NRSC’s Attack on Hickenlooper Lacks Proof, Context

A Republican TV ad strongly implies — without proof — that former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper accepted donations in exchange for not penalizing an oil and gas company involved in a fatal home explosion in 2017.

“A community devastated, but no one went to jail. No fines under Hickenlooper,” the narrator in the National Republican Senatorial Committee ad says. “John Hickenlooper. He took the money and let them get away with it.”

That’s not the whole story.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp., the company that owned the well and pipeline that leaked gas into the home, did donate more than $330,000 to Hickenlooper’s administration, as the ad states. But a Denver news station’s report about those and other donations — which the NRSC cited in defense of its ad — actually