{"id":38496,"date":"2022-09-09T14:22:28","date_gmt":"2022-09-09T20:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-recall-effort-okd-for-state-senator-who-quit-gop\/"},"modified":"2022-09-09T20:22:28","modified_gmt":"2022-09-09T20:22:28","slug":"colorado-recall-effort-okd-for-state-senator-who-quit-gop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-recall-effort-okd-for-state-senator-who-quit-gop\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado recall effort OK\u2019d for state senator who quit GOP"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Colorado
Colorado Republican Sen. Kevin Priola, left, Democratic House Speaker KC Becker, center, and Democratic Sen. Lois Court discuss a proposed ballot initiative to let the state keep excess tax revenue in Denver on March 20, 2019. A Colorado recall campaign is targeting Priola, who left the GOP and joined the Democratic Party in September 2022, saying he was disgusted with Republicans' widespread embrace of 2020 election conspiracies. (Jim Anderson\/Associated Press file)<\/span>Jim Anderson<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

DENVER \u2013 Backers of a campaign targeting a Colorado lawmaker who left the GOP and joined the Democratic Party, citing the Republican Party\u2019s embrace of discredited 2020 election conspiracies, received the go-ahead Friday to collect voter signatures in their bid to trigger a recall election.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s Secretary of State\u2019s Office said it had approved a recall petition targeting state Sen. Kevin Priola, whose term representing a suburban Denver district ends in 2025. Petitioners have until Nov. 8 to collect enough signatures to force an eventual recall vote.<\/p>\n

Priola infuriated Republicans when he announced his party switch in August<\/a>, saying he was horrified by the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and had waited in vain for his party to repudiate it as well as former President Donald Trump, who continues to insist the 2020 presidential election was stolen.<\/p>\n

Numerous assertions that the presidential election was stolen have been proved false<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Priola also rebuked what he called the GOP\u2019s refusal to take climate change seriously<\/a>. \u201cToday, my Republican colleagues would rather deny the existence of human-caused climate change than take action,\u201d he wrote in a letter announcing his decision.<\/p>\n

Priola\u2019s move enhanced Democrats\u2019 prospects for retaining a majority in Colorado\u2019s Senate in the November midterm elections. The party holds a comfortable majority in the House. But the recall drive is in a new district assigned to Priola that\u2019s become more conservative because of last year\u2019s redistricting process.<\/p>\n

Signature-gatherers hit the streets Friday, and the recall campaign already has raised $130,000, said Michael Fields, who heads the recall committee and is president of the conservative group Advance Colorado Institute. Fields cited Priola\u2019s past votes with Democrats, especially on state tax policy, as well as what he called Priola\u2019s betrayal of the Republican voters who elected him to office.<\/p>\n

\u201cConservative Republicans voted for him to be a conservative leader in the Senate,\u201d Fields said.<\/p>\n

Priola did not immediately respond to telephone and email requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Priola is in his second term as a state senator and is not up for re-election in November. The campaign needs signatures equal to at least 25% of the number of votes cast in the district in the last election to force a vote.<\/p>\n

Fields said any recall vote, if certified by the Secretary of State\u2019s Office, could be held in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colorado Republican Sen. Kevin Priola, left, Democratic House Speaker KC Becker, center, and Democratic Sen. Lois Court discuss a proposed ballot initiative to let the state keep excess tax revenue in Denver on March 20, 2019. A Colorado recall campaign is targeting Priola, who left the GOP and joined the Democratic Party in September 2022, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1509],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-38496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-state-elections"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38496"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=38496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}