U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner reminds voters in a TV ad released Wednesday that his Democratic challenger, former Gov. John Hickenlooper, used to brew beer, a beverage the Colorado Republican says he enjoys.

In the 30-second ad, filmed at Bourbon Brothers Smokehouse and Tavern in Colorado Springs, Gardner revives an attack he lobbed at Hickenlooper earlier this summer with clips of the one-time presidential candidate protesting that he wouldn’t make a good senator.

Seated at a bar, a jovial Gardner opens the ad saying, “Let’s get down to some real differences between me and John Hickenlooper. First, Hickenlooper owns a brewery. And me? I just like beer.”

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Hickenlooper, who founded Wynkoop Brewing Co. in the late 1980s before successful runs for Denver mayor in 2003 and governor in 2010, turned over his holdings to a blind trust in 2003, and trustees sold his stake in what had by then grown into a restaurant empire in 2007.

Technically, however, Gardner is correct — his multimillionaire opponent’s blind trust owns a piece of of two brew pubs.

Gardner campaign spokeswoman Meghan Graf told Colorado Politics that it’s “hard to keep track of all his fancy investments so you’d have to ask their team.”

According to financial disclosure documents filed with the U.S. Senate, Hickenlooper and his wife own non-public shares worth between $115,000 and $300,000 in a brew pub in Fort Collins and a brewery and restaurant in San Francisco, among other investments that include blue chip stocks, mutual funds and Treasury bills.

“He admits he would not be an effective senator,” Gardner says as he glances at clips of Hickenlooper on a widescreen TV on the wall. “I cross party lines to get things done. That’s what I like to do, and it works.”

Gardner, national Republicans tear into Hickenlooper in new TV ads

Gardner, ranked as one of the Senate’s most bipartisan members in one study, has been touting his sponsorship of a bill signed into law this summer establishing permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, though his critics charge the achievement masks a record pilloried by environmental groups.

“One thing is clear: Coloradans can count on Hickenlooper for beer, but can count on me to get things done,” Gardner concludes as he lifts a glass of beer and adds, “Cheers!”

The ad hints at an attack lobbed against Hickenlooper in 2013, when District Attorney George Brauchler, a Douglas County Republican who was contemplating running for governor in 2014, called Hickenlooper “a nice man” before charging that “no one elected him to be the state bartender. They elected him to be governor.”

A spokesman for the Hickenlooper campaign called it a “weird flex to remind voters John had a career before politics” but declined to comment further on the new Gardner ad.

In a statement, the Colorado Democratic Party’s communications adviser tore into Gardner’s contention that he “gets things done.”

Senate goes on recess, despite Gardner's 'unfathomable' prediction

Citing the Republican incumbent’s claim in May that it would be “unfathomable” for the Senate to recess without approving pandemic relief legislation, Eli Rosen noted that Wednesday marks 98 days since Gardner threw down the gauntlet, and the Senate adjourned for a recess earlier this month without passing a bill.

“It’s unfathomable to see Senator Gardner take a victory lap after failing to deliver COVID relief and going on a month-long vacation while Coloradans struggle,” Rosen said. “Instead of fighting for Coloradans, Senator Gardner sold us out for President Trump and corporate special interests. We all know that Senator Gardner prefers $1,000 bottles of champagne over Colorado’s craft beer — but if he wants to talk beer, it’s clear Gardner is nothing but foam.”

Gardner, Hickenlooper release TV ads in US Senate race touting accomplishments