Colorado’s season of failed attempts to recall elected Democrats ended Friday when organizers seeking to oust state Senate President Leroy Garcia handed in a tiny fraction of the signatures they needed to force a recall election.

“We’re going in blind. We don’t know what the count’s going to come to,” recall organizer Dave DeCenzo said ahead of arriving at the Secretary of State’s Office.

His group needed 13,506 valid signatures from registered District 3 voters to put a recall election on the ballot this winter. DeCenzo and one other man rolled into Denver on Friday afternoon with two Budweiser boxes that DeCenzo said contained no more than 120 signatures.

Later on Friday, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said that the petitioners had in fact handed in just four signatures.

“Therefore the petition is insufficient,” she tweeted.

DeCenzo said he was withholding many other signatures “out of fear of doxxing” — that people’s personal information would be used to harass them — but did not provide any evidence that those other signatures exist.

DeCenzo, an engineer and Pueblo City Council candidate, had sounded more optimistic in an interview with The Denver Post earlier this week. He had told reporters for days that he wasn’t sure whether he had enough signatures because he didn’t have time to count them.

Proponents for the petition to recall @Leroy_Garcia submitted signatures for review earlier today. The petition contained 4 signatures. To be sufficient, 13,506 valid signatures are required. Therefore the petition is insufficient. #copolitics #coleg — Colorado Sec. of State (@COSecofState) October 18, 2019

In a statement, Garcia said, “In the last 60 days, we spoke to tens of thousands of Puebloans. Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters told me they didn’t want this. They know I’m working every day and getting results for Pueblo. Now, we can get back to the business I was elected to do, to work for all of my constituents and focus on solving problems and not playing politics.”

This was last recall attempt standing, after a summer of failed ones. Organizers tried but could not collect enough signatures to initiate recall votes of four other Democrats: Gov. Jared Polis, state Sens. Brittany Pettersen and Pete Lee, and state Rep. Tom Sullivan.

The organizers’ criticisms of these politicians centered around their support for 2019 bills including a rewrite of oil and gas regulations, Colorado’s joining of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and a red flag gun law. Notably, Garcia broke from his party by voting against the red flag bill.

A Pueblo native and former Marine, Garcia is known for his hands-off leadership style in the Senate. He doesn’t twist arms and is almost never a public face for any controversial piece of legislation. His GOP counterparts in the Senate say they like him and appreciate that he is less partisan than some of his colleagues. Garcia is fiercely loyal to his hometown and easily won re-election in 2018, when the GOP didn’t even run a candidate against him.

But he was a recall target nevertheless, in large part because he, like other targets this year, serves in what’s widely considered a swing district. Democrats control both chambers of the legislature and control the governor’s office, and the recent recall attempts have represented, among other things, an attempt by Republicans to reclaim some measure of power by going after theoretically vulnerable politicians.

It speaks to Garcia’s perceived vulnerability that his predecessor, Angela Giron, was recalled in 2013. Recallers targeted Garcia, too, that year, but backed off after he broke from his party and voter against two gun bills.

It is extremely difficult to recall a state legislator. Since Colorado’s Giron and John Morse were recalled six years ago, only one other state official in the United States has been recalled.

Garcia dismissed the recall efforts as a broad attempt to undo fair election results.

“The people of Colorado spoke loud and clear,” Morgan Carroll, chair of the Colorado Democratic Party, said in a statement, “and sent a message to the sore losers and con artists running these sham recalls — they don’t want their 2018 decisions to be overturned.”

Updated 2 p.m. Oct. 18, 2019 The original headline on this story, which referred to the percentage of necessary signatures turned in as part of the Leroy Garcia recall effort, was corrected due to a mathematical mistake.