January 09, 2019 10:03 AM UTC

While Shutdown Rages, Cory Gardner Raises

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• by: Colorado Pols

American Bridge alerts the world to a fundraiser that took place a short while ago this morning in Washington, D.C. in support of Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado hosted by the ubiquitous Denver-headquartered law firm of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck:

A tracker from Bridge caught Gardner headed into the “undisclosed location”:

Right now, @SenCoryGardner is cozying up to Washington lobbyists and collecting checks at a fundraiser while 800,000 Americans go without a paycheck because of the #TrumpShutdown.

His empty calls to open the government mean nothing. It’s time for him to act. #COSen #copolitics pic.twitter.com/RAFFrNrlsL

— American Bridge (@American_Bridge) January 9, 2019

Needless to say the optics of Gardner holding a high-dollar D.C. fundraiser while federal employees in Colorado file for unemployment and the first missed payday for hundreds of thousands more cross the nation rapidly approaches are extremely poor, and undermines his credibility after nominally breaking with President Donald Trump over the shutdown. Every day the shutdown drags on now, Gardner proves himself ineffective at the one thing a majority of Colorado voters might value: persuading fellow his Republicans to do the right thing. Meanwhile, the Republican base fumes.

And when Gardner is cashing checks instead of taking every possible action to force a vote on reopening the government, he’s simply part of the problem–and he doesn’t deserve the praise he got a week ago.