He added: \u201cThese are things that for decades could have been done by others but were never done. We\u2019ve been able to get them done working with this president.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democrats note that Gardner isn\u2019t the only Colorado leader to press the White House on these priorities.<\/p>\n
[Image:2]Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Gov. Jared Polis, both Democrats, also pushed the Trump administration to relocate the BLM to Grand Junction and place U.S. Space Command headquarters in the state.<\/p>\n
In fact, Polis met with Trump on Air Force One before Thursday\u2019s rally to make his case on bringing Space Command to Colorado Springs.<\/p>\n
\u201cColorado is the perfect home for Space Command and I was excited to have the opportunity to remind President Trump why that\u2019s true,\u201d Polis said in a statement, just hours after he compared Trump to a demagogue in a fundraising email.<\/p>\n
Polls show Trump, Gardner are unpopular in Colorado<\/div>\n
The challenge for Gardner is whether people will listen. A new poll shows that Colorado voters don\u2019t look favorable on the first-term senator and the president.<\/p>\n
More than half \u2014 56% \u2014 of registered voters in Colorado disapprove of Trump\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Gardner\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Thousands of Trump supporters wait to enter the World Arena for a campaign rally with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in Colorado Springs Monday, Feb. 20.<\/span>Photo by Mark Reis<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>The numbers for both are essentially unchanged from earlier Democratic and Republican polls of likely 2020 voters. But Trump\u2019s numbers may hold a silver lining: The survey was conducted Jan. 31 to Feb. 4, when the impeachment trial was occurring in the U.S. Senate, and his ratings improved ever-so-slightly from a poll in July.<\/p>\n
Democratic pollster Andrew Baumann said the numbers are bad for the senator ahead of November. \u201cGardner has managed to achieve a difficult trifecta: he has unified \u2013 and motivated \u2013 Democrats against him, alienated unaffiliated voters and still left his own base fractured,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s campaign dismissed the polls on Thursday and called Colorado a top 2020 target.<\/p>\n
In his interview with The Sun, Gardner seemed to acknowledge that he will have to overcome political headwinds to get his message out.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople need to take their partisan hat off and they need to look at what we\u2019ve been able to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Republicans want Gardner to be vocal advocate for Trump<\/div>\n
But if Democrats and unaffiliated voters won\u2019t listen to his list of the accomplishments he\u2019s made with Trump, Republicans may be more receptive. Several who spoke with The Sun at Thursday\u2019s rally said they felt Gardner needs to do more to align himself with the president.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he needs to be closer to the president,\u201d said Jess Loban, a small business owner in Castle Rock, where he also sits on the town council. \u201cI think those changes have started to happen. We had a whole string of tweets from the president in support of Cory Gardner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vicki Hannon, a flight attendant from Castle Rock who was wearing a large Trump hat, said she thinks Gardner is doing a good job, but there\u2019s room for improvement in his relationship with the president.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he could be a little tighter,\u201d Hannon said. \u201cI\u2019d like to see him out there more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Republicans who said they aren\u2019t closely following Gardner said they were reassured by the fact that he was appearing at Thursday\u2019s rally.<\/p>\n
\u201cI honestly don\u2019t know a whole lot\u201d about Gardner, said Leanne Perry, a 52-year-old mother from Vail, \u201cbut he\u2019s here with the president today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kevin Lewis of Colorado Springs, a 57-year-old entrepreneur, echoed that sentiment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Trump supports Cory,\u201d Lewis said. \u201cI support Cory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bonnie Vermilion of Colorado Springs cheers as she awaits the arrival of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence at a campaign rally at the World Arena in Colorado Springs Monday, Feb. 20.<\/span>Photo by Mark Reis<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, a Windsor lawmaker who is also chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, spoke at the rally about the shared accomplishments of Gardner and Trump. Buck said Gardner has stood with the president.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely unfair,\u201d he said of Republicans who think Gardner should do more to back Trump.<\/p>\n
In an interview with The Sun after the speech, Buck said Gardner \u201chas 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\u2019s there for the president. I just don\u2019t see where some people feel like they\u2019re going to get more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even Trump gave a nod to Gardner\u2019s loyalty, saying the senator\u2019s support never waivers, including through the president\u2019s impeachment trial. \u201cCory was with us all the way,\u201d Trump said in a speech that lasted nearly two hours.<\/p>\n
The Trump campaign said the president supports Gardner and that Thursday\u2019s rally was a prime example of that. In fact, that was the point.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt about it,\u201d Kayleigh McEnany, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said Thursday. \u201cThis is a show of unity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sun staff writer John Frank contributed to this report.<\/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>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gardner share a stage in Colorado Springs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-74938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74938","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=74938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90329,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74938\/revisions\/90329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74938"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=74938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}