IN THE NEWS: Coloradans Call on Gardner to Oppose Trump’s Supreme Court Nomination

Colorado Sentinel: “The duplicity of their argument to rush through the appointment of Judge Amy Coney Barrett is raw and repugnant”

Over 17,000 Coloradans petition Gardner to oppose Barrett’s nomination

Sen. Bennet: Rushing this Supreme Court nomination is “institutional arson"

Denver, CO - As Senate Republicans rush the lifetime appointment of President Trump’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Coloradans across the state are calling on Senator Cory Gardner to stand up to Trump and reject Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination. Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountain, the Colorado AFL-CIO, and the Colorado Sierra Club collected over 17,000 signatures to demand that Gardner oppose the “sham” nomination of Barrett as she poses a direct threat to our health care, clean land and water, a women’s right to choose, and worker’s rights. Simultaneously, the Colorado Sentinel editorial board wrote that “duplicity of [Gardner and Senate Republicans] argument to rush through the appointment of Judge Amy Coney Barrett is raw and repugnant” and called on Gardner to “do the right and honorable thing” and oppose this rushed nomination. 

But instead of working in good faith to pass pandemic relief as COVID spikes across the country, Gardner gave Mitch McConnell the “key vote” to rush the nomination through — despite Gardner taking a stand eight months before the election in 2016, saying that “our next election is too soon” and “the American people deserve a role” in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice.

The Colorado Sentinel writes that — if he is ousted from office — Gardner has one more chance to amend his legacy and conclude his single-term in office “on a note of honesty and righteousness” and “[play] a crucial part in preserving American democracy.” 

Gardner’s colleague, Senator Michael Bennet, took the Senate GOP to task for their “institutional arson in service of someone like Donald Trump” for opposing a Supreme Court nomination as too close to the election eight months out in 2016, but ramming through Trump’s pick just eight days prior to this year’s election.

While Bennet is listening to Coloradans, unfortunately it appears once again that Gardner is more interested in his loyalty to Trump.

Read the highlights below or Sentinel editorial HERE and the Colorado Politics articles HERE and HERE. 

Colorado Sentinel Editorial: Gardner and the GOP can walk the nation back by opposing Barrett’s nomination
By Editorial Board | October 25, 2020

• About four years ago, Republicans in the Senate employed their right to push back against President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. Rather than hear the case for Garland in the Senate and reject it on its merits, they dishonestly said, including Gardner, that no president should be allowed to nominate a Supreme Court justice in the final year of his term. Gardner and Republicans in the Senate were unequivocal that voters should weigh in on late-term nominations via the presidential election. They insisted that the stakes are too high, because the high court increasingly was being used as a new tool for legislating, or de-legislating, issues failed in the Senate.
  
• What matters is that Gardner and Republicans have reversed themselves. Now, just days from the growing likelihood of voters ending not only Trump’s tenure but that of Gardner and other complicit Republicans, they have a new demand.
  
• The duplicity of their argument to rush through the appointment of Judge Amy Coney Barrett is raw and repugnant.
  
• Republicans, for years, have been unable to successfully legislate banning a woman’s right to privacy. They seek justices who agree that the right to make decisions in regards to our own bodies is guaranteed only to men. Republicans seek justices who will ban the right to equality regardless of sexual orientation. They seek new justices who will ban the right of Congress to legislate insurance companies and the rights of states to ensure the voting rights of abused minorities.
  
• Gardner and other Republicans must at this moment in American history do the right and honorable thing by rejecting Barrett’s nomination. 

Colorado Politics: Groups on the left demand Gardner oppose Amy Coney Barrett
By Joey Bunch | October 25, 2020

• A handful of groups that are no friends to Republicans made a demand of U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner Sunday: back off on approving Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.
  
• The Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountain, the Colorado AFL-CIO, and the Colorado Sierra Club said it had signatures from 17,026 people, as part of a nationwide campaign to sway determined Republicans.
  
• Officials from the advocacy organizations said Barrett would be a bad choice for worker's rights, access to health care and climate issues, with Alexis Schwartz, the Sierra Club Colorado's political organizer calling it a "sham Supreme Court nomination.”
  
• Michael Brune, the Sierra Club's executive director, provided a letter dated Oct. 8 that stated "As members for life of the highest court in the country, Supreme Court Justices have the solemn responsibility to be fair, even-handed, and uphold the sanctity of our laws and the values of our Constitution, and to keep faith with the letter and spirit of the nation’s core public health, environmental, civil rights, and labor laws. Barrett has failed to demonstrate these values, even outright rejecting them at times. The Supreme Court must protect the rights of women, workers, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, people of color, and other vulnerable communities."

Colorado Politics: WATCH: Colorado's Bennet charges Senate GOP with 'institutional arson' over Barrett
By Joey Bunch | October 25, 2020

• The Democrat from Denver, who's not on the ballot this year, delivered a 2,998-word, 28-minute speech on the Senate floor that charged she's the continuation of a long history of protecting powerful interest over self-government, his office said.
  
• “Judge Barrett’s nomination comes to this floor on a path cleared by the same deep-pocketed donors and corporations that have worked for decades to protect their power, regardless of the costs to the American people and their security, well-being, and civil rights,” Bennet said in his address. “And based on everything I’ve learned about Judge Barrett’s record, I fear she will become one more predictable vote for that agenda...Judge Barrett’s confirmation will cement a 6-3 majority on the Court that will allow the powerful to do what they want, while standing against the American people’s efforts to protect one another, to support one another, and to invest in each other through our democracy.”
  
• He seemed to acquiesce that Republicans have the vote, just as they denied one to President Obama's nominee four years ago, citing the proximity to the election then, ignoring now.

• "I can assure you that the same faction that was willing to enlist every parliamentary gimmick, or deploy any oratorical sleight of hand, or commit any act of institutional arson in service of someone like Donald Trump, will continue to do whatever they can get away with in this body," Bennet said

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