Conservative activists began signature gathering Friday to recall state Sen. Kevin Priola, who recently switched from Republican to Democrat — and increased the odds his new party will keep control of state government.
Proponents of the recall have until Election Day — Nov. 8 — to gather enough signatures to force a recall vote. The Colorado Secretary of State approved the petition Friday morning.
Advance Colorado Action senior adviser Michael Fields, the registered agent for the recall committee, said that volunteer and paid petitioners plan to start gathering signatures immediately.
Recall backers need to gather 18,291 signatures from registered voters in the new Senate District 13 in order to force the recall election. The new district stretches from east Henderson in Adams County north along U.S. 85 into Greeley. Fields said the effort hopes to gather between 23,000 and 25,000 signatures to ensure it has enough valid supporters.
It’s not immediately clear when a special election for the seat might be held, if backers gather enough valid signatures. The next legislative session begins Jan. 9.
But Sen. Stephen Fenberg, a Boulder Democrat and the Senate president, said he’s still not convinced the new district is the correct setting for the recall effort. He said the state constitution requires signatures be gathered from residents who are eligible to vote for a recalled official’s successor. Greeley residents won’t be able to vote for Priola’s successor until January, he said.
That could be the basis of a future challenge to the validity of submitted signatures, Fenberg suggested.
Democrats are still weighing their options, he said, but they plan to launch a “full defense” of Priola. A committee designed to facilitate that defense — dubbed “Colorado Over Party” — was registered with the state Thursday.
Fields said he expects the signature gathering effort to cost between $250,000 and $300,000. The committee already has about $130,000 for the effort, he said. He has high hopes of a successful recall if his group can pass muster on petitioning. Voters in the new district tend to vote Republican by about plus-four percentage points, according to an analysis by nonpartisan redistricting staff.
“Kevin Priola is totally out-of-step with the voters of Senate District 13 — which is why there is real grassroots enthusiasm for this recall effort,” Fields said. “Priola even threatened to sue to avoid having to face the voters of his new district. If Priola doesn’t want them, they shouldn’t want him.”
Colorado Democratic Party Chair Morgan Carroll called the recall “a political circus designed to distract from the real issues Democrats are delivering on: affordability, public safety, and Colorado’s strong economic recovery.”
“It just confirms that the Colorado Republicans are more interested in punishing independent thinkers than addressing the issues facing Coloradans,” Carroll said. “Kevin knows who he works for — his constituents — and they will see right through this cynical power grab.”
Priola previously said he disagrees with signature gathering needing to go through his old district. He argued the voters from his old district — which leans slightly Democratic — sent him to the Senate in 2020, and they should be the ones to decide if they want to recall him. Reached Friday, Priola deferred to the rebuttal on the petition as his response.
On the petition that will be shown to potential signatories, the recall effort’s organizers accused Priola of being “out of step” with his constituents. The petition makes no mention of Priola’s decision last month to switch his party affiliation; instead, it lists five bills from previous legislative sessions that Priola supported as evidence that he “does not represent the views” of his district.
Those votes include a sweeping harm-reduction measure from 2018 that, among other things, would’ve given cities the authority to open supervised facilities where people could legally use drugs; a bipartisan 2019 bill that made it a misdemeanor to possess up to 4 grams of most illicit substances; a 2021 bill that Priola and one other Republican co-sponsored, alongside dozens of Democrats, that “corrected” mill tax levies; a 2019 bill that, with voter approval, would’ve allowed the state to keep its excess revenue, instead of refunding it to residents, for schools and road projects; and the $5.4 billion transportation package that raised tax fees to improve roads and address pollution.
The petition also includes Priola’s response to those allegations. He cast the recall effort as “personal and political retribution” for his decision to leave the Republican Party and that it was being driven by “special interests with deep pockets.” He noted that the votes listed by the effort’s supporters were old, and he called the description of those votes “false and extremely misleading.”
“These hyper-partisan political insiders are wasting hundreds of thousands of your taxpayer money on a special election to punish me for serving you as an independent voice,” he wrote.
Priola has two years left in his term and is term-limited, meaning he wouldn’t need to face voters in his new district if the recall effort deflates.
Priola switched parties in August over concerns about climate change and lack of Republican reaction to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection and claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. His conversion also increases the chances of Democrats keeping control of the Senate in a year when Republicans hoped to regain power.
He promised it wouldn’t change the way he votes — particularly to protect gun rights and oppose abortion — but that he wants Democrats in control of the chamber.
“Even if there will continue to be issues that I disagree with the Democratic Party on,” Priola wrote, “there is too much at stake right now for Republicans to be in charge.”
