Fed Up With the Real Thing, Activists Take "Cardboard" Cory Gardner on the Road

Photo: Chase Woodruff


Mateo Lozano wanted to talk to Senator Cory Gardner about his experience as an immigrant — about his family’s background, his brother’s deportation, his precarious status as a DREAMer under an administration that has been hostile to documented and undocumented immigrants alike.

Even as Gardner has launched his 2020 re-election campaign in earnest, however, it hasn’t been easy to find an opportunity to speak to him. On Monday, August 19, in a turn of events that has played out repeatedly over the past few weeks, Lozano and his fellow activists with the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition got word that Gardner would be making an afternoon appearance at an aerospace company in Louisville — but when they showed up, they were turned away by his staff. It was a private event, they were told.

“He holds his town halls in secrecy,” says Lozano, a regional organizer with CIRC. “He only does it by word of mouth, with people that he’s interested in meeting with.”

Gardner’s lack of public appearances and constituent outreach has been a constant source of frustration for activists over the past few years. The Yuma Republican, who faces an uphill battle for re-election in a state that’s trending blue, hasn’t held a public town hall since August 2017. Not long after President Donald Trump’s election kickstarted a new wave of anti-Gardner organizing, a cardboard cutout of the senator used by activists to mock his inaccessibility soon became a fixture at rallies and protests.

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