U.S. Senate candidate Cory Gardner talks with Joe Schiraldi of Left Hand Brewing Co. in Longmont during a tour. (Matthew Jonas, LongmontTimes-Call)
Nearly eight months after Republican Cory Gardner's stunning decision to give up a safe congressional seat and take on Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, the left is still dazed and confused.
How can a guy who backed anti-abortion measures that Coloradans overwhelmingly defeated, who was elected with Tea Party support, who once was ranked the 10th most conservative member of the U.S. House how can he be virtually tied with his opponent in a state that has been trending blue?
An upbeat personality helps. As does having a Democratic president in the White House with falling approval ratings.
"We watched as Mark Udall continued to vote 99 percent of the time with President (Barack) Obama, and he continued to rubber stamp a failed agenda," Gardner told supporters gathered last month at an Italian restaurant in Brighton. "The president of the United States came to Colorado in July to host a fundraiser for Mark Udall. Mark was so ashamed of his record he couldn't even show up. Had I known Mark wasn't going to be at his own event, I would have been there."
The laughter nearly drowned out Gardner's next comment: "I would have introduced the president to the 340,000 Coloradans who had their health care plans canceled, thanks to Mark Udall's deciding vote."
Gardner had announced in June 2013 he would not challenge Udall, saying, "I'm not in a hurry to run for another office." But after he and his wife, Jaime, talked about where the country was headed, they decided they had to take a risk and try to get a Republican majority in the Senate in 2015.
Related: Sen. Mark Udall's accomplishments are an issue in tough re-election
Throughout the campaign, Gardner has rewritten his record, contends Amy Runyon-Harms, executive director of the liberal group Progress Now.
"Cory Gardner is trying everything possible, including sending out mailers covered with birth control pills and standing in front of windmills in ads, in his thinly veiled attempt to con Coloradans into believing he's something that he's not," she said.
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Republican Cory Gardner defends conservative record in Senate bid