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WASHINGTON, D.C. – The League of Conservation Voters today launched a new nearly $1 million television ad campaign in the Colorado Senate race highlighting Congressman Cory Gardner’s attempts to mask his record of fervent opposition to environmental protection and women’s health care. The ad, “Score,” begins running today in the Denver media market, and will run through Election Day.

“Cory Gardner’s slick TV ads can’t hide his abysmal record. He’s consistently voted to weaken existing water and air safeguards to protect the profits of polluters who support his campaign. Despite what Cory Gardner wants you to believe, he also still supports a federal ‘personhood bill’ that could ban common forms of birth control,” said Daniel J. Weiss, LCV Senior Vice President for Campaigns. 

“Cory Gardner is hiding his real record of opposing protections for Colorado’s air, land, water and Coloradans public health. The truth is the real Gardner will say and do anything to get elected. Coloradans know better and will reject his extreme agenda,” said Pete Maysmith, Executive Director of Conservation Colorado.

The ad highlights Congressman Gardner’s record of protection for polluters and attacks on women’s health care. Congressman Gardner voted to dismantle the Clean Water Act and gut the public health basis of the Clean Air Act. He wrote a bill to eliminate the cleanup of many toxic waste sites that would force taxpayers to pay for cleanups instead of polluters. Gardner wrote an energy plan that prioritized oil and gas companies’ interests over children’s health, hunters, fishermen, and national security. 

He also sided with out-of-state energy companies by supporting a ballot initiative that would have diverted millions of dollars from Colorado water projects to fund transportation. He’s also voted to protect oil subsidies, including $53 billion in taxpayer subsidies for oil companies operating offshore. Gardner attempted to mask his anti-environmental record by posing in front of wind turbines, even though the Associated Press described the legislation he touted in the ad as a “failed measure” that was “deemed useless for not enabling a single project.”  

Congressman Gardner is a co-sponsor of the Life at Conception Act, H.R. 1091, a federal personhood bill that could ban common forms of birth control and threaten in vitro fertilization. He has refused to remove his name from the bill, falsely claiming that “there is no federal personhood bill,” which earned him the non-partisan FactCheck.org’s “Whopper of the Week.”

Congressman Gardner received a 4% score on LCV’s 2013 National Environmental Scorecard and he has a 9% lifetime score. He’s received a 0% score on the Planned Parenthood Action Fund Scorecard. Documentation for the ad is available here. 

LCV named Gardner to its Dirty Dozen program, and has previously released two other television ads in the race, reminding voters that he sides with the out of state oil billionaire Koch Brothers, whose front groups have spent  millions of dollars attacking his opponent. Gardner took hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from the oil and gas industry while repeatedly voting to protect their tax breaks.

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Paid for by the League of Conservation Voters, www.lcv.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.