Incumbent Republican Cory Gardner put up his last defense for his U.S. Senate seat against Democratic former Gov. John Hickenlooper in a final debate in Fort Collins Tuesday night.

The issues, by now, are familiar to those following the race: COVID-19,  the Affordable Care Act,  hypocrisy over seating a Supreme Court justice and court packing, ethics, guns, racial equality and protest violence, climate change and a peaceful transition of power.

Hickenlooper, like the top of the Democratic ticket, wouldn’t give a direct answer on whether Democrats should add seats to the Supreme Court, called court packing, if Democrats win the Senate and White House. He called it a hypothetical question. 

“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of court packing, and we’re seeing it right now.”

Gardner called a woman’s right to an abortion “settled law,” when asked about it being overturned by a conservative court, then turned back to court-packing.

The candidates sparred over plans to address the pandemic, with Gardner saying Hickenlooper didn’t support a robust relief package and Hickenlooper claiming his opponent and fellow Republicans were distracted by trying to rush Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court days before the election.

Gardner pushed back: “When Gov. Hickenlooper was in office he had the chance to get the personal protective equipment that we needed for the state, and yet he refused to provide the personal protective equipment stockpile that could have protected us,” Gardner said of Hickenlooper’s eight years in office, which concluded last year.

He said mistakes were made on all sides as the pandemic rolled out, putting most of the responsibility on China.

When the topic turned to whether Gardner supported repealing Obamacare, the incumbent said, “I don’t think this has to be a zero-sum game, the Affordable Care Act or nothing.”

Hickenlooper said he’s been frustrated by the unwillingness of both sides to work together.

“We’ve gone six months now since we’ve had any relief,” he said. “… Yet one side or the other continues to say, ‘Oh no, it’s their fault.’ “

Hickenlooper has repeatedly tried to position himself as an outsider, despite nearly two decades in public office.

“This is the status quo,” the governor said Tuesday night on the Colorado State University campus. “This is what I want to go to Washington to change, because we need negotiations.”

After Gardner spoke of his work to pass the Great American Outdoors Act, the most significant public lands bill in a couple generations, Hickenlooper noted, “Just because you pass one environmental bill, it doesn’t make you an environmentalist.”

Gardner said Hickenlooper had been devastating to energy jobs, and mentioned one of his past stunts.

“He drank the fracking fluid, but he’s also drank the Kool-Aid now,” the senator said on radical environmental ideas.

Hickenlooper again faced questions about his ethics violations related to his travel as governor. He said again they were honest mistakes, even though the attacks have been central to Republicans’ case against him this campaign.

“I will certainly make sure that never happens again,” Hickenlooper said Tuesday night.

Colorado Politics’ Ernest Luning asked the governor about the time he softened his support for the state’s 2013 large-capacity magazine ban before a sheriff’s association that opposed it and whether that was akin to the political double-talk he has accused Gardner of providing.

“Let me be very clear,” the ex-governor said. “I stand behind my record on gun safety.”

He then pivoted the answer to money in politics. Asked a second time, he talked about mass shootings and how to solve them, naming background checks and banning high-capacity bans, laws he signed as governor.

Gardner said he supports the Second Amendment and laws shouldn’t go too far. “I don’t think we should infringe on those rights,” he said, using the example of a father giving a gun to his son.

Then he accused Hickenlooper of trying to have it both ways on guns.

“What he’s saying here is actually different than what he wants to do in Washington,” Gardner said. “It’s two John Hickenloopers — one wants to say something here, one wants to say something there.”

The meeting was the last of four between the pair since an Oct. 2 opening in Pueblo. They debated twice last week, on Telemundo stations statewide and again in Denver Friday night. The finale was sponsored by 9News, Colorado Politics, Rocky Mountain PBS, the Fort Collins Coloradoan, KRDO in Colorado Springs, KJCT and KKCO in Grand Junction and KOBF in the Four Corners.

Read more about:

• The Oct. 2 debate by the Pueblo Chieftain by clicking here.
• The Oct. 6 debate on Telemundo by clicking here.
• The Oct. 8 debate on Denver 7 by clicking here.

In the three previous contests, Gardner came out as the rhetorical aggressor, challenging Hickenlooper’s record of honesty and sincerity to serve in Washington, given his history of ambivalence toward the position when he had his eye on the presidency last year.

Hickenlooper, accurately, has tacked to the middle on health care and energy. Most notably, Coloradans have seen him go negative, something he eschewed in previous races for governor and Denver’s mayor, many have noticed, he’s gone negative in his ads. In a debate last week, he called his Republican challenger “slick and polished,” and at one point declared, “Cory Gardner hates metro Denver.”

The affable governor said in debates he had to do that, because Gardner’s camp were leveling smears at him, forcing him to “tell the truth” about Gardner.

After Tuesday’s debate, the state Republican party sent out of a fundraising email referring to “corrupt John Hickenlooper” who “works to line his own pocket.” The Colorado GOP alleged Hickenlooper’s “greatest accomplishment” was being the first governor cited for ethics violations.

Before the debate, the state Democratic Party told reporters to expect Gardner to fib about his environmental record and bipartisanship, while pushing “a sham bill” to make sure preexisting conditions are still covered by insurers, if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. 

Fresh polling released Tuesday has Hickenlooper up 10 points, according to Morning Consult, and up 21 percentage points with critical unaffiliated voters.

Colorado Politics and 9News collaborated on statewide polling this month, as well.

Hickenlooper led Gardner by 9 percentage points in the survey conducted online Oct. 1-6 by national polling firm Survey USA.

Hick was up 48% to 39% among likely Colorado voters, with 8% undecided and 6% backing some other candidate.

Gardner six years ago ousted a presumably safe incumbent, Mark Udall, and Democrats have been sore about it ever since — one that got away.

But if it’s one they can get back, then the political berries could be sweeter: important to returning the Senate majority to the Democrats and cementing Colorado as a sky blue state.

The venerable Cook Political Report has Gardner alongside Arizona’s Martha McSally as the two most endangered Republicans, as their once purple state continue to fade.

Seven other Senate Republicans are in the “toss up” category, including from once reliably red states as South Carolina, Georgia and Montana.

Given a likely loss in Alabama, Democrats need to flip four seats to take the majority. As CNN ranked the 10 seats most like to flip Tuesday, Gardner was second only to Alabama’s Doug Jones.

“There just isn’t much of a path for Gardner to hang on in a state that’s likely to soundly reject the President in November,” the network accessed.