REALITY CHECK: Gardner’s New Ad Deceives -- He Sold Out Colorado Public Lands & Peterson Air Force Base

Denver Post Editorial: Endorsing Gardner Was A “Mistake” and We “Regret” It

Once again, Senator Cory Gardner’s new TV ad tries to deceive Coloradans about his real record, conspicuously omitting the president he’s stood with “100%” – and his record of voting with Trump 98% of the time as they sell out our public lands and raid millions from Peterson Air Force Base. Gardner lost The Denver Post’s endorsement for that vote; they wrote that he’d become exactly the “political time-server” they’d warned against and later said that “Gardner failed to protect Colorado from cuts in addition to failing the U.S. Constitution.”

“Once again, Cory Gardner is deceiving Coloradans while voting in lockstep with President Trump in Washington to sell out our public lands and military community,” said Colorado Democratic Party Chair Morgan Carroll. “Gardner and Trump have opposed new Colorado wilderness, rolled back protections for public lands and raided millions from Peterson Air Force Base -- which was the final straw that caused The Denver Post to yank their endorsement. Coloradans know that Gardner is a slick politician who will say whatever he can to try to win, but we won’t be fooled.”

This isn’t Gardner’s first deceptive ad of the election cycle. Gardner’s first TV ad had to be edited after backlash from AAA Colorado and is facing a complaint with the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee for breaking ethics rules prohibiting official Senate footage in campaign materials, a rookie mistake that has caused Senators to have to take down their ads in previous cycles.

While Colorado Democrats have worked on all the issues Gardner claims credit for, Trump has given Gardner “advance notice” so he can “claim the first news headlines” to help his reelection.

Don’t fall for Gardner’s slick deception. Here are the facts: 

GARDNER AND TRUMP ARE SELLING OUT OUR PUBLIC LANDS

• Designation of new Colorado wilderness got left out in the last major public lands bill to pass the Senate.

• Gardner refuses to support the CORE Act -- a major wilderness bill to protect 400,000 acres of public land that passed the House last fall. But the bill is “unlikely to see the light of day in the Senate” without Gardner’s support.

• Gardner supported cutting millions from the Land and Water Conservation Fund as recently as 2018 and has voted to virtually eliminate funding for the program.

• Gardner has supported Trump’s anti-environment nominees who’ve overseen the largest rollback of protected public lands in U.S. history, dismantled efforts to fight climate change and gutted clean water protections.

GARDNER RAIDED MILLIONS FROM COLORADO MILITARY BASES FOR TRUMP

• 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.

• Last month, CPR reported the Trump administration “said it was completely restarting the search for a permanent home for Space Command” and it would only stay in Colorado for six months -- just through the election.

THE DENVER POST REVOKED GARDNER’S ENDORSEMENT BECAUSE HE SOLD OUT COLORADO FOR TRUMP

• The Denver Post rescinded their 2014 Gardner endorsement after he 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.’”
  
• Here is what else The Denver Post editorial board really thinks of Gardner:
  
  • April 2020: On COVID supplies, Gardner and Trump are undergoing “the worst imaginable form of corruption — playing political games with lives.”
    
  • February 2020: “Gardner either thinks it’s OK for a president to pressure a foreign government to investigate a U.S. citizen for personal and political gain or he’s too afraid to criticize this president for doing just that.”
    
  • January 2020: “We were astounded that Gardner would vote to cut Medicaid funding to states... Americans relying on federal health insurance panicked, rightfully so, as they wondered out loud in public if they’d lose access to health care.”

• September 2019: “Gardner can’t defend Colorado and the U.S. Constitution at the same time, or even one at a time, or just one or the other.”

• August 2019: “Innocent lives are in the hands of the U.S. Senate… Sen. Cory Gardner should stand in support of reasonable gun restrictions.”

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