October 01, 2025 01:10 PM UTC

Another Stupid Republican Recall Sputters Out

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Cassandra Ballard reports for the Aurora Sentinel, Aurora’s headline-hoarding far-right city councillor Danielle Jurnisky’s latest cry for attention, a recall campaign she initiated against Arapahoe County District Attorney Amy Padden, will not move forward after Jurinsky and her usual-suspect GOP attorney Suzanne Taheri informed the Secretary of State that they don’t have the signatures:

Aurora Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky and the rest of the recall committee had about two months to collect 75,875 valid signatures. Petition drive experts said another 30% more signatures were likely needed to ensure enough valid signatures can be approved by election officials.

Jurinsky was not immediately available for comment. The case has drawn accusations that the effort by Jurinsky was one of personal vendettas and political grandstanding…

“I understand that the recall attempt against me has failed because its proponents did not obtain the signatures to force an expensive and unfounded recall election,” Padden said in a statement. “The voters of Arapahoe County overwhelmingly elected me to lead the 18th Judicial District in a new direction, yet the petition proponents sought to undermine the will of the voters. Voters have recognized the important work that my office has been doing since January 2025 and plainly saw that this recall attempt was nothing more than partisan politics.

“I look forward to continuing to serve as the District Attorney for everyone in Arapahoe County and will continue to make our communities safer, stand up for victims, and seek justice for all.”

Jurinsky’s stated reasons for launching the recall campaign against DA Padden boiled down to the usual “Democrats are soft on crime” boilerplate saturating the media today, citing in particular a case in which a mentally ill offender was found incompetent under state law and ordered into mental health treatment instead of criminal trial. That case, in which DA Padden followed the same law that the Weld County DA later accused of forcing the release of another violent offender, backfired on (most) Republicans when they realized leading GOP gubernatorial candidate Barb Kirkmeyer voted for the bill along with every Republican in the Colorado Senate.

Once a feared tool of too-easy political retribution after two Democratic Colorado Senators were recalled and a third forced out under threat in 2013, recalls in our state devolved into something of a joke as multiple attempts to recall Gov. Jared Polis fizzled out while fleecing donors for considerable sums of money. Other recalls targeting Secretary of State Jena Griswold and now-Sen. Tom Sullivan met similar fates. After Sen. Kevin Priola defected from the Republican Party, top Republican activist Michael Fields swore revenge with a recall that never materialized. In the end, the investment required for a successful recall between regular elections just doesn’t make strategic sense, and has the effect of siphoning resources and energy away from the campaigns that matter.

As for Jurinsky, as readers know, she’s kind of nuts as her normal disposition, and leaping half-baked into a recall campaign she couldn’t close the deal on could be considered par for the marginal course. What we can say is that Jurinsky makes the thin pretense of “nonpartisan” city councils and school boards even thinner with her partisan antics, enough that even hard-boiled Republican operatives like Suzanne Taheri should think twice about filing Jurinsky’s paperwork.

Overall, we’re glad to see that recalls have faded as a tool of political retribution in Colorado, since they should be reserved for cases of bonafide misconduct–or at least a profound mismatch between an official’s agenda and the majority of voters as proved the case in the 2015 Jefferson County school board recall. This latest failed Republican recall like so many before it had no real community support, just a vengeful abuse of the process–and that’s why it failed.