Steyer Climate Change Super-PAC Targets Colorado's Gardner On Personhood

Billionaire Tom Steyer’s climate change super-PAC, NextGen Climate Action, has targeted Colorado Republican U.S. Senate candidate Cory Gardner for his support of a “personhood” measure that would give legal rights to humans beginning at conception.

As The Hill reports, NextGen has been focused on making climate change a priority in the upcoming November elections. Its new ad targeting Gardner on personhood, however, comes on the heels of new polls showing the Republican moving ahead of incumbent Sen. Mark Udall (D) by six points.

The new ad, entitled “Deception II,” accuses Gardner of being disingenuous with his position on personhood, both in Colorado and at the federal level.

In June, Gardner changed his position on the state personhood initiative, supposedly after listening to voters. He states that a federal personhood bill does not exist.

The NextGen ad, however, claims that Gardner has co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which some consider to be a “personhood bill.”

“Though Congressman Gardner claims to prioritize women’s health, his record indicates the opposite,” said NextGen spokeswoman Abby Leeper. “He’s led an eight year crusade to ban abortions and common forms of birth control. Gardner can try to deceive voters and run from his record but history doesn’t lie.”

However, as Breitbart News reported in September, Gardner – like some other Republican candidates this election season – has actually snatched the birth control issue away from his Democrat opponent by making over-the-counter birth control pills a main plank of his platform. Gardner released an ad in which he called for contraception to be made available to women over the counter and without a doctor’s prescription, so that it can be totally accessible to women who wish to purchase it.

Democrats want birth control pills prescribed by doctors so that they can claim they are free to women under ObamaCare’s new policies. Gardner, however, argues that Democrats like Udall simply want birth control to remain a politicized issue, one that will lead to higher costs and, ultimately, higher profits for drug companies.