December 17, 2014 12:54 PM UTC

Owen Hill Has a Different Story for You (and Cory Gardner)

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• by: Colorado Pols

We were recently forwarded an email that State Sen. Owen Hill sent to supporters this week, and we must admit to being impressed; when it comes to self-promotional nonsense messaging that ignores history, Hill is a true talent.

Hill spends most of his email discussing Republican victories in the 2014 election, though he adds unnecessarily, "The election results were not what I set out to achieve personally…" You may recall that Hill was a candidate for the U.S. Senate before Republican Rep. Cory Gardner kicked his ball over the fence and told him to go home. Here's how Hill prefers that you remember the events of March 2014:

When I stepped out of the Senate race in March, I was vocal about the importance of working together as a Republican team. Representative Cory Gardner was the right person for the Senate race this year, and Colorado is better for it.

Hill was most definitely not excited to see Gardner enter the race for Senate last spring, telling reporters that he was "pressured" to drop out of the race. As the Colorado Springs Gazette reported in March:

Hill said Gardner came to him weeks ago and pressured him to drop out of the race. '

'It's party leadership trying to decide who gets to run," Hill said…

"This is the exact same corruption and back-room deals that have caused the Republican party to lose elections year after year," Hill said. [Pols emphasis]

Even after Gardner had entered the race for Senate, the national Tea Party Express made it clear that they were still backing Hill. While Gardner probably would have had little trouble dispatching Hill in a Republican Primary, a contested GOP Primary would have significantly complicated Gardner's backtracking on issues such as Personhood. Gardner's surprise flip-flop on support for Personhood occurred just a few weeks after he announced his bid for the Senate…but more tellingly, just a few days after Hill finally backed out of the race.

If Gardner had to face a June Primary against Hill (or anyone else, for that matter), he probably could never have dropped his support for Personhood; it may not have cost Gardner the GOP nomination for Senate, but it certainly would have made it considerably more difficult to maintain the backing of that portion of the Republican base that keeps abortion issues first and foremost in their minds. Even a small erosion of support from that base could have been enough for Democratic Sen. Mark Udall to hold his seat.

Now that Gardner has been elected to the U.S. Senate, Hill has to be careful to un-burn any bridges while still promoting himself as a potential rising star in the Republican Party. Hence this paragraph:

While I am excited for Senator-elect Gardner's political future, I am also encouraged to continue to play a key role in Colorado politics as the Chairman of the Senate Education Committee. I am excited to be working in a realm that has such tangible effects on our children's futures. Here is one article published about me that was encouraging.

We left the link in place in the paragraph above because it is a perfect example of everything that Hill is trying to accomplish in his own re-branding. Check out the date on the link — it's from a CBS4 story on March 20, 2014.