REALITY CHECK: Gardner Is With Trump 100%, Prioritizes Party Over Colorado

Colorado Sentinel Editorial: “Six years ago, Gardener sold himself as a political moderate. He’s not. Despite his self-accolades, his Senate record show’s he’s one of President Donald Trump’s most reliable allies.”

Denver, CO - Senator Cory Gardner is once again up with a desperate and deceiving ad that hides his real record of being a partisan foot soldier for Mitch McConnell and standing with Donald Trump “100%.” Despite Coloradans pleading for Gardner to stay true to his 2016 commitment, Gardner caved to his party bosses and pledged to ram through Trump’s anti-ACA Supreme Court nominee days before the election.

Senator Michael Bennet responded to Gardner using him in the ad, saying he is “pleased once again to have the chance to reiterate my strong endorsement of John Hickenlooper.”

“Senator Gardner’s bipartisanship claims don’t hold water. Gardner has been a partisan warrior in Washington, working hand-in-glove with his party bosses to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act and now ram through an anti-choice and anti-health care Supreme Court nominee while failing to deliver needed COVID relief for Colorado families,” said Colorado Democratic Party spokesperson Eli Rosen. “But Senator Gardner is right about one thing — Coloradans do ‘believe in progress more than partisanship’ and that’s why we will be sending him and his Trump-McConnell rubber stamp packing and electing John Hickenlooper four weeks from today.”

Get the facts on Gardner’s partisan record: 

GARDNER IS “ONE OF PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S MOST RELIABLE ALLIES”

• Endorsing John Hickenlooper this week, the Colorado Sentinel editorial board wrote that “Six years ago, Gardener sold himself as a political moderate. He’s not. Despite his self-accolades, his Senate record show’s he’s one of President Donald Trump’s most reliable allies” and has backed Trump on everything from health care to gun safety.

• Despite promising Coloradans he’d stand up to his party, as coronavirus spread earlier this year, Trump said Gardner has been “with us 100 percent ... no waver.” CQ found that Gardner votes with Trump 98% of the time.
  
• Gardner is “Mitch McConnell’s right-hand man” — voting with his party boss 95 percent of the time, running McConnell’s Senate Republican campaign arm, and folding like a cheap suit to McConnell after a failed political stunt that left Coloradans waiting for urgent relief from COVID-19.
  
• Gardner caved to Trump and McConnell’s pressure, broke his 2016 commitment, and pledged to support Trump’s Supreme Court nominee — giving them the “key vote” to rush the anti-ACA and anti-choice nominee onto the U.S. Supreme Court just a month before the Court will decide the health care law’s fate.
  
• Gardner has voted for 98% of Trump’s judicial picks — rubber-stamping all but 4 of Trump’s 214 judicial nominees — and even voted for several judicial nominees deemed “not qualified” by the nonpartisan American Bar Association.
  
• Gardner has confirmed nearly every one of Trump and McConnell’s right-wing appointees, supported partisan procedural tactics and political activity, and was labeled “one of the most partisan members of Congress.”
  
• Gardner’s definition of “bipartisanship” ignores his own votes. Last year Gardner even discredited his own metric, telling constituents that he won’t just put his “name on something” that won’t pass while using that same misleading measure to call himself bipartisan.

• The Denver Post revoked their 2014 Gardner endorsement, stating that the endorsement was a “mistake” and that Gardner has become “precisely what we said in our endorsement he would not be: ‘a political time-server interested only in professional security.’”

GARDNER CHOSE TRUMP OVER COLORADO’S MILITARY COMMUNITY

• In March, 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 protect 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 “DISAPPOINT[ING],” GARDNER CRUSADES AGAINST PUBLIC LANDS

• 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 “did not publicly respond” after a federal judge ruled that anti-public lands zealot William Perry Pendley was serving illegally in his post at the Bureau of Land Management and ordered his removal. He’s still working at BLM.
  
  • Prior to the judge’s ruling, Gardner refused to oppose Pendley’s nomination to lead the BLM, despite Pendley opposing public lands and wildlife protections and writing that the “Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold.”
    
• Even The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel has come out against Trump’s pick to head the BLM, while Gardner remains silent.
  
• A rubber stamp for Trump’s toxic environmental agenda, Gardner has a failing 11% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters, earning him a spot on their notorious “Dirty Dozen” list.
  
• Gardner refuses to support the bipartisan House-passed Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy (CORE) Act, a decade-in-the-making collaborative wilderness bill to protect 400,000 acres of public land like Thompson Divide and Camp Hale. 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 has a long record of voting against Colorado’s public lands, even voting to block a measure to increase local input on land management.