Gardner With Trump “100 Percent” as New Polling Shows Both Underwater & Elections Experts Shift CO-Sen in Democrats’ Direction

Rally With Unpopular President Followed a New Crystal Ball Ratings Change: “Gardner Has Long Appeared Endangered by the Centennial State’s Shift Toward the Democrats.”

Just hours after Sabato’s Crystal Ball shifted its rating for Colorado’s U.S. Senate race from “Toss-up” to “Leans Democratic,” an increasingly endangered Cory Gardner appeared at a rally with President Trump, who is also deeply unpopular among Colorado voters. Trump declared Gardner “has been with us 100%,” underscoring how Gardner has transformed into a “Yes Man” for the unpopular president and his damaging policies. New polling shows Gardner in an even more precarious position than the president among Coloradans.

In 2014, Senator Gardner ran ads pledging to be an independent voice for Colorado and promising that “when my party is wrong, I’ll say it.” In 2016, he refused to endorse Trump and even “urged him to drop out of the race.” Now, with a Republican base that still doesn’t trust him, Gardner is trying to make up for lost time by clinging closer than ever to the president, endorsing his reelection more than a year ago and refusing to break with the president – or even to say whether he believes it’s wrong for a president to solicit foreign intervention in our elections. The Denver Post already rescinded their 2014 endorsement, writing “Gardner has been too busy walking a political tight rope to be a leader.”

Read more about why Senator Gardner is going “all in” in his support for President Trump:

Colorado Politics: Colorado Senate race moves to ‘leans Democratic’

• One of the top election forecasters moved Colorado’s U.S. Senate election from the category of “toss up” to “leans Democratic” on Thursday.

• Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan project of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, cited Colorado voters’ continued preference for Democrats and incumbent U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner’s general support for President Donald Trump as reasons for the change. 

• The Crystal Ball concluded that Gardner would not likely receive many votes from Democrats in the district this time, “at least not in the necessary volume he’d traditionally need.”

• The Democratic Party of Colorado on Thursday pointed to a poll from The Rocky Mountaineer, a progressive research group, showing that 37% of all voters approve of Gardner’s job performance, less than the 44% who approve of Trump. Among “very conservative Republicans,” 99% approved of Trump, compared to 76% who approved of Gardner.

Denver Post: Cory Gardner and President Trump praise each other at Colorado Springs rally

• U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner received praise and an adamant endorsement Thursday from President Donald Trump, who said the Republican senator from Yuma has been unwavering in his loyalty and support.

• “You are going to help us get Cory Gardner across that line because he’s been with us 100%,” Trump told a boisterous crowd of supporters in Colorado Springs, referring to Gardner’s re-election in November. “There was no waver. He’s been with us. There was no waver with Cory and we appreciate that.”

• Gardner, who voted this month to acquit Trump and prevent witnesses in the Senate’s trial, has his “total support and endorsement,” the president said.

• The rally closed any remaining gap between the president and Gardner, who did not vote for Trump in 2016 and urged him to drop out of the race that October.

Colorado Sun: Cory Gardner goes all-in with Donald Trump, says the results for Colorado “are simply astounding”

• Cory Gardner decisively tied his reelection bid to President Donald Trump on Thursday…

• Trump and Gardner shared the same stage and gushed over each other… completing a once-improbable union that came four years after the senator refused to vote for the party’s nominee in 2016.

• Gardner distanced himself from Trump after the release of an “Access Hollywood” recording of Trump bragging about sexual assault, saying that he couldn’t “support someone who brags about degrading and assaulting women.” But after Trump was elected, Gardner began aligning himself with the president and later endorsed Trump’s reelection bid last year. 

• Gardner’s campaign, which is facing difficult odds in November, now plans to spend the next eight months telling Colorado voters about his accomplishments in the Senate and explaining how Trump helped make them possible. The strategy is to use the story of their relationship to raise Gardner’s slumping approval numbers…

• The challenge for Gardner is whether people will listen. A new poll shows that Colorado voters don’t look favorable on the first-term senator and the president.

• More than half — 56% — of registered voters in Colorado disapprove of Trump’s job performance, according to the Mountaineer Poll, a survey from liberal advocacy group ProgressNow Colorado and Democratic pollster Global Strategy Group, and only 44% approve.

• Gardner’s job rating also is negative with 48% disapproval and 37% approval, according to the poll, which has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points. Another 15% of voters are unsure.

• Democratic pollster Andrew Baumann said the numbers are bad for the senator ahead of November. “Gardner has managed to achieve a difficult trifecta: he has unified – and motivated – Democrats against him, alienated unaffiliated voters and still left his own base fractured,” he said.

• Several who spoke with The Sun at Thursday’s rally said they felt Gardner needs to do more to align himself with the president. 

• “I think he needs to be closer to the president,” said Jess Loban, a small business owner in Castle Rock, where he also sits on the town council.

• In an interview with The Sun after the speech, Buck said Gardner “has done a great job of supporting the great accomplishments of this administration. You look at the Supreme Court justices, you look at the tax cuts, you look at impeachment, everything else, he’s there for the president. I just don’t see where some people feel like they’re going to get more.”

• “There’s no doubt about it,” Kayleigh McEnany, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said Thursday. “This is a show of unity.”

The Hill: Trump seeks to boost vulnerable GOP senator with Colorado rally

• President Trump on Thursday rallied with supporters in Colorado, seeking to boost vulnerable GOP Sen. Cory Gardner (Colo.) as the state’s Senate election this coming November could help determine which party will control the upper chamber.

• The president lost Colorado and its nine electoral votes in 2016 by about 5 percentage points, or roughly 136,000 votes. Democrats retained control of the governor’s mansion in the 2018 election and flipped one House seat as the state becomes more solidly blue.

• But the president’s presence in the state may be as much about the general presidential election as it is about trying to shore up the Republican majority in the Senate. 

• Gardner is among the most vulnerable Republicans up for reelection in the Senate in November. He narrowly won his seat in 2014 and will likely square off with former Gov. John Hickenlooper (D)… The Cook Political Report rates the race a “toss-up,” while Sabato’s Crystal Ball on Thursday shifted it to “leans Democratic.”

• The Colorado senator has attempted to tie himself closely to Trump, hoping that strong turnout among the president’s base will deliver him a victory. Gardner voted against hearing from witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial last month and voted to acquit the president on both articles.

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