WHEN Colorado’s legislators debated gun control earlier this year the Centennial Gun Store, a firearms wonderland in the Denver suburbs, became a “complete zoo”, says Paul Stanley, one of its managers. Gun fans who feared for their Second-Amendment rights cleared a shop wall of assault rifles. Suburban types who had never owned a gun flocked to the shop because “they didn’t want the government telling them what to do.” Ladies’ night at the firing range was booked solid.
In the end the Democratic-run legislature passed several gun laws, including a tightening of background checks and a ban on magazines that hold more than 15 rounds. That, in a libertarian-minded western state, generated more recoil than an antique Enfield. Outraged gun-lovers gathered signatures to recall four legislators who had backed the new laws. Two of the bids, against John Morse, the president of the state Senate, in Colorado Springs and Angela Giron in Pueblo, were successful, and on September 10th voters in those districts will be asked if they want to boot their state senators from office.
It was a dramatic move. Recalls are generally reserved for officials perceived to have abused their power, not simply those who pass laws that some people object to. Like most of the 19 states that allow voters to recall state legislators, Colorado has never actually tried it before. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures only 36 such votes have been held in American history (almost half of them in Wisconsin). In a year’s time Mr Morse will be term-limited out of office anyway.
Supporters of the recalls say that Mr Morse earned his punishment for denying his opponents time to testify during debate, a charge he denies. They also criticise him for playing golf on the taxpayers’ dime, just as some of his backers have tried to make the election about abortion. But the virulence of the campaign, on both sides (Mr Morse says his foes are “lying on steroids”), provides a clue to the deeper forces at work: the polarising of politics in a traditionally moderate place.
Long a swing state, Colorado has lately leaned to the left (see chart). Voters remain split roughly evenly between Democrats, Republicans and “unaffiliated”. Despite this the two parties are further apart in Colorado than anywhere else bar California, according to Boris Shor, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. Mr Shor’s data, which run up to 2010, suggest that Colorado’s polarisation is mostly the result of a rightward drift among Republicans since the mid-1990s. Their fondness for selecting unelectable puritans as candidates, as well as demographic changes, have allowed a well-funded, disciplined Democratic Party to dominate state politics. After last November’s elections the Democrats now control all three arms of government.
They have wasted no time. This year’s legislative session, says Floyd Ciruli, a Denver-based pollster, was one of the most left-wing he has ever seen. Along with the new gun laws Democratic leaders pushed bills to allow gay civil unions, require more use of renewable energy, lower tuition fees for illegal immigrants, allow voters to register on polling day and abolish the death penalty. All but the last were signed into law by Governor John Hickenlooper. Lawmakers also grappled with rules for the sale of marijuana, legalised by voters last year, and debated an income-tax rise to fund education, which is likely to be on the ballot in November. Ideas for more new taxes are lined up “like planes on tarmac”, says Mr Ciruli.
All this has left Colorado’s conservatives reeling, but there are enough of them to fight back. The recalls are the most obvious expression of discontent. Another is a dramatic, if futile, bid among several rural north-eastern counties irked by state energy policy to secede from Colorado (wags dub the proposed new state “Fracktopia”).
Most of the new laws are backed by a majority of voters, says David Winkler of Project New America, a left-leaning think-tank. Still, after two years of split legislative control during which Mr Hickenlooper could burnish his reputation as a consensus-seeking moderate, this year he has seen his approval ratings plummet among independents and Republicans. He still looks a good bet for re-election next year, partly because there is no obvious Republican alternative: Tom Tancredo, a veteran immigrant-baiter, is the leading candidate. The governor suggests that next year will see a return to bread-and-butter issues such as jobs. But Colorado has become a harder place to build political bridges.
It is not alone. The recalls have never been just about Colorado. Having failed in Washington, DC, gun-control groups are aiming at state legislatures. As a swing state with a tradition of gun ownership, Colorado makes an attractive target. Out-of-state tycoons such as Michael Bloomberg and Eli Broad have spent a bundle defending Mr Morse and Ms Giron. If they lose, says Mr Ciruli, gun-control elsewhere could be set back by five years or more.
Gun-lovers think they have won half a victory merely by getting the senators on the ballot. Legislators mulling gun control in other states, says Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute, a libertarian think-tank, must think: “Do you want this circus coming to your back yard?” Backers of the recalls hint that more are on their way.
It may be hard to put the genie back into the bottle. Alan Salazar, an adviser to Mr Hickenlooper, fears that when power reverts to the Republicans in Colorado, Democrats, too, may be tempted to resort to recalls when they lose arguments.
Colorado used to be a place where elections were won and lost on the doorstep, laments Rob Witwer, co-author of The Blueprint, a history of state politics. Today it has imported the worst habits of Washington, DC: races are generic and defined by national issues. That may be inevitable: voters care about guns, gays and drugs. But it makes pragmatic government harder.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Guns, gays, drugs and taxes in Colorado"
