\u201cWe need to be united<\/a> together.\u201d<\/p>\nIn the speech \u2013 broadcast on his campaign website \u2013 Gardner returned to a familiar refrain from the campaign trail and listed off his legislative accomplishments, touting his ability to deliver money for major projects in Colorado and supplies to battle the coronavirus.<\/p>\n
Hickenlooper\u2019s win gives Democrats both U.S. Senate seats in Colorado and the party universal control on the state\u2019s levers of power for the first time since 1936.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the day, as he rallied supporters, Hickenlooper criticized Gardner and the Republican-led Senate for pushing through a late-season Supreme Court nominee but not spending time to find a compromise with Democrats on additional coronavirus aid or climate change legislation.<\/p>\n
\u201cCory Gardner has failed to do his job, but if we do ours \u2026 we\u2019ll show him the door, we\u2019ll take back the Senate and we\u2019ll be able to make progress on these critical issues and so much more,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
From the start, Gardner\u2019s close ties to Trump \u2013 who lost in Colorado for the second time \u2014 doomed his campaign, one made even more difficult by the state\u2019s demographic shift toward Democrats since he took office.<\/p>\n
Gardner\u2019s defeat is the first in his 15-year tenure in public office, dating to the state legislature and U.S. House. He won a surprise upset against Democratic incumbent Mark Udall in 2014, promising Colorado voters that \u201cwhen my party\u2019s wrong, I\u2019ll say it.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he put little distance between himself and a president that he once called a \u201cbuffoon\u201d and refused to support in 2016. But Trump\u2019s transformation of the Republican Party left him little room to maneuver as the state shifted blue, and he endorsed the president in January 2019.<\/p>\n
His support for the president helped allow him to pass major legislation, including the Great American Outdoors Act and a bill creating a national suicide hotline. Gardner also voted to confirm three conservatives to the U.S. Supreme Court, including Colorado\u2019s Neil Gorsuch.<\/p>\n
But those same ties to the president also led to Gardner\u2019s undoing. Hickenlooper and Democratic allies used Gardner\u2019s conservative record to escalate a yearslong campaign to erode his support.<\/p>\n
Hickenlooper linked Gardner to Trump at every turn and blasted the White House response to the coronavirus crisis as he pushed a message of change and the need for compromise in Washington. He managed to defeat a challenge from his left in the Democratic Party primary earlier this year and ran a low-profile campaign during which he avoided tough questions and missteps that could have derailed his momentum.<\/p>\n
The Democratic cavalry rallied to Hickenlooper\u2019s side. He broke Colorado fundraising records with nearly $40 million collected through Oct. 14, compared with Gardner\u2019s nearly $27 million. And Democrats groups spent $15 million and used about $10.5 million on negative ads against Gardner.<\/p>\n
Outside Republican political groups worked to even the score, pouring nearly $21 million into the contest. The bulk of the money \u2013 $18 million \u2013 went toward attacks on Hickenlooper that focused on his two violations of the state\u2019s ethics laws earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Democratic groups spent $15 million and used about $10.5 million on negative ads against Gardner. The attacks worked to erode Hickenlooper\u2019s image but didn\u2019t shift the race.<\/p>\n
The attacks never really stuck because of his popularity leading Colorado, said former Gov. Bill Ritter, Hickenlooper\u2019s predecessor. \u201cEven though this campaign has sullied some things about that, he was still very well liked by Coloradans when he left office \u2013 and it wasn\u2019t that long ago,\u201d Ritter said.<\/p>\n
Gardner\u2019s loss is a huge blow for Colorado Republican Party<\/p>\n
Gardner\u2019s loss is the latest in a series of stinging defeats for the Colorado GOP at the top of the ticket over the past two election cycles.<\/p>\n
For years, Gardner was considered one of the state\u2019s most talented Republican politicians, even if he took flak from hardcore conservatives for not being more vocal about his support for the president.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hurts,\u201d Tyler Sandberg, a Republican consultant in Colorado, said. \u201cIn 2014, Cory charted a path out of the wilderness for Republicans on a statewide basis after a string of losses going back to 2006. He showed that it was possible to win statewide with an optimistic message and the willingness to put in the hard work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gardner\u2019s defeat means there\u2019s only one Republican left in a statewide elected office in Colorado: University of Colorado Regent Heidi Ganahl.<\/p>\n
Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a Democratic ally of Hickenlooper\u2019s who also served in the Senate, attributed Gardner\u2019s loss to the Republican losing his way.<\/p>\n
\u201cCory made the decision to embrace the politics and the pressures of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell in the U.S. Senate, as opposed to forging his own independent way representing the people of the state of Colorado,\u201d Salazar said.<\/p>\n
Gardner\u2019s campaign knew going into the 2020 election season that the president\u2019s unpopularity in Colorado would make it a tough battle.<\/p>\n
That all changed when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in mid September. The prospect of a strong conservative majority court energized Democrats and boosted his fundraising and poll margins, putting the race out of reach for Republicans.<\/p>\n
In the end, Gardner\u2019s strategy never permanently moved the needle.<\/p>\n
Claire Roberts, a 38-year-old Denver Democrat, voted for Hickenlooper on Tuesday largely because she thinks Gardner is \u201ca Trump puppet.\u201d She said she especially disapproved of Gardner\u2019s recent vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
Hickenlooper\u2019s campaign expected Gardner to sell more of his record, but the Republican stayed focused on his public lands work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think he ran a good campaign,\u201d said Alvina Vasquez, a Democratic consultant who ran a dark-money group against Gardner this cycle. \u201cCory Gardner voters are Trump voters, but he didn\u2019t draw anybody new in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hickenlooper, for his part, ran into some trouble during the Democratic primary against former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff. But, in the end, he was able to glide toward his party\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n
From there, Hickenlooper spent the general election talking about his platform and tearing down Gardner\u2019s record, especially on health care. Because of the coronavirus crisis, his public schedule was limited.<\/p>\n
During three debates with Gardner, Hickenlooper was able to dodge the incumbent\u2019s relentless punches and stay on his week.<\/p>\n
In the final weeks of the race, all Hickenlooper had to do was stay the course.<\/p>\n
Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/em><\/p>\nThe Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, journalist-owned news outlet exploring issues of statewide interest. Sign up for a newsletter and read more at coloradosun.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nRead more at The Colorado Sun<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"back seat in U.S. Senate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-50646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87791,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50646\/revisions\/87791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50646"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=50646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}