FACT CHECK: Gardner Still Desperately Greenwashing His Toxic Environmental Record, Uses *The Only* Paper That Backed Him To Deceive Coloradans

FACT: Hickenlooper was endorsed by The Denver Post, Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Pueblo Chieftain, Vail Daily, Durango Herald, Colorado Springs Independent, Aurora Sentinel, Greeley Tribune, El Semanario, & Boulder Weekly

Denver, CO - In a desperate final push, Senator Cory Gardner is up with yet *another* deceiving ad trying to greenwash his toxic environmental record that earned him a failing 11% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters and pulls quotes from the *only* newspaper that endorsed him. Gardner’s unwavering support for President Trump, selling out of our public lands, and failure to stand up for Colorado are among a litany of  reasons multiple newspapers have flipped their 2014 endorsements, resulting in John Hickenlooper racking up support from ten major outlets.

“Senator Cory Gardner’s deceptive greenwashing ads can’t hide his toxic environmental record and failure to stand up for Coloradans, and citing the lone news outlet that blindly supports him won’t help,” said Colorado Democratic Party spokesperson Eli Rosen. “Cory Gardner is no JFK, and Coloradans aren’t fooled by yet another cheesy greenwashing ad that ignores his real record of selling out our public lands and clear air to corporate polluters. Cory Gardner has nothing to run on because he sold Colorado out to Donald Trump and broke his promise to stand up to his party, and Coloradans are voting in record numbers to boot him out.” 

This latest greenwashing ad comes after Gardner’s last one, “Both Parties,” was shredded for featuring two registered Republicans -- a Parks official who was ousted for corruption and the founder of a “hollow shell” sham organization that was started by Gardner’s Big Oil allies on taxpayer time, leading to an ethics complaint for doing political work on the people’s dime. Leading environmental groups like the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, and the NRDC Action Fund have all endorsed Hickenlooper. 

Here are the facts that Gardner willfully leaves out of his latest ad: 

TEN MAJOR NEWSPAPERS ENDORSE HICK, NOT GARDNER

• Newspapers across the state have almost unanimously thrown their support behind Hickenlooper, often citing his strong environmental credentials — and Gardner’s lack thereof — and Gardner's unwavering allegiance to Trump:
  
  • Denver Post: “For eight years, Gov. John Hickenlooper threaded the needle between working hard to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Colorado as part of a global effort to slow global warming and lessen the effects of climate change on vulnerable regions.”
    
  • Vail Daily: “Gardner also wants you to believe that he’s a champion of public lands, but the truth is that he hasn’t gotten behind the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy Act that passed the House last fall, despite its broad bipartisan support.”
    
  • Durango Herald: “...Hickenlooper would be a leader in moving the country toward more renewable fuels and conservation…”
    
  • Grand Junction Daily Sentinel: “[Hickenlooper] brought the oil and gas industry and environmental groups to the table to hash out the nation’s first methane-capture regulations.”
    
  • Pueblo Chieftain: “We find Gardner’s support of the Trump administration’s disastrous four years in office infinitely more egregious.”
    
  • Colorado Springs Independent: “Of course, Gardner loyally has supported Trump’s agenda the past four years.”
    
  • Aurora Sentinel: “Since elected, Gardner has repeatedly backed Trump’s Republican Party when it was wildly wrong on managing the pandemic, wrong on health care, wrong on gun control, wrong on immigration, wrong on global warming...wrong on endless issues that matter deeply to all of Colorado.”
    
  • Greeley Tribune: “In his time as Senator, Gardner has not adequately made himself available for his constituents...As such, failure to provide that accountability represents to us a failure at the most basic level of public service.”

GARDNER SOLD OUT COLORADO’S PUBLIC LANDS

• A rubber stamp for Trump’s toxic environmental agenda, Gardner has a failing 11% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters and earned a spot on their notorious “Dirty Dozen” list of most anti-environmental lawmakers.
  
• Gardner refuses to support the bipartisan House-passed CORE Act, a decade-in-the-making collaborative wilderness bill to protect 400,000 acres of public land. Gardner is stonewalling the bill and even decried the legislation as “a partisan, political tool,” despite widespread grassroots support.
  
• Gardner voted to virtually eliminate funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and supported Trump’s attempt to cut $16 million from the public lands program in 2018.
  
• Gardner voted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling for the first time ever.

• Gardner pro-polluter votes include letting coal mines off the hook for stream pollution and to repeal methane emissions limits modeled after Colorado’s own — that Hickenlooper spearheaded. 

GARDNER DIDN’T SECURE SPACE COMMAND, BUT DID RAID MILLIONS FROM COLORADO MILITARY BASES FOR TRUMP

• In May, CPR reported the Trump administration “said it was completely restarting the search for a permanent home for Space Command” and no decision will be made on the permanent home until after the election.

• Gardner voted three times to let Trump raid military construction funding for his border wall and broke his promise to protect funding for Colorado’s bases as Peterson Air Force Base lost $8 million. Gardner apparently didn’t lift a finger to restore the funding.
  
• Twelve Republican senators broke with their party to oppose Trump’s sham border wall national emergency that cost Colorado funding -- but not Gardner.

BLM MOVE “DISAPPOINTMENT”

• The BLM’s relocation to Grand Junction was met with disappointment among community leaders and concerns the city was left with nothing more than “a figurehead headquarters” with far fewer jobs than promised.
  

• Gardner refused to speak out against Trump’s anti-public lands head of the Bureau of Land Management, William Perry Pendley, despite his support for selling off public lands and his long history of climate science denial and xenophobia and even after a judge ruled Pendley was illegally running the agency without Senate confirmation.
  
• Gardner has touted the BLM’s move to Grand Junction on the campaign trail, but even The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel has come out against Trump’s pick to head the agency.
  

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