By JACK HEALY
COLORADO SPRINGS — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and the billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad have each donated hundreds of thousands of dollars. The National Rifle Association is buying political advertisements. New York’s junior senator sent a fund-raising e-mail. And the election has attracted news coverage from as far away as Sweden.
All this over a homegrown campaign to oust two Democratic state senators who provided crucial support for a package of strict new state gun controllaws. As the recall elections — the first of their kind in Colorado’s history — draw closer, the race has swelled from a local scuffle into a proxy battle in the nation’s wrenching fight over gun control.
Over all, both sides have dedicated about $2 million to the campaigns, most of it in support of the two senators: John Morse, the president of the Colorado Senate, and Angela Giron, who represents the Southern Colorado city of Pueblo. That might not seem large compared with the multimillion-dollar governors’ races that can be commonplace across the country these days. But the money and the attention have transformed an off-year campaign that started with homemade signs and volunteers collecting signatures in grocery store parking lots.
Voters say they are being bombarded with telephone calls and pamphlets, radio and television commercials. Each day seems to bring a new procedural battle: over the language on the recall ballot, how the vote will be conducted or which candidates will appear as possible replacements. Mr. Morse, who represents Colorado Springs, and Ms. Giron each have one Republican challenger on the ballot.
Mr. Bloomberg, who has bankrolled other gun-control supporters across the country, recently contributed $350,000 to fight the recall efforts. Mr. Broad gave $250,000. Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, has stepped in on behalf of Ms. Giron, in particular, enlisting support through her Off the Sidelines political action committee.
Mr. Bloomberg “has said he is going to support officials across the country who are willing to stand up to the N.R.A. and Washington gun lobby to support sane gun laws that will keep guns out of the hands of criminals,” Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for the mayor, said in an e-mail. “These two senators did that.”
The N.R.A. has also jumped into the Sept. 10 race, contributing nearly $109,000 for mailings and radio, cable and online ads, according to campaign finance records.
The influx of money has allowed each side to claim that its opponents are being manipulated by outside interests. One advertisement by the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners said Mr. Morse was taking “marching orders” from the “billionaire playboy” Mr. Bloomberg. A fund-raising e-mail from Senator Gillibrand called the election “a wrongful recall by the N.R.A.”
Colorado’s vote is being watched closely around the nation as a litmus test of how voters respond to new gun measures in a swing state with an ingrained culture of hunting, sport shooting and gun ownership.
“There’s symbolic importance to both sides,” said Eric Sondermann, a political analyst in Denver. “If they’re recalled, it would be interpreted as a rejection of the gun control agenda, a rejection of what Colorado passed. If these two prevail, then maybe that’s one more nick in the armor of the N.R.A. and the gun advocates.”
To Democrats, the recall offers a chance to defend what they have called sensible and moderate gun regulations: specifically, requiring background checks on private gun sales and limiting ammunition magazines to 15 rounds. To firearms advocates, the vote is a way to demonstrate the political consequences of supporting gun control.
“The peasants have grabbed ahold of their pitchforks and torches,” said Dudley Brown, the executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners.
The passions on display in the recall effort also represent a widening rift in the state’s identity, some analysts say, between the Colorado of F-150s, hunting trips and rural towns, and the Colorado of Subarus, ski passes and downtown lofts.
This year, with Democrats’ controlling the legislature and governor’s mansion, they not only passed new gun control laws, but also laws allowing people living in the country illegally to pay in-state tuition, creating new green-energy requirements for rural electric cooperatives and approving civil unions for same-sex couples.
In Northern Colorado, some counties are so frustrated with the state’s trajectory that they will vote this fall on whether to secede and form their own state.
“A decision needs to be made in this state,” said Jon Caldara, the president of the Independence Institute, a libertarian research group in Colorado. “Are we going to be an urban-centric state where urbanites choose what happens, or will this be a state like Colorado has traditionally been, where we have the liberty and freedom for different communities to do different things?”
Still a Quinnipiac University poll last month found that while a majority of Colorado voters opposed the package of new gun laws, they also disliked the recall. The survey of 1,184 registered Colorado voters found that, by double-digit margins, they thought neither Ms. Giron nor Mr. Morse should be removed. By a nearly 30-point margin, those surveyed opposed the idea of the recall, saying disappointed voters should wait until the next regular election.
“Recall elections are left for someone who’s done something criminal or unethical,” said Jackie Haines-Bobbitt, a retired teacher in Colorado Springs, who calls herself a “hard-core Democrat.” “This is a huge waste of money. That’s not how the system works.”
The poll did not specifically survey the two recall districts in Colorado Springs and Pueblo. In those two, the outcome of the races is anyone’s guess.
Ms. Giron’s district leans Democratic. Mr. Morse’s is more evenly divided, making him more vulnerable.
With the outcome likely to be decided by a few thousand people in each Senate district, the campaigns are trying to reach every voter they can, making phone calls and going door to door. Both sides are optimistic, but say the result is likely to hinge on who can turn out more supporters.
“We have a very good chance of winning this recall,” said Tamra Farah, coordinator of the campaign to recall Mr. Morse.
Each afternoon, Mr. Morse sets out with a clipboard, ballot applications and pamphlets, to ring doorbells here in Colorado Springs and make the case why he should not be voted out of office. He guessed he had knocked on 1,200 to 1,500 doors in total.
“This is what does it,” he said. “Yeah, there are TV commercials and mail pieces. But nothing takes the place of showing up at someone’s door and having a conversation.”
Mr. Morse threaded his way through a neighborhood where he once attended Divine Redeemer Catholic School, delivering a pitch about the recall and gun control with the well-worn familiarity of a touring stage actor.
“Hi,” he said, as another door opened. “I’m State Senator John Morse.”
His roster of addresses consisted of supporters and undecided voters, so he got mostly hugs and handshakes. But as he wandered down Dale Street, a gray-haired man hustled out of his backyard, trowel in hand, to confront Mr. Morse. He accused Mr. Morse of jamming through the gun control laws and of silencing the opposition during the emotional debate over gun control after the mass shootings in Aurora and in Newtown, Conn.
After a few heated minutes, the man, who declined to give his name, walked back inside, past a bright green lawn sign that read, “Recall Morse.”
