Gardner: Rural GOP Vote Needed To Stop Front Range “Liberal” Agenda

U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner didn’t appear in the Denver area, but he made campaign stops last week in rural parts of the state to encourage fellow Republicans to vote for Walker Stapleton, the GOP candidate for governor, and other allied candidates.

At a Grand Junction event, Gardner said rural Republicans needed to vote to stop “some kind of liberal policy agenda that’s going to be run through the Front Range only.”

“This is an opportunity for Grand Junction, for Mesa County, from corner to corner in this state, including the part of the state where I live way out on the Eastern Plains, that every job matters in this state, that every idea can be put to good use in this state, and not just some kind of liberal policy or agenda that’s going to be run through the Front Range only,” Gardner told the Grand Junction Sentinel.

At a Greeley stop, after a protester shouted that Gardener had been silent about Trump’s ramped-up rhetoric, Gardner told the audience:

“There are men and women in this room that fought for this country so she could have the right to do that,” Gardner said, as reported by the Greeley Tribune. “And God bless each and every one of them that stood up for this country time and time again. What we don’t do is we’re not going to shut people down.”

Other than his stops across rural Colorado last Thursday, Gardner has kept a low profile in the midterm election. He’s made no appearances on conservative talk radio, a favorite media platform for the senator, and he’s been largely absent from the news.

Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet made appearances along the Front Range with a blue get-out-the-vote bus last week–as did Democrat John Hickenlooper.

Hickenlooper was active in supporting key state senate candidates Jessie Danielson of Wheat Ridge and Faith Winter of Thornton, whose races will determine if Democrats will control the chamber and likely state government along with it.

Gardner is not on the ballot in this election, but, like Trump, will be up for re-election in 2020. No Colorado Democrat has announced a challenge.