October 19, 2020 12:27 PM UTC

Oops! Joe Ricketts Botches Cory Gardner Rescue Mission

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• by: Colorado Pols

A press release last Thursday from Democratic U.S. Senate candidate John Hickenlooper’s campaign took note of a late investment in the flagging fortunes of GOP incumbent Sen. Cory Gardner by Joe Ricketts, the billionaire owner of the Chicago Cubs:

With ballots already coming in at record speed, Senator Cory Gardner’s wealthy corporate backers are panicking about losing their top ally in the U.S. Senate and pumping another million dollars into false ads. Hickenlooper for Colorado press secretary Ammar Moussa released the following statement regarding the latest attack from Gardner’s shady billionaire backers:

“With 19 days left to vote in Colorado, Cory Gardner’s billionaire friends are throwing everything and the kitchen sink to attack John Hickenlooper and lie about Gardner’s toxic record. After collecting from Cory Gardner’s trillion dollar tax giveaway, billionaire Joe Ricketts and his super PAC are rewarding Senator Gardner with a million dollars worth of false attack ads and desperate greenwashing. These attacks will do nothing to erase Cory Gardner’s record of rubber stamping Trump’s agenda, from a trillion dollar gift to the wealthiest people and largest corporations to ramming through a Supreme Court nominee while refusing to get desperately-needed COVID relief done.”

The campaign runs through a brief history of Joe Rickett’s lowlights, including some heartfelt Islamophobia and–naturally–“birther” theories about Barack Obama’s citizenship back when that was all the rage. All told, Ricketts is the kind of donor that Gardner probably doesn’t want in the headlines while he struggles with a double-digit deficit in every poll. But with respect to Rickett’s ads for Gardner in Colorado, sharp-eyed observers were quick to spot a more fundamental problem:

That’s the Grand Canyon, folks. In Arizona.

In the annals of Colorado politics, one of the most lampoonable errors that can be committed in campaign ads is the substitution of non-Colorado scenic vistas for perfectly suitable beauty spots that abound in our state. Cory Gardner, who banks heavily on his multi-generational Colorado heritage, has managed to avoid this embarrassing faux pas being attached to his image.

Thanks to Joe Ricketts, Gardner is now the butt of one of Colorado’s most humiliating inside jokes.