Matthew Staver for The New York Times
A hotly contested vote connected to gun control became a proxy battle, attracting money and support from around the nation.
COLORADO SPRINGS — Two Colorado Democrats who provided crucial support for a package of state gun laws were voted out of office on Tuesday in special elections seen as a test of whether swing-state voters would accept gun restrictions after mass shootings at a Colorado movie theater and a Connecticut elementary school.
The vote, which came five months after the United States Senate defeated several gun restrictions, handed another loss to gun-control supporters and gave moderate lawmakers across the country a warning about the political risks of voting for tougher gun laws.
The immediate effect of the recalls — the first of their kind in Colorado — was to remove two state senators, Angela Giron of Pueblo and John Morse of Colorado Springs, and replace them with Republicans.
Although the election was confined to two small districts in Southern Colorado and does not repeal Colorado's gun laws or change partisan control of the General Assembly, both sides spent heavily and campaigned fiercely, fighting to prevail in what analysts called a proxy battle between gun-control advocates and the National Rifle Association.
In a spirited concession speech, Mr. Morse, who lost the vote by just two percentage points, called the loss of his seat "purely symbolic" and defended the record of the last legislative session as "phenomenal."
"You're not judged by how you got knocked down but how you got back up," he said.
Mr. Morse, who was also the Senate president, will be replaced by his challenger on the ballot, Bernie Herpin, a Republican former city councilman from Colorado Springs.
For advocates on both sides, the stakes in Tuesday's elections were far bigger than the fates of two state politicians. As money and national attention poured into Colorado, a state of hunters that has been stained by two mass shootings, the races became a symbol of the nation's bitter fight over gun control, with one side bolstered by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and the other by the National Rifle Association.
While both sides campaigned vigorously, knocking on doors, holding rallies and driving voters to the polls, gun-control advocates far outspent their opponents. A range of philanthropists, liberal political groups, unions and activists raised a total of $3 million to defend Mr. Morse and Ms. Giron. Mr. Bloomberg personally gave $350,000.
It was not enough to help Mr. Morse overcome the conservative outrage that erupted this winter as Colorado's Democratic-controlled statehouse passed several gun laws over near-unanimous opposition from Republicans and Second Amendment advocates. Among other things, the new laws require background checks for private gun sales and limit ammunition magazines to 15 rounds.
Mr. Morse's hand was on the tiller during much of that debate. A former police chief, he said he found himself in a position of not just rounding up votes, but actually explaining the mechanics of guns to fellow Democrats. He brought a magazine to show his colleagues how it worked. In an emotional speech in March, as the debate reached its peak, Mr. Morse stood on the Senate floor and spoke of gun violence and "cleansing a sickness from our souls."
His opponents pounced on the remark, framing it as a sign of Mr. Morse's disregard for his gun-owning constituents, as well as a symptom of the widening gap between Colorado's urban Democrats and its rural Republicans.
Mr. Morse represented a slice of Colorado Springs that straddles those fault lines. His district is closely split among Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters. And on Tuesday, despite huge voter-turnout drives and Obama-style neighborhood canvassing, more of Mr. Morse's opponents showed up to cast him out.
The passions ignited by the vote were on full display on Tuesday, as opposing sides lined up side by side outside polling places here in Colorado's second-largest city. They spoke of knowing survivors of the mass shooting inside the Century 16 theater in Aurora, Colo. Two of Mr. Morse's sisters held up a banner, and complained that their brother's opponents were twisting his record and his words in bitter attack ads.
A few feet away stood Steven Martin, 53, a recall supporter with a Beretta handgun holstered on his hip.
"It's a deterrent," he said. "I love my country."
The recall movement drew support from as far away as New York and California. Organizers say it began locally, in living rooms and backyards, as a response to new gun-control laws that were the marquee achievements of Colorado's new Democratic majorities.
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