{"id":74086,"date":"2019-08-23T16:46:56","date_gmt":"2019-08-23T22:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cardboard-cory-tour-stops-in-durango\/"},"modified":"2019-08-23T22:46:56","modified_gmt":"2019-08-23T22:46:56","slug":"cardboard-cory-tour-stops-in-durango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cardboard-cory-tour-stops-in-durango\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Cardboard Cory\u2019 tour stops in Durango"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Carolyn
Carolyn Hunter of Durango asks a question to \u201cCardboard Cory\u201d Friday in Buckley Park. Liberal activists brought the life-size cutout to Durango as part of an 11-stop tour across the state. Hunter wanted to know when Gardner is going to do something about the national gun violence epidemic.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Cardboard Cory<\/a> \u2013 a life-size, cutout version of Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner \u2013 arrived Friday in Durango, one of 11 stops on a tour of Colorado.<\/p>\n

Tour organizers are highlighting what they perceive as Gardner\u2019s lack of willingness to hold public events or meet with constituents.<\/p>\n

In an airport shuttle-sized bus with his face painted on the side, Cardboard Cory arrived at 11 a.m. Friday in Buckley Park to hold a mock town hall. Attendees had the chance to pose questions they would like the real senator to answer. Representatives from Conservation Colorado, Front Range Indivisible and Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition also gave talks.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur main ask is that the senator hold a public town hall announced in advance so that real Coloradans can attend and talk to him about the issues that matter most to them,\u201d said tour communications director Olga Robak earlier this week during a phone interview.<\/p>\n

Cardboard Cory made his first appearance in 2017 when 1,000 attendees of the \u201cwith or without you\u201d town hall made similar calls for the senator to participate. Gardner succumbed to pressure in August of that year when he held three town halls in one day. He was greeted with hostile questions and a rowdy atmosphere, The Denver Post<\/a> reported. He hasn\u2019t held an in-person town hall since.<\/p>\n

Gardner has spent much of U.S. Congress\u2019 August recess meeting with Coloradans across the state, he said. He has met with community members and business owners on what he calls his \u201cMain Street Walking Tours,\u201d the latest of which took place in Windsor.<\/p>\n

But Robak said too many of those meetings have been held with hand-picked audiences and haven\u2019t been advertised far enough in advance.<\/p>\n

Gardner\u2019s office pointed to a few recent events to refute claims that he is unavailable. In June, for instance, The Fort Morgan Times<\/a> invited the public to a meeting with Gardner and the Morgan County Republican Central Committee, four days ahead of time. This month, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America invited the public<\/a> to a panel discussion that included Gardner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been traveling across all four corners of the state meeting with Coloradans,\u201d Gardner wrote in an email. \u201cMy \u2018Main Street Walking Tours\u2019 have continued, taking me to more than a dozen towns across the state. These informal meet-and-greets are a great way to hear directly from Coloradans, and I take these discussions to Washington to fight for bipartisan solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of the Cardboard Cory tour\u2019s goal is to collect questions and send them to Gardner.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, if the senator watched our tour and watched the videos of people asking him questions, he\u2019d be perfectly prepared to hold a real town hall,\u201d Robak said.<\/p>\n

The tour is sponsored by Protect Our Care, Conservation Colorado, Indivisible, ProgressNow Colorado, Planned Parenthood Votes, American Votes Colorado and Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.<\/p>\n

James Marshall is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Participants urge Sen. Cory Gardner to hold a town hall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,24],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-74086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-u-s-sen-cory-gardner"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74086","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=74086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74086"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=74086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}