Three Lies to Expect from Gardner at Tonight’s Debate

Gardner’s desperate to deceive Coloradans about record of standing with Trump “100%” & failing Colorado on health care, public lands & more

Denver, CO - Senator Cory Gardner has spent his entire campaign deceiving Coloradans about his record of standing with President Trump “100%” and failing Colorado — and we don’t expect that to change during tonight’s first debate. Gardner has stood by Trump’s side as he has botched the pandemic response, tried to gut the Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and sold out our public lands to corporate polluters. 

Ahead of tonight’s first Colorado Senate debate, here are the top three lies that Gardner will peddle: 

1. “I will protect people with pre-existing conditions” - FALSE 

• Gardner has spent a decade crusading against the Affordable Care Act — voting at least 13 times to repeal, gut, or defund the health care law, without a real replacement for people with pre-existing conditions. He even boasts on his website that he still wants to repeal the health care law and says the ACA is “unconstitutional.”
  
• Gardner will peddle a notorious sham bill that has been debunked six ways to Sunday, shredded by four independent fact checkers — even called “horse excrement” by 9News — and slammed by health care experts as a “political document” that would not actually protect people with pre-existing conditions.

2. “I’ll protect public lands and the environment” - FALSE 

• Gardner has earned an abysmal lifetime score of 11% from the League of Conservation Voters and earned a spot on their signature “Dirty Dozen” list by “supporting Trump and his anti-conservation agenda at seemingly every turn.” Despite Gardner’s desperate greenwashing ads — that use a fake environmental group — Coloradans overwhelmingly aren’t buying it and disapprove of Gardner’s handling of environmental issues. 

• Gardner is blocking a decade-in-the-making collaborative bill to protect 400,000 acres of Colorado public lands.

3. “I’m bipartisan” - FALSE 

• Gardner is with Trump “100%,” votes with the president 98% of the time, votes with McConnell 95% of the time, confirmed 98% of Trump’s judicial picks, and supports McConnell’s partisan legislative tactics and political activity. Gardner even led the Republican campaign arm charged with defeating pragmatic Democrats and cementing McConnell’s partisan majority.

• The measure Gardner uses to tout his bipartisanship does not include actual votes.

• The Denver Post rescinded their 2014 endorsement after Gardner voted to let Trump raid millions from military construction, 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 can try to hide from his record, but Coloradans won’t be fooled. Ahead of the debate, study up on Gardner’s real record at CoryFailedColorado.com.