Saying he helped pass gun control legislation in a purple state “before it was politically expedient,” national gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund on Tuesday endorsed former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, along with 10 other Democrats running in competitive races for the U.S. Senate.

Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts, who moved last fall from Boulder to Northern California, ripped Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, the incumbent Hickenlooper hopes to challenge, in a statement issued by the sister organization.

“Time and time again, Cory Gardner has sided with the NRA to oppose and block gun safety legislation,” Watts said. “Colorado deserves a senator who won’t be in the pocket of the gun lobby and will deliver the common sense gun safety the majority of Americans believe in.”

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Hickenlooper faces former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff in a June 30 primary, with the winner taking on Gardner in November.

The endorsement is one of 11 the national organization made in key Senate contests, part of a 2020 campaign a spokesman said will top $60 million, twice what the group spent in the last election.

“In 2018, the American people sent a loud-and-clear message to their leaders in Washington and elected a gun sense majority to the U.S. House, but that message has been roundly ignored by the Republican-controlled Senate, which is where gun safety bills go to die,” said John Feinblatt, Everytown president, in a statement.

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“Mitch McConnell is the single biggest obstacle to gun safety reform in Washington, so Everytown is going all-in to flip the Senate and elect leaders who will treat America’s gun violence epidemic like the crisis it is.”

Hickenlooper, who served two terms as governor, signed controversial legislation to require background checks and ban high-capacity magazines in 2013, in the wake of the 2012 Aurora theater shooting and a mass shooting later that year at an elementary school in Newton, Conn.

Opponent of the legislation successfully recalled two Democratic state senators, and another Democrat resigned her seat in the face of a threatened recall.

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Hickenlooper, who was endorsed in March by Gabby Giffords and the anti-gun violence organization the former Arizona congresswoman and shooting victim founded, said in a statement that Colorado has proven that it’s possible to take on the National Rifle Association and pass gun-control legislation.

“Washington Republicans have actively blocked common sense steps like universal background checks while taking millions of dollars in support from the gun lobby, but Coloradans are ready to elect someone who will finally get something done,” Hickenlooper said. “We can’t afford to lose another life to senseless gun violence.”

Romanoff and other Hickenlooper critics have questioned Hickenlooper’s enthusiasm for the legislation he has made a focus of his campaign, pointing to a recording of the then-governor distancing himself from a controversial limit on magazine capacity in a private meeting with Colorado sheriffs.

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“Confronted by critics at a meeting of county sheriffs, Hickenlooper blamed his staff for committing him to sign a ban on high-capacity magazines,” Romanoff wrote in a fundraising email. “Hickenlooper then told the sheriffs he never expected the bill to pass — and suggested he might not have signed it if he’d known it would cause so much ‘commotion.’ “

Hickenlooper’s “bewildering performance,” Romanoff added, “makes you wonder whether he’d wobble even more in Washington.”

While Gardner has benefited from nearly $4 million in campaign contributions and spending by the NRA over his congressional career, according to Brady, a national gun violence prevention group, his supporters emphasize his work on legislation meant to take on gun violence by addressing mental health concerns.

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Gardner’s Suicide Training and Awareness Nationally Delivered for Universal Prevention Act of 2019, currently stalled in the Senate, promotes mental health grants in an effort to prevent suicides. The Republican also co-sponsored the STOP School Violence Act to reauthorize school safety grants, which President Trump signed into law in 2018.