Gardner Cites New Bipartisanship Report That Ignores All His Votes and Stances on Issues

U.S. Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) issued a news release Wednesday about a new report showing Gardner to be “one of the most bipartisan Senators” in Congress.

It turns out the report, produced by Quorum Analytics, a software company, looks at one narrow set of data: the number of bills Gardner co-sponsored with a Democrat as the lead sponsor.

Nothing else was taken into consideration, not Gardner’s actual votes, not the significance or symbolism of the co-sponsored legislation, not his official stances on issues, like guns, climate change, healthcare, and abortion.

Quorum spokeswoman Theresa Hebert said her company is not judging Gardner or any lawmaker but simply demonstrating the “value of our software with the statistics that we have at our disposal to show what’s going on in Congress.”

Asked if she thought Quorum’s report was too narrow and easily manipulated, Hebert said, “There are certainly other ways that you can measure [bipartisanship]. We are specifically looking at that data set. It’s certainly not the only one you could use.”

Gardner issued the news release, titled “Quorum Highlights Senator Gardner’s Strong Bipartisan Record,” and tweet citing the Quorum data.

“Colorado is a fiercely independent state,” said Gardner in the news release. “We judge ideas based on how they will affect the Centennial State, not by the letter that is next to someone’s name. Coloradans expect our elected officials to work across the aisle for the good of our entire state. I’m proud of my bipartisan record of results for Colorado, and I will always place the people of Colorado first.”

Gardner’s news release also cited his fifth-place ranking, earlier this year, by the Lugar Center, as Washington DC think tank, that also used bipartisan co-sponsorships as the basis for a more in-depth analysis.

Asked for his views on Lugar’s report, Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, said he’s “not a fan of using cosponsorship as an indicator; it is a symbolic gesture for the vast majority of bills.”