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Cory Gardner takes the offensive, levels attacks in first U.S. Senate debate against John Hickenlooper

John Frank
The Colorado Sun
Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, left, and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper.
Jesse Paul / Colorado Sun

Republican Cory Gardner hurled attack after attack at his Democratic rival John Hickenlooper, from the opening minutes of the first debate in the U.S. Senate race to his closing statement.

He noted the former governor’s two violations of the state ethics laws, his contempt citation and taxpayer-funded defense attorney, his personal wealth and rides on private jets, his decision to take corporate money to fund positions in his office, his support for closing a coal plant that cost jobs in a rural community and his decision to appoint a donor to the state Supreme Court.

“It’s a very clear contrast between somebody who believes the people of Colorado are first — that’s what I believe — and somebody who believes their own self interests are first and they want to go to Washington to line their own pockets what they’ve done the last eight years as governor,” Gardner said in his opening remarks at a live-streamed debate in Pueblo.



Hickenlooper rolled his eyes, said his opponent was lying and repeatedly dismissed the broadsides as a “wall of words of untruth and distortion” without addressing them.

“Nothing but attacks, accusations,” Hickenlooper said toward the end of the debate. “The question is: Why isn’t Washington working better? Cory’s been there for four years in the House and six in the Senate, and as close as I can tell, it just gets worse and worse and worse. … Until we send new people to Washington nothing is going to change.”



Read the full story via The Colorado Sun.

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