May 15, 2020 10:03 AM UTC

Gee Thanks, Cory: How Gardner's "Side Deals" Could Backfire

• 4 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Colorado Democrats give this ad two thumbs down:

“Senator Gardner’s deceptive ads won’t change the fact that he’s stood by President Trump 100 percent of the time as they’ve played political games with lifesaving medical supplies and tried to yank health care coverage away from Coloradans when we need it most,” said Colorado Democratic Party Chair Morgan Carroll. “Coloradans can see through his Washington spin and know that Senator Gardner is just another politician selling out Colorado for Donald Trump.”

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Down by deepening double digits in every poll, America’s Most Vulnerable Senator™ Cory Gardner’s re-election campaign is nonetheless very excited to bring Coloradans a new TV spot, which highlights the deals Gardner has made to obtain personal protective equipment for Colorado during the COVID-19 pandemic:

At first glance, there’s nothing outrageously amiss with this positively themed ad, although the contention that the massive donations of protective equipment from nations like Taiwan and South Korea of which Colorado is receiving just a fraction are wholly the result of Sen. Cory Gardner’s “relationships” with officials in those nations is questionable. But even with reasonable doubt on that question, much like when Gardner managed to obtain 100 ventilators via a “personal request” after an order by the state for 500 ventilators was co-opted by the feds, there’s little point in being ungrateful for what we manage to get regardless of how we get it.

For Gardner, the problem here is more nuanced.

For anyone who has followed the story of Colorado’s struggles to obtain supplies of all kinds needed to respond to the pandemic from ventilators to face masks, the federal government’s failure to provide these supplies, while turning states’ attempts to obtain supplies ourselves like Donald Trump told us to into a fraught game of literal secrecy and smuggling, is very plainly the overarching problem. No one can complain that Gardner is working his “connections” overseas to obtain needed equipment for Colorado via side deals, but without an acknowledgement from Gardner of the larger failure at the federal level he is trying to mitigate–and that’s if you believe Cory Gardner is the sole motivator for the generosity of these donor nations–what he’s really doing is helping cover up Trump’s failures.

This isn’t hard to understand. The forgetful news cycle may not account every time for this unchanging reality, but the polls showing Trump underwater and Cory Gardner sliding into oblivion as the COVID-19 crisis grinds on tell us Colorado voters get it.