Hey Rock, watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat!
Note to self: Make stronger coffee........
:-)
Posted on 09/12/2013 5:15:44 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
Michael Bloomberg is the mayor of New York and a media mogul who weekends in Bermuda and whose net worth is an estimated $27 billion. Victor Head runs a plumbing business with his brother in Pueblo, Colo.
The two clashed from a distance Tuesday in the Colorado gun recalls, and Head gave the billionaire a righteous drubbing. The defeat of two pro-gun control Colorado state senators in recall elections sends a message that should be heard all the way back on the Upper East Side, and maybe even in Hamilton.
It wasn’t too long ago that Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns was supposed to be the great equalizer in the gun debate. For too long, the National Rifle Association had dominated with its big dollars and its fierce commitment to its cause. Bloomie would change that. Or so we were told.
This was before dozens of mayors quit the organization, some of them explaining that it had dawned on them that the group wasn’t against illegal guns so much as for making more guns illegal. And that was before the Colorado recall. The vote reinforces the failure of gun control in Congress earlier this year, with the extra sting of a direct populist rebuke.
The gun control measures at issue are relatively mild, certainly compared with what gun control advocates truly want. Colorado limited magazines to 15 rounds and imposed background checks on private transactions. Nevertheless, it was a career-ending vote for the two targeted Democrats.
The recallees, state Senate President John Morse of Colorado Springs and Sen. Angela Giron of Pueblo, weren’t fighting on hostile territory. In terms of registration, Morse’s district is split three ways among Democrats, Republicans and independents. Giron’s district is much more favorable, a heavily working class and Latino area that has been a Democratic stronghold forever. President Barack Obama carried it by nearly 20 points in 2012.
It was always thought that Morse, who has alienated all sorts of people besides gun rights advocates, could go down, and he did by 51 percent to49 percent. That Giron would follow him and by a larger margin, 56-44, was shocking.
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz waved off the defeats with the usual explanations. She said the Colorado recalls were the result of “voter suppression, pure and simple,” and pinned the blame on the NRA and the Koch brothers.
It is true that the recall didn’t have Colorado’s accustomed voting by mail and turnout was low, but it was a free and fair election in which people could go to the polls and vote their preference. That’s generally what we consider democracy. Were the circumstances unusual? Well, yeah — no one has ever been recalled before in Colorado.
As for the NRA and the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity, they certainly played in Colorado. The pro-recall forces were still badly outspent, by as much as 8-to-1 according to some estimates. Bloomberg wrote a personal check for the anti-recall side for $350,000.
Victor Head is not writing those kind of checks. Months ago he set out on what has all the hallmarks of a classic story of taking on City Hall.
He told my National Review colleague Charlie Cooke about it the other day. Head, a Pueblo native, was working as an auto mechanic in Wyoming when his father fell ill. He returned home to help his brother run his father’s plumbing business. When they heard that Colorado was going to adopt new gun control measures in the wake of Newtown, Conn., Head initiated what would become the recall with that most fearsome of political weapons — some fliers.
He printed and distributed them to local gun clubs to make people aware of an upcoming town hall meeting for Giron. Head got dozens of people there, but he felt Giron short-circuited the discussion. At the next town hall, he again handed out fliers to build a crowd, but this time Giron ruled that the discussion was to be exclusively about mortgages and barred Head from the room.
Head still got Giron to agree to hold one more town hall before the vote on guns, and this time roughly 1,000 people showed up. If Giron didn’t realize then that she had a populist revolt on her hands, she needed to be in a different line of work — and now she is.
What so got under Head’s skin, the sense that his representative wasn’t listening to him, added fuel to the recalls more broadly. Morse limited debate on the measures in the Senate and turned away people who wanted to testify. It was a notable act of high-handedness in a body that, as Dave Kopel of the Colorado-based Independent Institute points out, usually has limitlesss patience for citizen input. “It’s one thing to lose,” Kopel writes of the gun control debate in the Legislature. “It’s another to thing to lose when you didn’t even have the opportunity to present your reasoning.”
After Tuesday, that’s not a problem. The anti-recall side can make excuses, but it used to be clear-eyed about the stakes. In an interview with The New Republic a little while ago, Giron explained, “For Mayors Against Illegal Guns, if they lose even one of these seats, they might as well fold it up. And they understand that.”
Score one for the plumber.
Ping for a good read!
I just noticed the “Pollutico.”
Made me smile..thanks..nice way to start the morning..
I guess my spell check didn’t catch that ... hehehe ...
This was a HUGE victory for our side.
Hey Rock, watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat!
Note to self: Make stronger coffee........
:-)
;-)
This is surprisingly honest considering the source. Thanks for going to politico so I don’t have to.
right on!!!! and what guy doesn’t try to do some home plumbing so I can identify with this Second Amendment plumber. Obama looks like he has never touched a wrench,
Is Giron the idiot pol who browbeat the woman who tried explaining her desire for a weapon to protect herself against sexual assault?
We need more Americans like this guy.
I’m STILL GLOATING !!!
As a plumber of some 61 years, I am particularly PROUD of
Victor Head who had the temerity to help remove the two anti gun politicians.
God Bless him.
Debbie Wasserman suffers from a Suppressed Brain functioning disorder which is not treatable..
Similar to most of her brothers and sisters in the democratic causes.
A Modern day DAVID against a self indulgent Goliath mayor from New York.
Victor Head now needs to watch his back. Nanny Bloomberg is a wealthy vindictive jerk & his detectives are no doubt already on their way to Colorado.
Whatever it was, and having some usually helps, spending is often overrated.
MAIG might understand that, but I doubt Bloomie cares. He's looking at the White House in 2016. He wanted to go in 2012, but he changed his mind. He'll be a left wing Perot!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.