After two Colorado lawmakers who supported strict new gun-control laws were voted out of office in a special recall election last year, the National Rifle Association and its allies celebrated their huge win in the battle over gun laws in state capitols. But that particular victory did not last.
Even as Coloradans elected a Republican senator for the first time in a dozen years and handed Republicans control of one chamber of the state legislature, voters did an abrupt about-face when it came to the recalls. The two pro-gun Republicans elected during the recalls were handily beaten this month by Democratic candidates — one of whom once worked for the gun-control group founded by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City.
“It was vindicating,” said Angela Giron, who lost her State Senate seat in the old steel town of Pueblo in the September 2013 recalls, which also took down the Democratic president of Colorado’s Senate, John Morse.
Analysts said the whipsawing results were a lesson in how turnout can vastly change the landscape of the politics in this state, which has an independent streak. The dynamic seems to have empowered conservatives in the low-turnout recall vote last year, but rewarded Democrats this month in a midterm election in which mail-in ballots and a contested Senate race helped Colorado defy a nationwide pattern of sagging voter participation.
[For more of this story, written by Jack Healy, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11...fect-of-turnout.html]
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