After spending three Colorado Senate debates incessantly attacking John Hickenlooper with misleading and outright false claims, Senator Cory Gardner is on the air with yet another desperate attack ad.
“Over the course of three and a half hours of debates, Senator Cory Gardner has tried, and failed, to distract from his toxic record by desperately attacking John Hickenlooper,” said Hickenlooper for Colorado press secretary Ammar Moussa. “The truth is, Coloradans see right through these attacks whether it’s on the debate stage or on their TV screen. Cory Gardner has brought Washington’s dirty politics to Colorado to try to cover up his record of selling out Coloradans to rubber stamp Trump’s failed coronavirus response and attacks on our health care and clean air.”
Senator Gardner’s latest ad comes as he faces several ethics and campaign finance complaints, including an FEC complaint for accepting illegal contributions from McConnell’s super PAC. Other pending complaints include a Senate Ethics Committee inquiry into Gardner using official Senate footage in his first campaign ad and two separate complaints involving a champagne gala Gardner attended with corporate lobbyists. There’s also a lawsuit pending on Gardner’s 2014 campaign illegally coordinating with the NRA.
Since Gardner used a fake conservation organization in an ad greenwashing his toxic environmental record, three ethics complaints are pending against his anti-environmental allies for abusing taxpayer dollars to benefit Gardner’s campaign.
Please see below to get the facts about Cory Gardner’s false attack ad.
FACT: Gardner and his allies’ attacks on this subject have been consistently found to be “false” and “misleading” by independent fact checkers.
- “False.”- 9News Truth Test
- “Not true.” – Justin Wingerter, Denver Post
- “This is misleading.” – KDVR Truth Check
FACT: Dark money Republicans launched this attack with 97 allegations, 95 of which were dismissed.
- The IEC found two inadvertent errors, and Hickenlooper promptly paid the $2,750 fine.
- “Not true to say every flight was a violation.” – Justin Wingerter, Denver Post
- The original complaint contained commercial trips Hickenlooper personally paid for and travel on the state plane for official business.
- “The Public Trust Institute, the dark-money funded conservative political group that filed the complaint in 2018, acknowledged that it had no evidence to show those travel arrangements amounted to an inappropriate gift to the governor and the state’s Independent Ethics Commission dismissed those matters.” – The Colorado Sun
- “As far as we are concerned, both men staked their reputations on accusations that it turns out were easily refuted…At best it represents lazy reporting or perhaps willful disregard of the truth. At its worst, they were politically motivated lies.” – Denver Post Editorial
FACT: Hickenlooper was widely praised by people from both sides of the aisle for his leadership helping Colorado recover from natural disasters like floods and wildfires.
- “Gov. Hickenlooper would be given high marks for how he’s handled these various crises during a short tenure.” – Dick Wadhams, former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party
- “Hickenlooper shines during crises.” – Lynn Bartels
- “I’m a proud supporter of John Hickenlooper. John stood with us during the 416 Fire. He’s a man of common sense.” – Former Durango Mayor Sweetie Marbury
FACT: In editorials, the Denver Post and Colorado Sentinel called Hickenlooper an “honest and selfless public servant” who “tried to comply with the spirit and letter of the law.”
- A Denver Post editorial said, “we don’t believe Hickenlooper was trying to undermine the system, or disrespect the commission, or avoid accountability. In fact, the governor has been extremely transparent.”
- The Post also noted “there is ample evidence that he tried to comply with the spirit and letter of the law,” and “we consider both of those infractions to be relatively minor violations of the ethics laws.”
- They further noted Hickenlooper was “an ethical public servant” who made “an honest mistake.”
- The Colorado Sentinel called the rulings on “minor matters” “dark-money kabuki.”
- The Colorado Sentinel further said Hickenlooper’s long record has “proven him to be an honest and selfless public servant.”
FACT: Republicans are attacking Hickenlooper for his trips to bring business to Colorado. The state went from 40th in job creation to the top economy in the country while he was Governor.
- A national Republican group with ties to Mitch McConnell is behind the attacks: “A vice president for America Rising began filing open records requests in March 2018, when Hickenlooper was still in office, to obtain his travel records. The results of those open records requests formed the basis for the ethics complaint, filed by the Public Trust Institute, which was formed two days before the complaints were filed by former Republican Speaker of the House Frank McNulty.” – Colorado Politics
- There are allowances to the gift ban that include: “Travel to conventions or meetings when the offer is made ex officio, is related to the person’s official duties, is of benefit to the state, the individual is representing the state, or the state pays dues to the sponsoring organization (other exceptions may apply depending on circumstances); Gifts from relatives and friends.” – Colorado Independent Ethics Commission
- “Take Colorado, which ranks No. 1 in the ‘economy’ category for the second year in a row. When Democrat John Hickenlooper first took office in 2011, Colorado ranked 26th in unemployment and 40th in job growth.” – U.S. News and World Report
