Every week, we keep you “In The Loop,” on John Hickenlooper’s events, endorsements, and highlights. This week, we’re bringing you a special edition — “Out of the Loop” — to recap what was one lousy week for Senator Cory Gardner.
Gardner Fails On Health Care
It’s no secret that Senator Gardner wants to axe the Affordable Care Act — he’s spent a decade trying to repeal it but introduced a stunt one-sentence “health care” bill weeks before the election. That sham bill is *still* under fire by experts for not actually doing anything to protect people with pre-existing conditions.
The Colorado Sun put Gardner’s awful health care record under a magnifying glass this week in two must-read stories — and one cartoon.
Cory Gardner doesn’t like Obamacare.
Ask the Republican senator from Colorado about how to improve health care and the first response you’re likely to hear is that President Barack Obama’s signature 2010 Affordable Care Act needs to be repealed. It’s “destroying this country,” he once said.
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But if Gardner and congressional Republicans have a better idea, they haven’t shared it.
Typically, bills contain definitions of the terms used in them and citations of existing law that the bill would either amend or be added to. That allows regulators to implement them in the way they were intended and gives judges the chance to read the new provisions in the context of the surrounding laws when interpreting them.
Gardner’s bill doesn’t have that, which is unusual, Bagley said.
“It’s unusual to have a federal law that doesn’t indicate which U.S. code section it would go in,” he wrote in an email. “That’s especially so in the health-care space, since there’s already so much law on the books.”
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The lack of specificity in Gardner’s health bill leads Bagley to conclude that the proposal “isn’t a genuine effort to address the deep problems in a complex health care system. It’s a political document, and it looks like all it’s designed to do is give Sen. Gardner a convenient talking point.”
Read more from the Colorado Sun here, here and here.
Gardner Criticizes Scientists and Public Health Experts
Senator Gardner spoke at a large in-person conservative conference and attacked the scientists and health experts who are attempting to guide the country out of COVID-19. He pretended to defend small businesses when he actually worked to help big corporations and even shared a joke — based off of right-wing conspiracy theories — about the pandemic being an election year hoax. Later in the week, he even ran away from a scientist who tried to ask him a question about President Trump’s pandemic response.
As the Denver Post reports, Hickenlooper was quick to decry Gardner:
In some of his most candid remarks to date about the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner told a conservative crowd that public health advice and science have been politicized in recent months, causing an erosion of public trust.
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Gardner was asked by a panel moderator how the coronavirus pandemic became “so political” and why it had eroded “public trust in our media, in our institutions, in our government.” The senator, who faces re-election in two months, criticized public health experts, scientists, governments and the media for, he said, picking economic winners and losers based on political and philosophical beliefs.
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Gardner, a careful and talented speaker, was unusually frank in his remarks, acknowledging at one point that he’s “passionate about” the issue. At one point, he delivered with a straight face an apparent joke about when the pandemic will end.
“My 8-year-old son came to me and said, ‘Dad, I know when the pandemic ends.’ And I said, ‘You do?’ He says, ‘Yes, the day after the election.’ Now, he picked that up somewhere or heard that somewhere, or maybe mom and dad were talking too much around him,” Gardner told a laughing crowd.
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“Over 185,000 Americans are dead and millions have lost their jobs because President Trump ignored the science as Senator Gardner stayed silent,” Hickenlooper said in a statement responding to Gardner’s remarks Friday.
“Now he’s parroting President Trump, implying that the coronavirus crisis is a hoax while disparaging public health experts. It’s maddening,” Hickenlooper added. “Senator Gardner needs to be back in Washington getting Colorado the help we need to get through this crisis, not telling bad jokes alongside the Trump advisor who thinks we should let the virus kill another two million of our neighbors.”
Read more from The Denver Post.
Hickenlooper Up 29% with Unaffiliateds
According to Morning Consult’s most recent poll, Senator Gardner has a “math problem” and is a whopping 29 points behind Hickenlooper with unaffiliated voters — the largest voting block in Colorado.
Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner has a math problem.
The most vulnerable Republican up for re-election this fall boasts stronger support among the party’s base than most of the other GOP Senate contenders this year, but he is being lapped by Democratic rival and former Gov. John Hickenlooper among independents, who make up the lion’s share of the state’s active voter rolls.
“The unaffiliated voters are all that matter, especially in a hyperpolarized environment where you can count on your base to show up,” said Ryan Winger, director of data analysis and research projects at Magellan Strategies, a Republican polling firm.
Read more from Morning Consult.
Refusing to Support the CORE Act
Senator Gardner refuses to support the CORE Act, a collaborative bill to protect 400,000 acres of Colorado public lands, and now he’s even referring questions about the Senate legislation to his campaign.
“We have to make sure he doesn’t use that miracle of communication technology, the TV ad, he isn’t able to use that as a shortcut back into the Senate,” Hickenlooper said.
Gardner’s staff in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday referred questions about the senator’s position on the CORE Act to his campaign staff. A campaign spokesman couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.
Read more from the Aspen Times.
This week Hickenlooper also announced an endorsement from NRDC Action Fund — an actual environmental group, unlike the fake group Gardner made up for his ad.
Vail Daily Editorial: “This is a Plea to Sen. Gardner to Do His Job”
In a scathing Vail Daily editorial pleading for Senator Gardner to “do his job,” the paper criticizes Senator Gardner for being all talk and no action when it comes to providing any real relief for struggling Coloradans, protecting our public lands, and working across the aisle.
So when Gardner says he’s bipartisan, it’s better to look at his voting record that shows he’s voted with President Trump 89% of the time, according to Nate Silver’s nonpartisan FiveThirtyEight website.
Or when Gardner claims he backed forgivable loans so small businesses and their employees could get the help they needed to survive COVID-19 closures, don’t forget that he tweeted, in May, that it would be “unfathomable” for the U.S. Senate to recess before the Memorial Day break without delivering on another federal stimulus package. Now it’s almost Labor Day and Congress is still locked in gridlock because the Republican-led Senate refuses to budge after the House passed a $3 trillion aid bill back on May 15.
Read more from the Vail Daily.
Coloradans Dig in to Gardner’s Failures
State Representative Chris Kennedy penned an op-ed in the Denver Post dragging Senator Gardner for attacking access to health care while Hickenlooper has expanded access. Additionally, a guest column in the Sentinel Colorado sheds light on Senator Gardner’s failure to protect DACA recipients from President Trump’s heartless attacks on our immigrant community.
In 2011, one of then-Congressman Gardner’s very first votes in Congress was to repeal the ACA. That same year, Gov. Hickenlooper signed a bill establishing Connect for Health Colorado, a cost-effective and transparent tool to help people shop for health insurance.
In May 2013, as Congressman Gardner voted for the 37 th time to gut the ACA, Hickenlooper signed the Medicaid expansion bill, giving coverage to half a million more Coloradans.
As governor, Hickenlooper worked tirelessly to clean up the mess Gardner helped create. And now we need him to do it again. Over his decade in Washington, Cory Gardner has shown us exactly who he is–a Trump loyalist who consistently sides with big corporations at the expense of regular, hard-working Americans. Even during this pandemic, Gardner has worked with Trump to rip care from hundreds of thousands of Coloradans and gut protections for millions of Coloradans with pre-existing conditions.
Read more in the Denver Post.
It’s obvious that Gardner won’t act to protect DACA, because he is a loyal foot soldier for Trump. He is enabling Trump as he tries to snatch safety and security away from the 700,000 DACA recipients who call the U.S. home, during a global pandemic no less. It is clear that we cannot rely on Trump and Senate Republicans like Gardner to keep DACA in place.
The only surefire way to protect DACA recipients is to vote out Trump and Gardner this November. With Trump out of the White House and a Democratic Senate majority, we can pass legislation protecting DACA recipients next year.Read more in the Sentinel Colorado.
