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September 03, 2020 05:11 PM UTC

Cory Gardner Likes Talking Secession, Sometimes

  • 5 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
The flag of Cory Gardner’s State of North Colorado.

We took note last week of an interview of Sen. Cory Gardner by CBS4’s Shaun Boyd, in which Gardner cited the failed 2013 secession movement by 11 rural Colorado counties as evidence of a “silent majority” that would rise up to help him beat John Hickenlooper in the November elections. It’s a head-scratching claim to say the least, since we broke down the actual votes in 2013 in favor of secession, and not only did secession go down by a majority of individual votes, but a majority of the counties that participated including the most populous, Weld County, voted no.

And as the Denver Post’s Justin Wingerter reports in today’s edition of The Spot newsletter, this interview wasn’t the only time Gardner has mentioned the secession movement as some kind of ace in the electoral hole:

Gardner, who lives and votes in one of the 11 counties that considered seceding in 2013, has invoked that quixotic attempt at creating a new state on several occasions this year – and blamed Hickenlooper for the fact that it happened.

“Remember what happened in rural Colorado,” Gardner said during a virtual event in late May. “You had a whole bunch of counties that tried to secede under his leadership and what he did.”

On June 30, the night Hickenlooper won the Democratic primary, Gardner told Colorado Politics, “He needs to explain why 20% of the state tried to secede when he was governor.”

In response to all these mentions, the Post tried to get an answer to a germane question: how did Gardner of Yuma County vote on secession?

Gardner’s Yuma County voted to secede but Gardner has never said how he voted. He was a congressman at the time and claimed that it would be inappropriate to comment on state issues. When asked this week whether Gardner voted to secede, his campaign did not respond. [Pols emphasis]

It seems that secession is strictly a red meat for the base affair–and when reporters ask follow-up questions about Gardner’s resurgence of support for one of the greatest jokes of the 2010s in Colorado politics, he can’t be reached for comment. After Gardner’s CBS4 interview, we wondered if secession had become a regular part of his stump speech as opposed to a one-off throwaway line. And sure enough, it’s in his script.

We hope every interview with Gardner “goes deep” on secession now. There’s so much to unpack.

Comments

5 thoughts on “Cory Gardner Likes Talking Secession, Sometimes

    1. A brutal piece on Gardner in today’s Triad: (a conservative newsletter) 

      The Republican Party is Toxic

      Anyway, what I want to talk about is Cory Gardner and the Republican party.

      There’s new polling out today which suggests that Gardner isn’t just toast: The toast is on fire, the fire has turned the toast to charred carbon, and the remains of the toast have been shot into the sun and reduced to their component atoms.

      Have a look at the numbers.

      Gardner is an incumbent senator in a purple state and he’s polling at 39 percent among likely voters.

      39 FORKING PERCENT.

      When a political party sees itself not as a vehicle for reaching certain ends, but as an end in itself, it ceases to be a useful tool for society. It becomes more like a toxin.

      The reason the current version of the Republican party is so dangerous isn’t just because it was hijacked by a demagogic, aspiring authoritarian. It’s because the party was lead by people such as Cory Gardner.

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