Everything You Need to Know About the Colorado Recall Elections

Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty July 22, 2013 Good news: The news cycles for the coming days will be devoured by another non-political story, this one much happier than the Zimmerman trial: Over in the U.K., "Duchess Kate of Cambridge is in the hospital and in the early stages of labor, Buckingham Palace confirmed early Monday." Reminder:  If you're going on the NR cruise, you have until Friday to do the online registration through the cruise line's website. I'll be on the cruise, so no Jolt from July 30 to August 9 or so. Everything You Need to Know about the Colorado Recall Elections If you're a fan of the Second Amendment, and you feel that a whole bunch of lawmakers — mostly Democrats — reacted to the horror of Newtown by rushing to pass a bunch of ill-thought gun control laws that would have done nothing to prevent that tragedy, then you need to pay a lot of attention to the recall efforts against two Colorado state lawmakers. Second Amendment advocates aim to replace Democratic senators John Morse of Colorado Springs and Angela Giron of Pueblo. (They also tried to recall Senator Evie Hudak of Westminster and Representative Mike McLachlan of Durango, but failed to collect enough signatures.)  Back in 2010, Morse won, 48.1 percent to 47.2 percent, with about 250 votes separating him from his opponent (and Libertarian Douglas Randall collected 1,258 votes). Giron won more solidly, 54.8 percent to 45.1 percent, a margin of about 4,000 votes. In that November midterm election, about 28,000 votes were cast in Morse's race, about 40,000 votes in Giron's. Of course, in a special recall election, turnout may be much lower. The local Republican parties selected former Colorado Springs city councilman Bernie Herpin to take on John Morse and George Rivera, former deputy chief of the Pueblo police force, to take on Giron. Here's how it works: The ballot will include the original statement from the petitioners as to why the official in question should be recalled, as well as a no more than 300 word rebuttal from the official, if the official submits a statement. The ballot will have two boxes, marked "Yes" approving the recall and "No" disapproving the recall. There will also be a list of candidates for whom those that voted for the recall may vote for to replace the official. In this sense, the recall election is held simultaneously with the election of the new official. If a majority of participants vote "No" in the recall, the official whom the recall was filed against will remain in their position. If there is a majority of "Yes" votes, then the new official will be the candidate on the list with the most votes. The election will be conducted by mail, and even more so than in regular elections, the details count in this one: All active, registered voters in Senate district 11 will receive a mail-in ballot. Ballots will be mailed to military and overseas voters by August 9. Ballots will be mailed to local voters starting August 19. There will be two sections on the ballot. One will ask whether or not Senator John Morse should be recalled. The second section will allow voters to choose a successor candidate. Voters MUST answer the recall question to have their vote counted. The County Clerk and Recorder's Office says if a voter skips the recall question their ballot will be voided, even if they voted for a successor candidate. Ballots have to be received by the Clerk and Recorder's Office by 7:00 p.m. September 10 in order to be counted. Voters can verify that their ballot was received by visiting the Go Vote Colorado website. Herpin's pitch: I'm running to defend our Constitutional rights and promote an environment where small businesses are free to create jobs and improve our local community. For too long, John Morse has been more interested in doing the bidding of Big Government interests in Denver and Washington and less interested in the economic concerns and well-being of our community. We have the opportunity to remove the president of the senate and send a strong message that we will not tolerate elected officials who disrespect our Constitutional rights and ignore their constituents. Many in our community know about my long standing vocal and public support of our Constitutional rights.  I also have a history of serving our city and have always prided myself on being responsive to the people of Colorado Springs. Rivera is pointing out that, separate from Giron's gun vote, she's also voted for a slew of bills he deems bad for the district: A bill that makes it easier for water to be taken from the Arkansas River basin to be moved to Aurora and other northern Colorado cities, the bill calling for higher renewable energy standards that will make the cost of electricity rise by up to 20% for those living in the rural electric areas like Pueblo West, the bill that makes it easier for an employee that has been terminated to sue small business owners like my wife and I and to ask for punitive damages for things like "mental anguish", "inconvenience" or "loss of enjoyment of life", and the bill that completely changes our voting process to an all mail in ballot which greatly increases the risk of voter fraud. These two state-senate districts will, in the coming six weeks, get a taste of what Wisconsin "enjoyed" recently, having lots and lots of people from outside the state taking an intense interest in their local elections: Richard Bamberg's phone has been ringing off the hook - not literally - but three calls last week and then four Thursday have made him a little jaded by the Senate District 11 recall effort. It's just the beginning of what may be hectic days until the Sept. 10 recall election for Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs. "I asked to talk to their supervisor. I asked them to leave me alone," Bamberg said of the most recent caller who asked a few questions and then spoke for several minutes about positive things Morse has done as a lawmaker. "The thing I don't get is I'm not in Morse's district." Christy Le Lait, campaign manager for A Whole Lot of People for John Morse, said the calls aren't coming from its campaign. You Think You Treat Obama Badly? Check Out How New York's Media Elite Treated Him  Quick observation about this anecdote from Katherine Rosman of the Wall Street Journal, spotlighted by Garance Franke-Ruta of The Atlantic: On a warm weekday evening in 2003, a group that can fairly be described as representative of the media elite gathered at one if its favored venues: the garden behind the Manhattan apartment of journalists Tina Brown and Harold Evans. The occasion was the publication of "The Clinton Wars," by Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to President Bill Clinton. Editors from the New Yorker and the New York Times were in attendance along with media figures like Steven Brill and Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner. The guests mingled and sipped wine. Even Clinton showed up, instantly becoming the epicenter of attention. I had not been invited but attended the event as the "plus one" of political columnist Eric Alterman, who wrote about the party in The Guardian on Thursday. At the time, I was a freelance journalist not yet employed by The Wall Street Journal. Eager for an opportunity to find a good story or meet an editor who might give me work, I accepted Alterman's invitation to join him at an event littered with literati. Standing by myself I noticed, on the periphery of the party, a man looking as awkward and out-of-place as I felt. I approached him and introduced myself. He was an Illinois state senator who was running for the U.S. Senate. He was African American, one of a few black people in attendance. We spoke at length about his campaign. He was charismatic in a quiet, solemn way. I told him I wanted to pitch a profile of him to a national magazine. (The magazine later rejected my proposal.) The following year I watched as he gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, and then won his Senate seat that fall. On Tuesday, Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States. But what I will always remember is as I was leaving that party in 2003, I was approached by another guest, an established author. He asked about the man I had been talking to. Sheepishly he told me he didn't know that Obama was a guest at the party, and had asked him to fetch him a drink. In less than six years, Obama has gone from being mistaken for a waiter among the New York media elite, to the president-elect. What a country. We don't know who that established author is. We don't know if this unidentified author was the only person who mistook Obama for a waiter at that party, or whether it occurred with embarrassing frequency. (I am told by African-American and Hispanic friends that they are mistaken for staff in stores and restaurants with infuriating regularity.) But look at the folks mentioned as party attendees in that anecdote: Tina Brown and Harold Evans, Sidney Blumenthal, Steven Brill, Jann Wenner and Eric Alterman. Liberals all, and I'm sure that all of those folks would consider themselves not only not racist, but particularly enlightened to the plight of minorities in modern America. Maybe that party included some of the . . . er . . . conservative Manhattan media elite, but it's pretty unlikely. (It was, after all, for Blumenthal's book.) One of the reasons that discussions about race relations in the United States are so tiresome is that the tone is often, "I'm not racist, but you people are racist, and you people are the problem." Yet here we have a gathering of some of our most prominent and influential media voices, a crowd that undoubtedly would claim to be our society's smartest, most progressive, most enlightened, most open-minded, and most free from prejudice. And a future president of the United States gets mistaken for a waiter.  And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. (Matthew 7:3-5) Why Much Ado About Nothing Is Really Something The next few Jolts will include some movie reviews, because we need something lighter around here. Much Ado About Nothing Over the weekend, Will Allen offered a review on NRO that is just way too thoughtful, rich, and insightful to be the work of an intern. Test the kid for steroids. If I were an actor in Hollywood, I would be exceptionally envious of the Joss Whedon crew. This article gives you a sense of the friendships that Whedon has developed with some members of his casts over the years from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse — shows that ranged from brilliance to interesting, unpredictable failures. Whedon and his gang used to get together at the director's house to read Shakespeare — and from that came this project, a low-budget, filmed-in-twelve-days performance of Much Ado About Nothing. Whether you can enjoy the film — whether you're a Shakespeare connoisseur or whether you just need a summertime date movie — will depend upon how you feel about three Whedon choices: 1) It's in black and white. 2) It's set in the modern day, with automobiles, handguns, and cell phones. 3) Despite the set, prop, and costume choices, the actors recite the original Shakespearean dialogue.  About ten minutes in, I felt a bit of trepidation, as I understood about three-quarters of the dialogue. But it passed, because the cast did what they're supposed to do: They acted. Your eyes, ears, and mind flit over the phrases from Shakespeare's time that you don't recognize, because the meaning is clear from context and delivery. The movie is something of a vindication for fans of the Whedon clique, as almost everybody's really likeable and the director reverse-typecasts a few roles, picking actors whose past work is nothing like what they're called upon to do in this story. He cast Fran Kranz, the rapid-quipping nerd from Dollhouse, as one of the film's romantic leads as Claudio; Nathan Fillion, formerly Captain Mal and currently the romantic lead in Castle, is the hapless, goofy comic-relief cop Dogberry; and Sean Maher, the earnest young doctor/fugitive in Firefly is the villain Don John.  Just about everything works and you're left wondering why Hollywood couldn't make an in-color, non-Shakespearean dialogue romantic comedy that's even half as good. And all those actors you enjoyed on the old Whedon shows? I turns out they're really good, and in many cases, criminally under-employed. Sure, some Whedon alumni, like Fillion, have gone on to sizable success, and others, such as Amy Acker, work pretty regularly. But you watch this and wonder, where has Alexis Denisof been? Reed Diamond? Kranz?   You can't fool me. That's S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Phil Coulson, working undercover. After the credits, Samuel L. Jackson will appear and tell Benedick, "'Get thee a wife.' You think you're the only Shakespeare hero in the world? Benedick, you've just become part of a bigger universe — you just don't know it yet." And then they'll form the Globe Theater Avengers, with Hamlet, Othello, MacBeth, Romeo & Juliet . . . ADDENDUM: Patrick Ruffini: "It's not that Obama couldn't get people to care about the sequester. It's that he didn't call it SequesterNado." NRO Digest — July 22, 2013 Today on National Review Online . . . JOHN FUND: In the president's health-care law, community organizers will use a huge new intrusive federal database to sign people up for subsidies — and even ballots. Obamacare's NSA. THE EDITORS: The Motor City must figure out how to unwind itself. No Bailout for Detroit. MARK STEYN: It took only six decades of progressive governance to bring a city to its knees. The Downfall of Detroit. JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: We should re-charter Detroit as a Hong Kong-like free-enterprise zone, or give people incentives to leave. Remake Detroit, or Empty It. LARRY KUDLOW: In Michigan, unleash free-enterprise tax zones. A Kemp Growth Plan. IAN TUTTLE: George Zimmerman had been personally affected by a spate of burglaries before that tragic night. The Neighborhood Zimmerman Watched. JOHN O'SULLIVAN: President Obama's speech on Friday made good points, but was also logically muddled. What Obama Got Right — and What He Didn't. To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com Why not forward this to a friend? Encourage them to sign up for NR's great free newsletters here. Save 75%... Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. 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