A mishandling by Gardner on disabled protest
U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner should have left protesters in his office Thursday until he got into town that night — regardless of the time his airplane’s wheels touched down — and met with them to discuss their fears that Republican cuts to Medicaid would also cut off life-supporting services.
Instead, the first-term Republican’s staff had the disabled protesters arrested and physically removed from his downtown Denver office Thursday night as he was headed into town for the congressional break.
The arrests were hard to watch. We are ashamed. This is a man who we have stood up for when he didn’t hold town hall meetings. We’ve given him the benefit of the doubt that he would fight for a better version of the Republican repeal of Obamacare, using his vote as leverage for a more moderate bill.
Our disappointment is tempered only by assurances that for two days Gardner’s local staff members slept in the office with protesters — a move that allowed the protesters to stay and ensured they would have access to bathrooms and other care. Gardner’s staffers were facing pressure from the building owners and other tenants. Gardner’s downtown office lobby space is small, and nine overnight protesters inconvenienced others in the building. Gardner met with members of ADAPT — a Colorado-born group fighting for disability rights — once this year. His staff members have met or held phone calls with ADAPT members another 15 times in the last year.
We don’t condone the behavior of the protesters. There’s a more effective way to get things done, even in politics today, than breaking laws and getting arrested.
That said, we agree with the message of the protest.
The Republican bill has been silent — by design — on how $772 billion would impact Medicaid patients over the next 10 years. The disabled community has valid reason to fear. As Denver Post reporters Danika Worthington and Mark Matthews reported, the disabled make up 7 percent of Medicaid participants in Colorado but account for 27 percent of the program’s costs. Republicans in Congress are trying to cut Medicaid funding without reform or specification of what should be cut. “Let states figure it out” has been the mantra.
No doubt, Gardner faced a tough situation, and its complications were multiplied, his spokesman, Alex Siciliano tells us, by the fact the senator’s plane back to Denver International Airport was diverted and didn’t land until around midnight.
But surely a senator facing such a scene back in Denver could have demanded that he be allowed to meet with the protesters and try to defuse the situation.
The GOP created the uncertainty for vulnerable populations that in part drove ADAPT protests across the country to step up their opposition. In Rochester, N.Y., 25 people were arrested. Gardner shares in that responsibility.
The senator should have been a leader and tried to use his skills as a politician to convince ADAPT that their concerns were valid and had been heard, but that now it was time to leave for health and safety reasons. After that, police intervention could have been warranted. The members of The Denver Post’s editorial board are William Dean Singleton, chairman; Mac Tully, CEO and publisher; Chuck Plunkett, editor of the editorial pages; Megan Schrader, editorial writer; and Cohen Peart, opinion editor.