CO-Sen: New Poll Already Shows Cory Gardner (R) Looking Doomed In 2020
Kudos to the folks at ProgressNow Colorado for already gearing up for 2020:
Following an historic victory for Colorado progressives in the 2018 midterm elections, a new poll of Colorado voters from Change Research indicates that Sen. Cory Gardner is in serious jeopardy as a candidate for re-election in 2020. The poll was conducted between December 2nd and 4th online, had 540 responses, and has a margin of error of +/-4.2 points.
A majority of voters polled disapprove of Gardner’s job performance, reject Gardner’s excuses on a wide range of policy issues, and support a Democratic challenger over Gardner by a 47-41% margin. Colorado voters also strongly support reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which Gardner claims to support. Voters are are prepared to punish Gardner if his fellow Republicans aren’t persuaded.
“After the 2018 landslide election for Democrats in Colorado, Cory Gardner is in politically toxic territory,” said Ian Silverii, executive director of ProgressNow Colorado. “Colorado didn’t vote for Donald Trump in 2016, and in 2018 Colorado voters punished Republicans at every level of government as a rebuke to Trump. The damage done to Cory Gardner’s own career in politics after publicly aligning himself with Trump to save the U.S. Senate is clearly indicated in this new polling, which shows that if the election were held today Gardner would lose handily to virtually any Democratic opponent.”
Gardner has done everything to make himself look like a fraud:
Sen. Cory Gardner says he believes climate change is real and that humans are contributing to it.
“I’ve said it before — I said it in 2014 — there’s no doubt pollution contributes to climate change,” the Colorado Republican told The Colorado Sun last week. “Climate change is real. I’ve been on the record saying that.”
But when American Geophysical Union announced it was giving Gardner its presidential citation for his work to improve science education for women and minorities, dozens of the organization’s 60,000 members began to sound the alarm. They argued that Gardner has denied climate science and supported legislation and President Donald Trump’s political appointees that threaten to worsen climate change.
“Sen. Gardner’s public positions on many aspects of the Earth and environmental sciences reflect his rejection of scientific findings uncovered by decades of research by AGU scientists,” dozens of the group’s members said in a letter criticizing the award’s presentation to Gardner.
The debate is a preview of what is forecast to be a difficult 2020 re-election bid for Gardner. The environment and climate change are likely to be key attack topics for Democrats and the deep-pocketed groups supporting them. Already organizations, including the League of Conservation Voters, are amassing a ledger of Gardner’s votes on the subject as they work to build their case.
And his refusal to stand up to Trump:
The U.S. Senate could a take a historic step toward overriding the Trump administration by withdrawing some military support from Saudi Arabia as early as Monday, but Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, hopes an alternative comes together before that.
“This is a country in a critical part of the region that has played a key role in our work protecting Israel,” Gardner told The Denver Post. “The right question is, how do we protect the innocent people of Saudi Arabia while going after the people responsible for this horrific, heinous murder?”
The murder Gardner referred to is the killing of a journalist named Jamal Khashoggi, who walked into the Saudi consulate in Turkey one day in early October to get documents for a marriage license and never walked out. The CIA and its equivalent in Turkey both concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is responsible for Khashoggi’s murder and likely dismemberment.
“This is a prime example of a human rights violation,” Gardner said.
Gardner’s critics in the Colorado Democratic Party, however, say that’s a reversal from what he told KDMT radio host Jimmy Sengenberger on Nov. 29.
“Well, I would be careful of what the CIA is being accused of saying,” Gardner told Sengenberger then. “And I think that was clear in a briefing yesterday. I can’t get into the details of it, but I would just be very careful about what the CIA does and doesn’t believe.”
The Democratic Primary to take on Gardner is going to be interesting. Stay tuned.
