House Republicans attempted to challenge the authority of Speaker of the House Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, D-Boulder, on Wednesday morning. It was a procedural move that long-time Capitol observers said they’d never seen before.

The move came during the reading of the previous day’s House Journal. The Tuesday journal contained the report of the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee from its Monday marathon hearing.

Monday’s hearing featured six firearms bills, several designed to repeal 2013 laws on gun control. All six bills died largely along party-line votes, in a hearing that lasted more than 11 hours and ended just after 1 a.m. on Tuesday.

At the center of Wednesday’s fight: a bill to repeal the 2013 law limiting the size of ammunition magazines. Senate Bill 15-175 would have repealed the 15-round limit on magazines. The bill failed on a party-line 7-6 vote, but Republicans believe that it has enough Democratic votes in the full House to pass.

A committee’s actions are codified once the Speaker approves the committee’s report and enters them into the House journal. The reading of the journal is one of the routine actions taken by the House every morning.

But it wasn’t routine on Wednesday. That’s when Rep. Kim Ransom, R-Littleton, attempted to “blast” SB 175 out of the committee, by asking for the journal to be amended to show the bill passed. Hullinghorst ruled her request out of order, and that prompted Rep. Justin Everett, R-Littleton, to appeal her decision and ask for a roll call vote on the Ransom motion.

The Everett request put the House into a standstill, while Democrats checked the rules to find out if such a request is allowed. But Democrats considered it a challenge to the Speaker’s authority, one they later referred to in a press release as a “coup, covered with the fingerprints of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, an extremist special interest group that has clearly taken control of House GOP floor strategy.”

As it turned out, the House rules do not address such a move, and in those cases, Hullinghorst said, it’s up to the speaker to decide. She ruled the motion out of order, stating her decision is “that we will always, in this body under my rule of order, consider the action of a committee and the vote of a committee as final.”

Everett reiterated his request for a roll call vote, and the vote failed, 26-39, with five Republicans voting with the Democrats. Those who voted in favor of the motion included the House’s minority leadership.

House Majority Leader Crisanta Duran, D-Denver, came to the microphone moments later to scold the Republicans, and her voice shook with tears as she spoke.

“We come from rural and urban areas,” she said. “We have Republican and Democrat affiliations. But above all what is so beautiful about the respect for this institution and the respect for this body is that we have a democracy, and through that democracy, leadership is elected. We have rules in place that we follow and I have never seen this happen in all my time down here. It is unbelievable, it is disrespectful and I hope we can go forward and think about decorum and respect for this institution and respect for democracy moving forward.”

Duran also complimented the five Republicans who voted with the Democrats: Reps. J. Paul Brown, R-Ignacio; Tim Dore, R-Elizabeth; Jon Keyser, R-Morrison; Bob Rankin, R-Carbondale; and Yeulin Willett, R-Grand Junction.

After the vote, Everett told The Colorado Statesman that the idea came earlier in the session. He explained there had been a question about a member’s vote in a committee, and Republicans researched how they could get that vote changed in the full House.

Everett pointed out the State Affairs Committee has now killed two bills on the magazine limits, but the time has come for a full debate on the issue on the House floor, he said. “It’s basic freedom of speech. Citizens need to be heard, and the whole body needs to deliberate this, not just the ‘kill committee.’” Everett said he knows there are Democrats who would vote for the bill, so Republicans tried to “blast” it out of committee, to give it the fair hearing on the House floor, “instead of playing political tricks.”

He acknowledged that challenging the speaker’s authority is a risky move, given that she has the authority to route it to the committee. “I understand procedures, however, it’s almost a one-person rule in the House that’s dampening the voice of the citizens who have spoken in [recall] elections…The speaker with her iron fists chose to clamp down and not allow a simple amendment to the journal. She’s made her voice heard on where she stands on firearms,” and doesn’t let the voices in her own caucus be heard who would support the repeal. “That’s very unfortunate. It’s destroys the process and hurts our democracy.”

Within the hour, RMGO had posted the vote to its Facebook page, asking its readers to check on how their representatives voted, stating the votes were either pro-gun or anti-gun.

At least one Republican who voted in favor of the Ransom/Everett motion expressed frustration on how the debate was framed.

Rep. Jon Becker, R-Fort Morgan, told The Statesman that while he voted with the majority of the Republican caucus, “I have the utmost confidence and respect in the speaker” who he said has done a great job.

Becker said he voted in favor of the motion because he believes the full House should have the conversation about the magazine limits. He hoped the rules would be a way to bring that debate to the chamber.

But the vote quickly turned into something that he didn’t support. “I understand the vote has now turned into two different directions: you’re either against Speaker Hullinghorst or you’re against guns. I’m not against either one,” Becker said. “I’m for the procedure; this was a rule we could use to see if we could have a discussion about magazines on the floor. I support guns whole-heartedly, but I respect Speaker Hullinghorst greatly.”

— Marianne@coloradostatesman.com