March 21, 2019 12:08 PM UTC

No Seriously, Where Is Cory Gardner This Recess?

• 9 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

We joked earlier today about a photo sent out by Sen. Cory Gardner’s social media accounts featuring Gardner behind the controls of a commercial aircraft, which as it turns out was a simulator at the United Airlines pilot training facility in the Stapleton neighborhood of Denver taken yesterday. So far as we know, that’s the only word that’s leaked out about Sen. Gardner’s whereabouts during the March congressional recess. ShareBlue’s Emily Singer reported earlier this week:

This week is a district work period for members of Congress — better known as a recess week, when lawmakers head home to meet with constituents and get a feel for what the voters who sent them to Capitol Hill want to see them work on in the nation’s capital.

Yet three vulnerable Republican senators up for re-election in 2020, who just voted to ignore the Constitution and uphold Trump’s fake national emergency, have no public events listed for constituents to attend, according to a review of senators’ official websites, campaign websites and social media accounts…

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), arguably the most vulnerable Republican incumbent senator facing re-election in 2020, also has no public events listed on his websites nor social media accounts. [Pols emphasis] Gardner was rebuked by his hometown newspaper, which revoked its endorsement of the senator after Gardner’s vote to uphold the fake emergency.

Sen. Gardner’s lack of accessibility by his constituents back home in Colorado is a long-running matter of record, with his last public town hall event apparently having occurred all the way back in November of 2017 in Pueblo. Gardner’s 2017 round of town halls were generally considered to be a public relations disaster, after angry constituents vocally rejected unsatisfying answers that did little to improve Gardner’s dented image.

But when you don’t do them at all, and everybody knows you’re in town…that’s worse.