December 12, 2013 10:34 AM UTC

Giron Recall Was Less About Guns, More About...Giron

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• by: Colorado Pols

We've written many times in this space that the Sept. 10 recall elections for Sen. John Morse and Sen. Angela Giron were two very different elections with very different rationales. Whatever the reasons, Democrats just didn't really like Giron, which had more to do with the massive margin in her recall election than anything about gun control. And as Fox 31's Eli Stokols reports, results from a recent focus group indicate exactly what we have said here before:

But a recently conducted focus group, paid for by a coalition of pro-gun control groups, gives greater clarity to what happened in Pueblo, where former Sen. Angela Giron lost a solidly Democratic district by a 20-point margin.

The report, which FOX31 Denver has obtained, confirms what many political observers have surmised already: that it wasn’t the gun laws alone that cost Giron her seat, but a deep-seated dislike for and mistrust of the lawmaker herself among many Democrats in her hometown…

…People in the two focus groups — men and women, all Democrats (the party holds roughly a 15-point advantage in Senate District 3) — explained that they believed that Giron “went Denver” and lost touch with her constituents, taking orders instead from party bosses around the Capitol.

Moreover, some women surveyed said they took additional umbrage at Giron’s explanation that she voted for certain bills, despite serious opposition from parts of her district, because she’s “a strong Latina.”

Giron certainly has a vocal group of supporters, but not enough to change the perception she created about herself in her short time in the state senate. The good news for Democrats — and the sobering news for gun advocates who celebrated the Giron recall — is that Democrats will almost certainly retake SD-3 in 2014:

The focus group voters said they hardly know anything about Republican George Rivera, who was the only successor candidate on the recall ballot and will face a reelection challenge from Democratic state Rep. Leroy Garcia, who opposed the gun control bills, next year.

The recall wasn’t about Rivera, voters said. It was about Giron.

“There’s not always someone you want to vote for,” one respondent said. “But there’s always someone you want to vote against.”