morse "the worst legislator in the United States."

The robocalls hitting Democrats in Senate District 11 cite the MPP, but are paid for by a group linked to longtime GOP operative Patrick Davis, former National Republican Senatorial Committee political director–and who we can assure liberal Democrats has no interest in legalizing marijuana. A larger problem is that both MPP and the robocalls are flat wrong about that bill's purpose. Senate Concurrent Resolution 003 would not have "resulted in the repeal of a voter-approved initiative to regulate marijuana like alcohol." None of the provisions legalizing personal possession and use of marijuana would have been affected. The resolution would have tied the opening of retail marijuana stores to the approval of the marijuana tax initiative headed for the ballot this November. As long as the tax initiative passed, the stores would be allowed to open. If not, well, they'd need to try again.

As we've said over and over about Amendment 64, the revenue opportunity is one of the big reasons pot is now legal. We believe it was a big part of motivating voters who were otherwise ambivalent about legalization.

Senator Morse said after the bill died that he introduced it to "get the attention" of the marijuana industry, which has been noncommittal to outright opposed to the tax initiative. The problem is that Amendment 64 was indeed not written in compliance with TABOR, which means the tax provisions built into the amendment are invalid–that's why the second initiative is necessary. Morse, simply put, was concerned about bad faith.

Those are the facts of what happened. We recognize that there are some who will read all of it and still disagree with Morse's short-lived proposal, and that's fine. The facts of this are not nearly what they're being represented to be by either pro-legalization advocates or opportunistic Republicans. And we think a full airing of the true facts would leave a lot of Democrats backing Morse–including plenty of pot smokers.

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Sunday Ground Game: Giron In Front, Morse a Horse Race

What Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz calls "the worst election you've never heard of" is now only a few days away. Early voting is well underway in both Senate District 3 (Pueblo) and Senate District 11 (Colorado Springs). Although the ads are still blaring, most attention has now turned to the field campaigns underway to actually turn out voters. And that's where the fight will be won or lost in both cases.

We are hearing more and more cautious optimism from Democrats as Election Day nears. In Pueblo, all news reports show Democrats still way out ahead in terms of ballots returned, though Republicans in this heavily Democratic district are likely to have a high turnout. Although you can't be certain of a 1:1 Democrat/recall "no" vote ratio, especially in fractious Pueblo, organizers on the ground seem confident they will not just win for Sen. Angela Giron, but run up the score a little to shore her up for the 2014 general election. The reason they're not already celebratory, they say, is they don't want to encourage any kind of complacency–and that makes very good sense.

In Senate District 11, the extremely expensive and contentious fight between Senate President John Morse and ex-Springs councilman Bernie Herpin is virtually certain to be a closer race than Giron's–perhaps very close. Both sides have worked very hard to personalize this high-profile race, and Morse's campaign believes they have done what they needed to drive up Herpin's negatives. Overall, the candidates personally have mattered more to this race than in Pueblo.

The biggest factor now, though, is the high degree of professional organization in both sides' field operations. That reflects the high stakes of this one recall, compared to the two that have already failed and in Pueblo where it's increasingly likely the GOP will lose. This is the race where Republicans have basically placed all their chips, pouring massive nationwide resources into this tiny state Senate district and obliging Democrats to do the same. The national proxy battle that the Senate District 11 recall represents at this point cannot be overstated.

To Democrats' credit, we can tell you the very best and most experienced field operatives in Colorado are working the canvassing operation in Senate District 11. These are the same people who oversaw and participated in the groundbreaking Democratic field campaigns of 2004-2012, one of the major reasons why Colorado is considered a blue state today. On the other side, don't let the diversionary incompetence of recall spokesperson Jennifer "CAPartyGirl" Kerns fool you–there are smart people working to turn out the vote for the GOP, too.

Rather than a poll, use this space to tell us long form what you think will happen Tuesday and why.

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Reporters should keep an eye on CO Springs elections chief Williams in the wake of his attack on candidate Morse

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

In the wake of El Paso Country Clerk Wayne Williams' criticism last week of State Sen. John Morse, reporters should gain assurances from Williams that he'll run a fair recall election in Colorado Springs.

On KFKA radio Aug. 29, Williams said it was "ironic given Bloomberg’s contributions yesterday" that Morse urged citizens to reject, as Morse wrote previously, "out-of-state billionaire and extremists who are wasting $150,000 of our tax money" on the recall election."

It's a surprising to hear Williams toss out partisan criticism because county clerks have a tradition of not taking sides in elections they're running. It looks bad.

Williams is a well-known Republican, but it still looks bad.

And it should have raised the eyebrow of KFKA's Devon Lentz, who was interviewing Williams on her and Tom Lucero's AM Colorado morning show.

Lentz should have asked Williams point-blank: "Wayne, we may be friendly, but I have to ask if you think it's appropriate for you to be attacking Sen. Morse, given that you're in charge of the election? So I'm wondering, why voters should trust you to run a fair election."

It's a question Colorado Springs reporters might pick up and run with, as well. And at a minimum, reporters should keep an eye on Williams and see if they detect any signs of favoritism toward Republican challenger Bernie Herpin.

Lentz: Wayne, do you by any chance have senator Morse’s response to the recall that you can share with us? I haven’t seen that.

Williams: Sure! I’ve got it right here, cuz it’s part of the ballot and I’ve got the sample ballot up in front of me….So, John Morse [preparing to read response from ballot] It’s kind of ironic. 'Vote ‘no’ on the out-of-state billionaires and extremists who are wasting $150,000 of our tax money—' I say ‘ironic’ given Bloomberg’s contributions yesterday—"and spending millions on a negative campaign to recall your twice-elected senator John Morse… [BigMedia emphasis]

Listen to Wayne Williams attacks Morse on AM Colorado 8.29.13 @4:30.

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Hickenlooper Swings Into Action For Morse, Giron

Gov. John Hickenlooper, taking a position and everything.

In a nationwide appeal sent moments ago via the Democratic National Committee, Gov. John Hickenlooper throws down hard against the upcoming recall elections of Senate President John Morse and Senator Angela Giron:

We have shown in Colorado that after great tragedy we can come together and make our schools, streets, and homes safer.

After Columbine, we closed a loophole that allowed dangerous people to purchase weapons at gun shows.

After the senseless shootings in Aurora last year, we studied the facts and talked to a wide range of people — including Second Amendment advocates — about how we could prevent gun violence. We passed legislation improving mental health services, modest restrictions on future sales of high capacity gun magazines, and universal background checks.

We were only able to pass the law because Democratic legislators had the courage to stand up to outside special interests — but now those groups are trying to make an example of two of them by forcing them into a recall election…

Opponents of these laws told us that expanding background checks wouldn't keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. The facts show otherwise. Last year alone, more than 5,000 people failed background checks because of arrests or convictions for serious crimes, including 38 people for homicide, 133 for sexual assault, 420 with restraining orders, 618 for burglary, and 1,380 for felony assault.

Expanding background checks to cover all gun sales prevents violent criminals from acquiring guns. That means safer communities while also respecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Coloradans.

These recall elections cost a small fortune and do nothing to improve democracy or representative government. They are intended to intimidate and punish a select number of Democratic legislators for daring to vote their conscience — for daring to do the right thing to make their communities safer.

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Gessler To Morse: Let Me “Edit” That For You

As the Colorado Independent’s Tessa Cheek reports:

ON WEDNESDAY, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s office signed off on ballot language for the state’s first-ever lawmaker recall election, where Democratic state Senate President John Morse will effectively face Republican City Council Member Bernie Herpin.

The Morse campaign doesn’t like the ballot language and believes the Republican secretary of state may have worked to tilt the scales in the race, stripping out language Morse submitted to be included.

But the Herpin campaign argues the Secretary didn’t go far enough. In a release the campaign charges that, in the language Morse submitted to the secretary, he “violated state law” by making false assertions about Herpin and about Basic Freedom Defense Fund — the group organized to promote recall of Morse mainly in response to his support for gun-control legislation last spring.

The recall campaigns, launched months ago, have been characterized by regularly erupting similar back-and-forths and there may be many more to come over the four weeks leading to Election Day on September 10.

Specifically, reports the Independent, GOP Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s office “edited” two statements from Morse’s ballot language–an allegation about a “junket” de facto opponent Bernie Herpin took as a Colorado Springs city councilor, and an accusation that Herpin “opposed criminal background checks, a position so extreme it would allow felons and domestic abusers to buy guns.” We don’t know very much about the first allegation–we will soon enough–but on the matter of Herpin’s opposition to background checks, we can tell you that he is the founder of the Pikes Peak Firearms Coalition. That organization certainly appears to oppose background checks:

Finally, we firmly believe that exercising one’s right to bear arms should not justify being identified on any government list, as precedence has shown time and again that agreeing to “reasonable controls” has only resulted in the continuing and irrevocable infringement by the government on the rights of the individual. [Pols emphasis]

Also, you can read Herpin’s own guest editorial against 2000's Amendment 22, the initiative closing the “background check loophole” at gun shows passed with overwhelming voter support after the mass shooting at Columbine High School. It’s not available online anymore, but it’s not equivocal:

First, there is no such thing as a “gun-show loophole.” [Pols emphasis] Federal law explicitly and intentionally exempts the private sale of firearms from federal regulation. Lawmakers recognize that sales and exchanges of goods and services between private individuals are not subject to the control or scrutiny of the government. They also recognize that such laws are unenforceable at best and threats to personal liberty at worst.

This would seem to validate the charge that Herpin “opposes criminal background checks.”

Once you accept that, then yes, Gessler’s “edit” is a real problem. And Gessler’s well-earned reputation for shenanigans as the state’s chief elections officer makes it pretty easy to throw the penalty flag.

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More evidence that Morse recall is an abuse of the political process

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Laura Carno, whose organization donated over $55,000 to recall Sen. John Morse, has been claiming Morse is an extremist on various conservative talk-radio shows.

Yet on "Politics and Guns" July 23, she said of Morse that, before this year, "you wouldn’t have been able to guess that he was a Democrat."

So Carno's problems with Morse are very recent, lending credibility to The Denver Post's view, as expressed in an editorial titled "John Morse Recall Is an Abuse of the Political Process," that the recall effort an extreme over-reaction to a policy dispute.

The statement invites questions for Carno about whether she thinks The Post is right that the Morse recall is a "perversion of a process that should be reserved for corruption and incompetence."

Here's a partial transcript of the radio interview, as well as the audio:

Carno: @31:52 Yes. That’s correct. And that’s one of the common questions that the recall committee got when they launched this, “Why don’t you just let him finish out his term?” So, there are a couple answers to that. One is, he didn’t get everything he wanted in the last legislative session. And just as a reminder to your listeners, Senator Morse was a very moderate Democrat. You wouldn’t have been able to guess from his legislative agenda from the previous terms that he’d been in there, you wouldn’t have been able to guess that he was a Democrat. He is former law enforcement. He had some good pro-police bills, pro-military bills. He even sponsored in 2007 a reciprocity bill for Conceal /Carry holders for Colorado – a very pro-gun bill.

Click Here for Audio

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