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ICYMI: Gardner Folds, Political Stunt “Ended Before It Began”

The Vulnerable Republican Incumbent Caves, Failing to Stand Up For Coloradans 

Senator Cory Gardner’s latest failed political stunt last week has earned the vulnerable incumbent a well deserved round of blistering headlines. After putting on a big act and pretending that he was going to fight to keep the Senate in session in order to provide more coronavirus relief, Gardner folded immediately without taking any meaningful action.

His initial blustering and subsequent capitulation to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell earned Gardner scathing reviews. One local columnist called the performance a “failed rebellion” that “lasted less than a day” from the “good soldier” Gardner who has proudly backed Trump “100%.” Also this weekend, The Atlantic’s Todd Purdum likened the loyalty that Gardner exhibits to Trump and McConnell to “a tawdry romance novel.”

“Senator Gardner tries to tell Coloradans one thing, but his record shows he sides with his party leaders when it matters,” said DSCC spokesperson Helen Kalla. “Time and again, Gardner has refused to hold Mitch McConnell or the Trump administration accountable for their disastrously inadequate coronavirus response. It’s clear that he would rather play meaningless political games than fight for desperately needed relief for Coloradans.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Colorado Sun (Opinion): Why Cory Gardner’s rebellion ended before it began

By Mike Littwin

Key Points:

  • It is fair to assume that Cory Gardner — whose name rarely appears without the notation that his Senate seat is in serious jeopardy this November — is growing increasingly worried. And now, as the kids say, we have the receipts.
  • On Wednesday, as you may have heard, Gardner drew an Obama-in-Syria-like line in the sand. A day later, Gardner quickly erased it, just as Mitch McConnell was preparing to stomp all over it.
  • The Gardner rebellion, as I like to call it, lasted less than a day. It began with a series of tweets — what else? — from Gardner saying that the Senate’s Memorial Day recess was “unfathomable” in light of the coronavirus crisis and the economic crisis it has spawned. There was much work to be done, Gardner tweeted, and he was prepared to call out McConnell — although failing to mention McConnell by name — on the Senate floor, doing whatever he could to halt the weeklong recess.
  • The other thing to know about Gardner is that despite his claims to be the third most bipartisan member of the hyper-partisan Senate, Gardner — hardly the rebellious type — is a good soldier who beams at a Donald Trump rally in Colorado Springs as Trump was saying Cory has backed him 100 percent.
  • So when Gardner challenged McConnell, with whom he’s closer than you should be with anyone in these socially distancing times, I figured he must have had McConnell’s wink-wink approval and that Gardner would walk away with some kind of symbolic win. It wasn’t likely he could get much more than that. In line with Trump’s disastrous mishandling of the pandemic, the president is in no hurry to have another major coronavirus stimulus bill passed, and McConnell has said the latest House bill addressing coronavirus was DOA, which may not be the most felicitous expression to use when the American death count is all too rapidly approaching 100,000.
  • Turns out, I was wrong about the wink-wink. It seems there was no agreement. Gardner stuck his neck out, and when McConnell raised the figurative ax, it was game over. When Gardner agreed to let the recess go unchallenged, he got what Sen. John Thune, the GOP whip, called “some things down the road,” which is Susan Collins’ favorite, compromise wording.
  • Meanwhile, Gardner was touting McConnell’s announcement that the Senate would take up the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act sometime in June. That bill does help Colorado parks and would fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund and has bipartisan support — notably including from Michael Bennet — and the support of Trump. What it doesn’t have is anything to do with coronavirus.
  • What makes the failed Gardner rebellion so interesting is that he was absolutely right to take it up. It’s not the recess itself that was unfathomable — this is the U.S. Senate we’re talking about — it’s the unwillingness of Trump, McConnell and friends to take the necessary steps to ward off further disaster. 
  • According to a recent U.S. Census survey (h/t Denver Post), nearly half of Colorado households have lost income during the pandemic. And the news gets even louder and more necessary to hear. Most economists now believe that as countrywide unemployment claims approach 40 million, many of those jobs will not come back. One Stanford economist says that as many as 40% of those jobs won’t come back.
  • The linchpin of Gardner’s reelection campaign is that he can get things done in Washington. I’m not sure this is a winning approach. Trump is deeply underwater in Colorado and, in large part because of that, Gardner trails John Hickenlooper — with whom he got into the inevitable spat over the Gardner cave — by a significant margin according to two recent Democratic-leaning pollsters.
  • And now we are left to wonder what the reaction would have been if Gardner had actually taken the floor and had rallied a few Republicans with him. I’m going to guess that it would have been glowing. It might even have impressed some voters. But it would definitely not have impressed Mitch McConnell or Donald Trump, and so, of course, it never happened. And Gardner just went home, too.

Read the full op-ed here.

The Atlantic: The Price of Trump Loyalty

By Todd S. Purdum

Key Points:

  • Now Gardner, perhaps the Senate’s most endangered Republican incumbent, is locked in an uphill battle for reelection in a state trending bluer by the day. He trails his probable Democratic opponent, the former governor and erstwhile presidential candidate John Hickenlooper, by double digits in the polls. In a sharp about-face, Gardner has backed Trump at every turn since endorsing the president for reelection last year.
  • “He’s been with us 100 percent,” Trump said of Gardner at a February rally in Colorado Springs, at which Gardner lavished praise on the president.
  • By January 2019, after Gardner broke with Trump and voted to end a 34-day government shutdown without providing financing for the president’s border wall, Trump’s favorable-unfavorable rating among Colorado Republicans was 84 percent to 15 percent, while Gardner’s was a comparatively weak 59 percent to 26 percent, according to the KOM Colorado poll.
  • In the most recent KOM survey, Trump’s favorability rating among Republicans dropped slightly, to 78–21, while Gardner’s rose, to 72–19. But that increase is not nearly enough to compensate for Gardner’s abysmal favorability rating among undeclared voters, now the largest slice of the Colorado electorate. Among those voters, Gardner scored just a 29 percent favorable rating, compared with 62 percent unfavorable.
  • So sticking with Trump may be the best available strategy for Gardner, even if it’s not sufficient to win in a general election in a state where Trump lost to Hillary Clinton by just less than five percentage points, and where Democrats won every statewide office in 2018. (Gardner’s office did not return requests for comment for this article.)
  • Hickenlooper, who is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination against Andrew Romanoff, former speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives in next month’s primary, says Gardner has forsaken the platform he ran on six years ago.
  • “Senator Gardner promised to be an independent voice, but he’s caved to Trump and corporate special interests,” Hickenlooper said in an emailed statement. “Together they’ve tried to yank away Coloradans’ access to health care and rolled back protections for our clean air and water. Coloradans are fed up and want someone in Washington who will fight for them.”

Read the full story here.

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