“The rebuilding of America is going to take leaders who can work with each other, not blindly follow any party or any leader. For that basic reason, we urge Coloradans to vote for John Hickenlooper for the U.S. Senate”
Today, John Hickenlooper earned the endorsement of the Pueblo Chieftain editorial board, his tenth editorial board endorsement in the U.S. Senate race and the fourth editorial board to buck Senator Cory Gardner after endorsing him in 2014.
In their endorsement, the Chieftain notes Gardner’s silence and repeated failure to stand up to President Trump on the disastrous mishandling of COVID-19, decision to separate families at the southern border, mockery of our men and women in uniform, and criticism of vote by mail.
In sharp contrast, the endorsements says Hickenlooper’s “legacy was one of building an incredibly strong economy, improving our highways and supporting a progressive agenda.”
Hickenlooper has now received support from editorial boards in every corner of the state: The Denver Post, The Colorado Sentinel, The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, The Durango Herald, The Greeley Tribune, El Semanario, The Vail Daily, Colorado Springs Indy, and Boulder Weekly. Four of these papers had previously backed Gardner.
Read the Pueblo Chieftain endorsement here or see excerpts below:
Endorsement: Hickenlooper is the choice for US Senate
In evaluating the tenure of US Sen. Cory Gardner, there’s no escaping the fact that he has stood by silently as President Donald Trump and his ever-changing cast of supporters have incompetently dealt with the COVID-19 crisis, treated human beings like animals at the southern border, provided legitimacy to repugnant and dangerous racists, and abandoned common decency, creating an atmosphere in which political opponents are called names and diminished — no matter their credentials and contributions to this nation.
The US by far has done the worst job among developed nations in dealing with COVID-19 – the numbers prove it, even though the conspiracy kooks don’t believe the numbers – and Gardner has stayed silent.
The president slurs the military, calling them losers and suckers. And Gardner has stayed silent.
The president has said repeatedly that voting by mail is rampant with voter fraud. There’s no evidence of that, and Gardner knows that mail voting has been successful and without fraud in Colorado, the state he represents. And he has stayed silent.
Rather, Gardner has mounted a relentless attack campaign against former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, his Democratic challenger, focusing on relatively minor infractions of ethics rules. Endless TV commercials on that topic — we’ll get to that in a minute – are no substitute for telling us what he’ll do if reelected.
We do know what he has done. Gardner has voted over and over to kill Obamacare, but with no guarantees that those with pre-existing conditions will maintain care under the nebulous GOP health care plan – whatever that might end up being.
And for those of us in Southern Colorado, we haven’t seen much of Gardner until this year, although he did deliver on significant funding for the Lower Arkansas River Conduit this year.
Hickenlooper was governor for eight years, and his legacy was one of building an incredibly strong economy, improving our highways and supporting a progressive agenda.
Prior to that, he served eight years as mayor of Denver, and played a major role in the revitalization of Downtown Denver.
…
We find Gardner’s support of the Trump administration’s disastrous four years in office infinitely more egregious. And if the president is elected for another four years, we are gravely concerned that Gardner will continue to be one of the many enablers of more chaos that undoubtedly will ensue.
The rebuilding of America is going to take leaders who can work with each other, not blindly follow any party or any leader. For that basic reason, we urge Coloradans to vote for John Hickenlooper for the U.S. Senate.
