WASHINGTON — The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and Colorado Democrats have defeated yet another round of desperate, antidemocratic recall efforts by radical Republicans — preventing petitions targeting Senators Pete Lee (SD-11) and Brittany Pettersen (SD-22) from moving forward onto the ballot.
“If Colorado Republicans want to keep wasting their time on these Sisyphean recall attempts, we’ll gladly keep batting them down,” said DLCC press secretary Matt Harringer. “Senators Pete Lee and Brittany Pettersen are committed public servants who will continue fighting for their constituents to move Colorado forward.”
Leveraging experience from similar recall attempts in Nevada, the DLCC invested in a grassroots decline-to-sign campaign with state partners that knocked on doors across the two districts, supported by digital and mail campaigns. Organizers followed the playbook that successfully defended state Representative Tom Sullivan from a recall earlier this summer.
News of Republicans’ latest abject failure comes on the heels of the defeat of the recall targeting Governor Jared Polis, which also flopped with Colorado voters. The flurry of baseless recalls has divided state Republicans while drawing the support of radical right-wing groups like the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners and the Proud Boys.
The partisan, antidemocratic abuse of the state’s recall system is merely the latest antic of a party that cannot come to terms with its landslide loss last year. Governor Polis won election by over ten points as Democrats flipped the state Senate and grew their majority in the House, winning complete control of the Colorado government for the first time since 2014.
Undeterred by their growing list of failures, right-wing radicals and their Republican allies recently launched a fifth recall against Senate President Leroy Garcia (SD-3), who won reelection last year with nearly 75% of the vote. The DLCC and state partners on the ground are working to prevent the recall from reaching the ballot and are prepared to fight it at every step if it moves forward.
“These radical Republicans can’t win at the ballot box, so they’re playing political games,” Harringer said. “It only serves to tarnish their already suffering reputation in Colorado and will hurt GOP candidates at every level of the ballot next November.”
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