As conservatives celebrate their victory over booting anti-gun legislators in Colorado’s recall elections last night, let’s look at the some of the reasons that contributed to their success. In Dave Weigel’s September 11 post on Slate, the spokeswoman for the recall, Jennifer Kerns, provided the information and showed that even Democrats love their guns. Granted, gun rights supporters have known this for quite some time. The only people who don’t get seem to get it are urban-based liberal elites.
Kerns explains how women, Hispanics, and blue collar workers helped score a victory for liberty last night.
Hispanics: In the heavily Democrat, hispanic district in Pueblo, Hispanics are strong 2nd amendment supporters.
Women: There were many women behind this Recall movement, beginning when the gun control bills were heard in the State Legislature. A new radio ad out in the final weekend of the election featured Kimberly Weeks, a victim of rape, who testified in the State Legislature and took Senator John Morse to task on why she would be robbed of her right to defend herself. Other women’s groups were the first to run ads against Senator John Morse on the theme of “a woman’s right to choose… how to defend herself” which pushed the narrative. And even the Spokesperson for the effort (me) is a woman, and I, too, was one of the first women to testify against the gun control bills back in February. I got in under the wire to testify before they shut down the testimony from the public.
Blue collar: 3 of the 3 Founders of the Pueblo Recall are blue collar workers. 2 of them are plumbers and 1 is an electrician. They connected very well with the demographics of Pueblo, which is a blue collar former-steel worker town. 1 of the founding members of the Morse Recall is also blue collar, he wears a hard hat and spends about 100 hours per week out in an oil field in steel toed boots, then would go home at night and work on the Recall.
From the beginning, we had interesting demographics on our side. Again, by the numbers: More Democrats & Independents combined signed the Recall petition than Republicans. I believe this goes back to #1 above, it struck a populist nerve that appealed to independents. When we saw the turnout on Election Day was spiking with Independent/unaffiliated voters, we were ecstatic because we knew that a majority of those votes would likely break our way.
For the future, it will be interesting to see if the anti-gun wing of America learns their lesson from this defeat. Then again, liberals’ hopeless emotionalism will probably blind them again to another electoral slaughter on this issue. At the same time, the fact that more Democrats and Independents signed the petition than Republicans only further discredits DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz insane claim that her side lost due to voter suppression.
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