Democratic challenger John Hickenlooper defeated Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner on Tuesday in a closely watched contest that will help determine which party controls Congress next year.
Hickenlooper had 54% percent of the vote with 85% of ballots counted Tuesday, and Gardner had 44%. Three other candidates split the remaining votes.
It’s unclear so far whether Democrats will win enough seats nationwide to take over control of the U.S. Senate.
“Tonight, your message is loud and clear: It’s time to put the poisonous politics of this era behind us and come together to move forward,” Hickenlooper said in a victory speech on Facebook Live shortly after 8 p.m.
“Clearly, people are saying it’s time to turn the page. It’s time for a different approach. It’s time to start solving problems and helping people and that’s exactly what I intend to do,” Hickenlooper added.
Gardner called Hickenlooper to concede before thanking his supporters, staff and family in a speech at 7:40 p.m. He said Hickenlooper’s success will be Colorado’s success, and offered to help smooth Hickenlooper’s transition to the Senate.
“To the people of Colorado, thank you for this great honor to serve you. This nation’s better days are ahead of us, and let none of us forget that,” Gardner said.
Hickenlooper, a Denver Democrat and former two-term governor, began the day as the front-runner following a month of polls that showed him with a significant lead over Gardner, a Yuma Republican.
Nicole Wilson, an Adams County resident who voted at Ball Arena, cast her ballot for Hickenlooper because she thought he was a good mayor of Denver. As Jon Sierra dropped off his ballot in Denver’s Sunnyside neighborhood, he said, “Hick deserves a shot.”
Gardner parlayed short careers in the Colorado General Assembly and U.S. House into a 2014 run for Senate, where he rode anti-Obama sentiment to an unexpected and narrow win over then-Sen. Mark Udall. But anti-Trump sentiment and Colorado’s increasingly Democratic lean made him an underdog from the start against Hickenlooper, whose missteps did little to shrink his polling lead.
Laurie Sanchez, who described herself as a Democrat at heart, cast votes for Trump and Gardner on Tuesday because she believes they will not pass any strict gun control measures.
Hickenlooper began the 2020 election cycle as a presidential candidate and repeatedly vowed not to run for Senate, saying he was not “cut out” for the job, that he would “hate it,” that being a senator would not bring him “any satisfaction or delight,” and that he would likely not be a successful candidate or senator.
But after dropping out of the presidential race in August 2019 and at the urging of national Democrats, he announced a run for Senate. In the weeks after, several top Democratic candidates dropped out and threw their support behind Hickenlooper. Eventually only progressive candidate Andrew Romanoff remained, and Hickenlooper easily defeated him in a primary election June 30.
That night, Gardner kicked off the general election race by calling Hickenlooper “the most corrupt governor in the history of Colorado,” and he rarely pulled punches in the four months and four days that followed, using debates, television ads and social media to endlessly criticize Hickenlooper for twice violating the state’s gift ban and for refusing to comply with a subpoena to testify about the violations.
“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 that they want to go to Washington to line their own pockets,” Gardner said during a debate in Pueblo last month.
Hickenlooper, on the other hand, largely focused on policy, namely health care, and Gardner’s support of President Donald Trump, harking back often to a rally the two Republicans hosted in Colorado Springs this February. Hickenlooper used attack ads for the first time in his 17-year political career, saying they were necessary given a barrage of attacks from Gardner and his GOP allies.
“Donald Trump told us Cory Gardner has been with him 100%, not with Colorado,” one of Hickenlooper’s final television ads stated. “How’s that working out for you?”
Through it all, public polls remained virtually unchanged. In August 2019, they showed Hickenlooper leading by 13 percentage points. An October 2020 poll showed the same margin. On average, the Democrat led by about 10 percentage points in the month before Tuesday’s election. At no point in the 14 months after Hickenlooper joined the race did a poll show Gardner tied or in the lead.
“I don’t think there’s any question that (Trump) was the drag,” said Ryan Winger, a Republican-leaning pollster with Magellan Strategies. “I think the results would look better across the board without President Trump being an anchor on the ticket.”
Staff writer Sam Tabachnik contributed to this report.
