“Their own statements before, during and after the attack make clear: the attack was done for Donald Trump, at his instructions and to fulfill his wishes,” said the Denver Democrat, a prosecutor in Trump’s second impeachment trial. “Donald Trump had sent them there. They truly believed that the whole intrusion was at the president����ap orders and we know that because they said so.”

DeGette was the first of the nine House impeachment managers to speak Wednesday. She did not speak during the trial’s first two days — the only prosecutor not to.

DeGette’s 23-minute presentation made frequent use of videos, audio clips, court documents and news articles to show that many Jan. 6 rioters believed they were following Trump’s orders when they ransacked the Capitol, beat police officers — killing one — and searched for politicians to harm, including then-Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

, who faces federal charges related to the riot, is saying, “Let����ap call Trump. He’ll be happy. We’re fighting for Trump.” In another video, accused rioter , “I thought I was following my president. I thought we were following what we were called to do. He asked us to fly there, he asked us to be there. I was doing what he asked us to do.”

Trump faces one article of impeachment, for incitement of insurrection. The impeachment managers, including DeGette and fellow Colorado Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, ended their arguments Thursday after two days. Trump’s attorneys will make their case Friday and possibly Saturday. Senators will ask questions and vote on any procedural measures over the weekend, and a vote on conviction or acquittal will follow.

Colorado Republicans in Congress have criticized the impeachment trial as unconstitutional political theatre. On Thursday morning, Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Silt on whether the “sham impeachment trial” is “a waste of our time and taxpayer money.” The four options were, “Yes!” “Absolutely Yes!” “100% Yes!” and “Heck Yes!”

“As the Left discusses political violence this week, let����ap not forget the violence of BLM and ANTIFA that happened for months on end this summer,” , referring to the summer of 2020. She attached a video of Black Lives Matter protests and left-wing riots last year.

DeGette returned to the Senate floor later Wednesday for a 22-minute speech about the harm done on Jan. 6 and the ongoing risk from domestic extremists. She read social media posts written by Trump supporters who promised further violence after the Capitol riot.

“These extremist groups were emboldened because President Trump told them repeatedly that their insurrectionist activities were the pinnacle of patriotism,” the congresswoman alleged. “Well, let today be the day that we reclaim the definition of patriotism. Impeachment is not to punish, but to prevent.”

Neguse, a Lafayette Democrat, gave a nine-minute speech late Wednesday afternoon. He attempted to pre-emptively cut down arguments from Trump’s lawyers that the former president’s remarks on Jan. 6 were free speech protected by the 1st Amendment.

“No president, no matter their politics or the politics of their followers — conservative, liberal or anything else — no president can do what President Trump did,” Neguse said. “Because this isn’t about politics, it����ap about his refusal to accept the outcome of the election and his decision to incite an insurrection. There’s no serious argument that the 1st Amendment protects that.”

“Usually politicians don’t slam the door shut on Latino voters so abruptly,” said state Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat. “Usually they Hispander for a few months after the election,” she added, using a pejorative term that refers to political pandering to Hispanics.

with eight Democrats joining all Republicans in favor. But because it is non-binding, it����ap unlikely to have any effect on Congress’ upcoming coronavirus relief legislation. Under current law, people in the country illegally are already prohibited from receiving stimulus checks.

“Budget resolution amendments are non-binding and lead to exactly the kind of circus that makes Washington so famously dysfunctional,” a spokeswoman for Hickenlooper said. “Instead of playing political games, John is laser-focused on getting us through the pandemic, rebuilding the economy and finding a long-term solution to fix our broken immigration system.”

The vote came during a U.S. Senate process colloquially known on Capitol Hill as “vote-a-rama” during which hundreds of non-binding amendments are decided on over the course of many hours. The minority party – in this case, Republicans – use the amendment votes to send messages.

Immigrant rights activists say Hickenlooper sent the wrong message with his.

“Colorado did not elect John Hickenlooper to the Senate so he could cast chicken[expletive] votes,” said Hans Meyer, a Denver immigration attorney.

The Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition called it a “backstab.” The Colorado Working Families Party called his vote “unacceptable.” Angela Cobián, treasurer of the Denver Board of Education, called it “exceptionally disappointing.”

Sen. Michael Bennet, also a Denver Democrat, voted nay on the Republican amendment Thursday, leading to criticism from the Colorado Republican Party.

“Sadly, Senator Bennet chose to side with his liberal allies in giving Americans’ hard earned taxpayer dollars to illegal immigrants — those funds should instead go to help Colorado schools, teachers, businesses and families,” Colorado GOP spokesman Joe Jackson said.

A of 16 moderate and centrist senators — eight from each political party, including Hickenlooper — have a raison d’etre to write a COVID-19 relief package that will attract 60 votes in a U.S. Senate that’s split 50-50.

“I think everyone’s got a sense of urgency,” Hickenlooper said in a Jan. 25 interview, soon after the coalition met with White House advisors. “This has to happen in real time. I think everyone also realizes there has to be a certain amount of compromise from everybody.”

Fresh off November victories that handed them control of the presidency and Congress for the first time in a decade, Democrats must decide whether to craft a bipartisan bill or push their own legislation through Congress using a budgetary procedure known as reconciliation. It requires only a simple majority to pass through the Senate.

Some progressive activists are growing impatient with bipartisanship at a time when Coloradans are strained by the dual crises of COVID-19 and the economic downturn it has wrought.

“It����ap frustrating that that seems to weigh so heavily and move the discussions,” said Andrea Chiriboga-Flor, state director of 9to5 Colorado, which advocates for working women. “Sometimes it feels like catering (to Republicans) outweighs the desperate needs of people and what they’re going through right now. There’s no question how bad people are suffering.”

The differences between a bipartisan bill and a Democratic package could be large, though much remains in flux. Democrats have pushed for an injection of cash to state and local governments, which Republicans generally oppose. Democrats have been willing to drop that from past relief bills in order to achieve bipartisanship, and may have to again this time.

“I know it����ap been kind of a sticking point and the decision was to leave it for later in that last package that we did at the end of the year,” said U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, an Arvada Democrat and advocate for state and local funding. “Well, now is later. Now it����ap time to do it.”

And while the group of 16 agrees on prioritization for vaccines, the senators all have a range of other priorities. For Hickenlooper, a brewpub founder, small businesses must be a focus. He was perturbed that within President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan, less than 3% of spending would go to small businesses — and he let White House advisors hear about that last weekend.

“They make up almost 50% of the private workforce,” Hickenlooper said of small businesses. “I don’t think that (funding) is sufficient and I made my little pitch that this is a place that really needs to be looked at more closely.”

Colorado’s unemployment rate is 8.4%, considerably higher than the national average and drastically higher than the state’s 2.5% rate before the pandemic. The leisure and hospitality sectors are struggling. Only moratoriums on evictions have saved some from homelessness.

“So many people in Black and brown communities are in shambles, so I do think that����ap problematic, to overemphasize how important (bipartisanship) is versus meeting the needs of people,” said Chiriboga-Flor, whose group is pushing for a long-term eviction moratorium to be included in Congress’ next package. A short-term moratorium is in place through March.

Liberal critics have been irked by Hickenlooper’s steadfast faith in bipartisanship throughout his political career. His membership in the new group of 16 senators is an early test of bipartisanship’s odds, as well as his optimism, in the 117th Congress.

“With the Senate split 50-50, if you have 16 senators working together who say, listen, let����ap come up with a bipartisan approach, that����ap going to have an awful lot of impact,” said Joe Allen, a former staffer to Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Ind. Allen is the executive director of Bayh-Dole 40, a nonprofit that celebrates a bipartisan 1980 agreement between Bayh and former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan.

“For this group of 16 to succeed, they have to pick issues where they really can say, let����ap work together on this and we’ll put the other things aside. If they try to work on everything, that����ap just going to bog them down,” Allen added.

The group faces strong headwinds in trying to compile a massive — and massively expensive — relief package that can garner 60 votes in the Senate. Perlmutter, a longtime friend and ally of Hickenlooper, said this is the new senator’s strong suit.

“This is a democracy,” Hickenlooper said in an interview, “and too often when you try to jam policy positions through, it makes future improvements of the policy more difficult and makes it more difficult to get other policies through.

“President Biden ran on his belief in a bipartisan approach to solving the nation’s problems, wherever possible, and I said that myself many times during the election. I think we should try to work on things from a bipartisan perspective, certainly at first.”

Lizeth Chacon, executive director of the Colorado People’s Alliance, said the impoverished and struggling people of Colorado are “looking for folks to stop the politicking” and find solutions.

“That����ap the frustration in our community. A lot of the time we just see folks going back and forth and focusing more on their political career or alignment with their party,” she said. “What we’re looking for from our congressional delegation is just to act, because our communities have been waiting for months.”

For people, policy and Colorado politics

What’s The Spot? You’re reading an installment of our weekly politics newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered straight in your inbox.

In a small, dwindling number of hours, 2020 will end. Nothing can be said of it that has not already been said of roaches, rotten eggs and root canals, so let’s leave it at that and dive right in: Here is the best, worst, dumbest and weirdest of Colorado politics in that no good, very bad year, as compiled by reporter Justin Wingerter in consultation with several political observers.

Best federal campaign: Lauren Boebert

When you’re a millennial high school dropout with no political experience and little money who manages to beat a five-term incumbent congressman by 10 percentage points, you’ve earned this superlative. No contest.

“Lauren Boebert accomplished something no Colorado candidate had done since 1972, unseating an incumbent member of Congress in a primary election,” said Dick Wadhams, a former chair of the Colorado Republican Party. “Even though Trump endorsed five-term Congressman Scott Tipton, she convinced Third District primary voters she was the real Trump candidate.”

With a potent Trumpian mix of social media bombast, ultra-conservative platitudes and an unfailing ability to bring attention to herself, Boebert shocked Tipton on June 30. Then she won a general election contest against the far more politically experienced Diane Mitsch Bush on Nov. 3, making her a rising Republican star in Colorado — albeit one who since winning her election has made the biggest wave by backing outgoing President Donald Trump’s attempts to cast doubt on his loss.

Worst campaign: Scott Tipton

When you’re a five-term incumbent congressman who lost to a millennial high school dropout with no political experience and little money by 10 percentage points, you’ve earned this superlative. No contest.

“It would be inaccurate to say that Scott Tipton and his campaign team fell asleep; they were in a coma,” says Jason Bane of Colorado Pols, a Democratic blog.

Aside from sending a few mailers bashing Boebert, Tipton never seemed to acknowledge he had a primary challenger. He skipped forums and did not run TV or radio ads. Then he lost. Badly. There’s not much more to say about Tipton’s campaign because, well, there wasn’t much of a Tipton campaign.

Scott Tipton's primary campaign in :

— J. Miles Coleman (@JMilesColeman)

Best legislative campaign: Kevin Priola

The state senator, a Republican from Henderson, continues to defy expectations, demographics and his party’s decline in the state. How? By combining with a centrist, bipartisan record. The result was in an otherwise Democratic .

Both parties poured massive amounts of money into the legislative race, and Democrats attacked Priola on several fronts. But just as in 2016, when Priola first ran and won, the Republican held on, sketching out a blueprint for how Republicans can be victorious in Colorado’s moderately Democratic areas.

“He went door-to-door in the middle of a pandemic and made the case for reelection despite a brutal barrage from progressive interests and a real lack of quality air support from right-wing outside groups,” said Ian Silverii, executive director of Progress Now Colorado. “Priola is a household name in Adams County to be sure, and that gave him a good head start, but running against that many headwinds and still eking out a victory deserves recognition.”

Best local government campaign: Alexis King

Since 2004, district attorneys in the 1st Judicial District (Jefferson and Gilpin counties) have been Republican. Four years ago, Republican Pete Weir won by a solid seven percentage points. Four years before that, Democrats didn’t even nominate a candidate.

Skip ahead to November. Alexis King, a reform-minded Democrat, faced Matthew Durkin, a Republican with decades of experience and the endorsement of The Post. She won by nearly 10 points, a 17-point party swing from 2016, and will be the first woman to hold the position of top prosecutor in the 1st Judicial District.

Best ad: Andrew Romanoff, “”

This mid-June ad from the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate was eye-catching, memorable, and accurate. It used former Gov. John Hickenlooper’s famous 2010 shower ad to brutal effect and encapsulated the Senate contender’s awful June in a punchy 30 seconds.

So much so that Colorado’s Democratic establishment rushed to Hickenlooper’s aid. Angrier than mosquitoes in a mannequin factory, they issued statement after sanctimonious statement, decrying the attack ad as too mean.

Worst ad: Giffords, “”

This August spot from the gun control group features a man we are told is Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner but who looks more like an overweight Jeff Daniels. Setting aside the fact that guns were not a top issue for voters (this was August 2020), the supposed purpose of the ad — to criticize Gardner for opposing background checks — is lost in strange imagery, like chest hair coming through MAGA pajamas.

Worst political blunder (tie): Hancock’s travel

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s decision to travel for Thanksgiving, after telling Denverites and city staff not to, was immediately criticized by public health officials and politicians in both major political parties. Democrats distanced themselves while Republicans and anti-shutdown conservatives had a field day with it — for weeks.

Today's cover: Democrat hypocrites are undermining COVID with ‘do as I say, not as I do’ attitude

— New York Post (@nypost)

Worst political blunder (tie): Hick’s contempt

In a slew of unforced errors just weeks before his June primary election, John Hickenlooper refused to appear at a virtual hearing of the Independent Ethics Commission, fought a subpoena in court, lost in court, still refused to comply with the subpoena, and was held in contempt, all because he didn’t like virtual hearings.

His decisions, and those of his lawyers, generated weeks of bad headlines and Republican ad material while accomplishing absolutely nothing. In the end, Hickenlooper still had to testify about his multiple gift ban violations. The virtual format he wasted time and taxpayer money fighting worked just fine after all.

“Because of Hick’s own arrogance, resources national Democrats could have deployed elsewhere were instead poured into the primary to rescue his campaign,” says Kyle Kohli with Compass Colorado, a conservative group.

Despite himself, Hickenlooper pulled off wins against Romanoff and then Gardner.

Greatest sacrifice for a campaign: Teddy Hickenlooper

Look, no teenager playing hoops in the driveway wants to go up for a fadeaway only to be blocked by his or her 68-year-old dad. Much respect to Teddy Hickenlooper for enduring that indignity in aid of his father’s U.S. Senate campaign.

In May, the Hickenlooper campaign posted a video of its candidate swatting Teddy’s shot, walking over to a camera and vowing to “block Mitch McConnell from the chokehold he has on the U.S. Senate.” The video was mocked by some — including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — but proved popular, racking up hundreds of thousands of views.

This man embarrassed his son for a campaign ad and I’m crying

— Anthony Raia (@anthonyraia_)

Need more 2020 politics?

Here’s our list of the top 10 political stories of the year.

As always, forward this newsletter to your colleagues and encourage them to . And to support the important journalism we do, you can become a Denver Post subscriber .

People who worked with Hickenlooper when he was Denver’s mayor and Colorado’s governor, including three former chiefs of staff, say his legacy in the Senate is more likely to lie in coalition building than in major legislation or a rise to leadership. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, has routinely told skeptical interviewers and crowds that he can bridge the deep partisan divides of the Senate.

“John’s going to come to the job with confidence about where we need to head, and I don’t think he’ll get pushed around or intimidated by people that are bad actors or malevolent actors and cynics,” said Sen. Michael Bennet, who was Hickenlooper’s chief of staff at the mayor’s office.

Doug Friednash, a chief of staff to Hickenlooper when he was governor, said his former boss has been unfairly chastised for believing he can work well with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican.

“That����ap not some ginned-up idea that they fed to him from some focus group. That����ap just who he is. I could see John resurrecting a Gang of Eight,” said Friednash, referring to a bipartisan group of senators who worked with some success on immigration reform in 2013. Bennet was a member.

Hickenlooper, who turns 69 in February, will be in the history of the Senate. Among the few who joined the upper chamber at his age, even fewer served more than a single term, and Hickenlooper has said he doesn’t plan to stay long. in September, “I’m old enough, I’m never going to get seniority, I’m not going to be fighting to be the chair of a committee.”

“I’m going to be that foot soldier in the trenches that takes the time, weeknights, and weekends to build relationships with people in my party and the other party, and really find out where are those places” for compromise, he said then.

During a candidate forum last October, Hickenlooper listed three Senate committees he would like to join: Commerce, Appropriations and Foreign Relations. Two of those — Commerce and Foreign Relations — Sen. Cory Gardner is currently a member of. Commerce, Hickenlooper said, is critical to Colorado.

“And I think you have to look at Appropriations because that determines where the money goes. I’d also look at Foreign Relations. If you look at what has happened in American foreign policy, our president has betrayed our allies and betrayed the national interests of America,” he said then.

As of Friday afternoon, it still wasn’t clear whether Hickenlooper’s party will be in the Senate majority or minority next year, though the latter appears more likely. Hickenlooper woke up Wednesday as Colorado’s senator-elect but disappointed by Democratic losses in other Senate races across the country. With 60 votes needed to pass most legislation, bipartisanship is a necessity in the upper chamber, regardless of party control.

“The Senate is a peculiar place,” said Bennet. “It����ap a place where one senator can do a tremendous amount of damage; one senator can hold everything up. But it����ap also a place where unusual coalitions of people can come together and overcome the intransigence and the special interests that are inlaid around the place.”

Roxane White, another former Hickenlooper chief of staff, said that while Hickenlooper has never been a legislator, he was closely involved in legislation and budgets when governor and mayor. He knew whip counts, knew who his allies were, and wasn’t afraid to work the phones to win over holdouts, she said.

“It����ap a different world for him, but it is not an unfamiliar world,” White said of legislating.

Hickenlooper’s tenure will be watched skeptically by progressives, who have been annoyed with the moderate Democrat at times in his political career. Lizeth Chacon, executive director of the Colorado People’s Alliance, says her group has worked successfully with Hickenlooper before on issues such as a minimum wage hike but will lobby and protest if they feel he’s siding often with corporations.

“The work is going to be on us to ensure he is going to be accountable to the people of Colorado who voted to elect him,” Chacon said. “We’ve seen him be someone that����ap more open to meet with people and to be challenged on his positions. We are ready to do that, and we hope he is ready to do that with us.”

Hickenlooper’s tenure in the Senate will be shaped by his unfailing belief in bipartisanship, a desire to blend his moderate Democratic politics with that of Republicans. Whether he will be successful at it remains to be seen.

“One thing I’ve learned since I’ve been there is, there are 100 ways to be a senator, and people approach the job in very different ways,” Bennet said. “Some are infuriating ways and some are unproductive ways, but some are productive.”

On Aug. 13, 2019, a poll showed the Democrat with a 13-point advantage over Republican Sen. Cory Gardner. A week later, Hickenlooper entered the race. On Tuesday night, he won it handily.

The reasons for that are numerous. They span from the macro — the coronavirus pandemic, the president����ap unpopularity — to the micro, such as ad strategy and debate performances.

In the end, Gardner was unable to escape from under the weight of President Donald Trump and Colorado’s increasingly Democratic electorate. In key moments, his critics say, he didn’t try to. Hickenlooper, meanwhile, overcame an embarrassing ethics ruling that ultimately did little to hurt his electoral odds.

“Colorado has changed a lot since 2014” — the year Gardner first won a seat in the Senate — “and because of Trump’s unpopularity here, Gardner was in a very tough, if not intractable, situation,” said Kyle Saunders, a professor of political science at Colorado State University.

Trailing in the polls and hit with a barrage of outside spending, Gardner’s prospects looked dim as 2019 ended and the first several months of 2020 passed. But a Republican-authored ethics complaint against Hickenlooper began to bear fruit in the spring, fertilized by Hickenlooper’s own unusual decision-making.

In the weeks before Democratic primary voters decided between Hickenlooper and Andrew Romanoff, Hickenlooper refused to appear at a virtual hearing of the Independent Ethics Commission, fought a subpoena in court, lost in court, refused to comply with the subpoena, was held in contempt by the IEC, and was found to have twice violated the state’s gift ban. The series of unforced errors earned the candidate negative headlines and left political observers scratching their heads.

Gardner and his allies saw an opening. Outside GOP groups poured money into Colorado as ballots went out to Democratic voters. Negative ads hit the airwaves highlighting Hickenlooper’s dismal June. At the end of the month, Hickenlooper beat Romanoff easily but Republicans had their opening: to paint Hickenlooper, in Gardner’s words, as “the most corrupt governor in the history of Colorado.”

In a different year, it may have worked.

But this is 2020, the year of a global pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, the year of a stark economic downturn, the year of racial and civil unrest. The pandemic in particular highlighted health care, Hickenlooper’s signature issue. The Affordable Care Act, once vilified, was in vogue again.

Gardner caught a small break in August when his Great American Outdoors Act, a significant public lands bill, was signed into law by the president. His ad strategy became two-fold: criticize Hickenlooper’s ethics, and tout the GAOA.

But nothing seemed to move the needle, which remained firmly on Hickenlooper’s side. A September poll showed Gardner within five percentage points of Hickenlooper, but it was an outlier. Other polls that month showed Hickenlooper’s lead holding steady at seven to 10 points over Gardner. They never budged.

“Hickenlooper and his team did exactly what they needed to do: They ran a campaign that highlighted Hickenlooper’s strengths and positive image without making any big mistakes or gaffes,” said Saunders, “while really all they had to do to keep the lead weight of Trump around Gardner’s neck was to show pictures of him with Trump and connect the two in the minds of voters with their ads.”

All that was left were the October debates, which both sides saw as Gardner’s best opportunity to close the gap. Gardner, the much better speaker, went hard after Hickenlooper but with a smile and nod to bipartisanship. Hickenlooper focused on health care, Trump and the state of the nation. When the dust settled, the polls remained stubbornly unmoved. Nothing Gardner did changed the state of the race.

“I don’t think it’s been any secret that there’s a heavy anti-Trump sentiment among unaffiliated voters, and they represent 40% of the electorate,” said Dick Wadhams, a former chair of the Colorado GOP and former campaign manager in Senate elections, on Tuesday night. “And that has affected races up and down the ticket.”

It was Gardner who aligned himself with Trump, endorsing him last year and rallying with him in Colorado Springs this February, creating much material for Democratic ad makers. It was Gardner who, in another widely shared moment, called Trump ethical and moral during his final debate against Hickenlooper.

“Because Cory Gardner has made this decision to unequivocally support the president no matter what he says or does, he’ll be paying the price for that,” said David Flaherty, a GOP pollster in Colorado, in the days after the final debate.

That price is the first electoral loss of Gardner’s career, and the largest margin of defeat for a U.S. senator from Colorado in 42 years.

Staff writer John Aguilar contributed to this report.

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 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 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����ap a very clear contrast between somebody who believes the people of Colorado are first — that����ap 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 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.

On Monday, the data firm Morning Consult of its final 2020 election survey, which was conducted Oct. 22-31. Biden leads President Donald Trump in Colorado with 54% of those polled. The Republican has 41% of support.

The same poll found Hickenlooper leads Republican Sen. Cory Gardner by eight percentage points, 52% to 44%. The poll of 727 likely Colorado voters has a 4% margin of error.

Two polls released Sunday found similar margins in the presidential contest and larger margins in the Senate race. A Data for Progress survey found Biden leading Trump by a dozen percentage points. So, too, did a poll conducted by Keating Research and two other Colorado polling firms.

The Data for Progress poll found Hickenlooper leading by nine points and the Keating one found Hickenlooper leading by 11 percentage points.

Polls have consistently shown Biden and Hickenlooper ahead by large margins in an increasingly Democratic Colorado. But double-digit victories are rare. The last presidential candidate to win by 10% or more here was Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Hickenlooper, meanwhile, has warned his supporters against complacency, writing in a fundraising email Monday morning that “if there is anything we’ve learned from 2016, it����ap that we can’t trust the polls.”

The public questioning came during of the Senate Commerce Committee on social media regulations. Testifying were Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Dorsey said he believes Twitter has removed or flagged tweets from Khamenei and other world leaders aside from Trump, but could not recall any examples. While he agrees Holocaust denial is misinformation, Dorsey told Gardner that it does not fall into one of the categories of misinformation that Twitter censors.

“We have a policy against misinformation in three categories, which are manipulated media; public health, specifically COVID; and civic integrity, election interference and voter suppression. That is all we have a policy on for misleading information. We do not have a policy or enforcement for any other types of misleading information you mentioned,” the Twitter founder told the senator.

This year, Twitter began labeling some Trump tweets as misinformation and hid at least one for glorifying violence after Trump wrote “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Gardner, a Yuma Republican who faces reelection next week, did not mention any specific Trump tweets but accused Twitter of unfairness.

“With your answers on the ayatollah and others, I just don’t understand how Twitter can claim to want a world of less hate and misinformation while you simultaneously let the kind of content that the ayatollah has tweeted out flourish on the platform, including from other world leaders,” Gardner told Dorsey. “It����ap no wonder that Americans are worried about politically motivated content moderation at Twitter.”

Still, Gardner warned his fellow senators against being too quick to legislate.

“I don’t like the idea of a group of unelected elites in San Francisco or Silicon Valley deciding whether my speech is permissible on their platforms, but I like even less the idea of unelected Washington, D.C., bureaucrats trying to enforce some kind of politically neutral content moderation,” Gardner said. He later added, “We have to be very careful and not rush to legislate in ways that stifle speech.”

“As I’ve said several times, I’m not crazy about the idea of court packing,” Hickenlooper, the Democratic challenger to Sen. Cory Gardner, said in a statement to The Denver Post. “What we need to do to change the way Washington works is change the people we send there — and that starts with voting next Tuesday.”

Asked on followup whether Hickenlooper in fact opposes court expansion by a potential Democrat-controlled Congress, the spokesman, Ammar Moussa, said the campaign would not be commenting beyond the prepared statement.

Hickenlooper, the former governor, has, like Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, has declined for weeks to take a specific position on whether Congress should add seats to the nine-member court, which now leans conservative by a 6-3 margin.

Asked last month if he supports court expansion, Hickenlooper told The Denver Post, “I’m not going to answer your question, just because I can’t believe they (Senate Republicans) are going to go through with this.”

In previous comments on the subject, as in his latest statement, Hickenlooper has said he leans against expanding the court, though he has also said he’d reconsider that position if he felt fundamental rights, such as access to reproductive health care, were on the line.

He promised The Post he’d be “much more forthcoming” on the topic of court expansion after the Senate confirmation process concluded.

Now it has, in a 52-48 vote on Monday night that saw Gardner voting in the majority, and Hickenlooper declined through Moussa to be interviewed Tuesday.

Democrats who support court expansion are concerned about the rulings a conservative Supreme Court majority might make regardless of whether voters flip the Senate blue. As Hickenlooper himself has noted, the majority may not only thwart certain new Democratic initiatives but also roll back existing precedents, such as the right to legal abortion, which Hickenlooper has called a basic civil right.

Many Republican leaders, including some in the Senate, have been open about their hope that Barrett will take anti-abortion positions as a justice.

At a town hall in 2019, Hickenlooper, then a presidential candidate, said, “The one place where I might consider court packing, … if the basic civil rights of this country seem at risk, I think that might be the one thing that would persuade me to — and perhaps it’d be on a temporary basis — but to court pack, to balance back any objective framework, to bring back the appropriate balance in our judicial (branch).”