“The use of the phrase makes it sound like there is some sort of quid pro quo, that it was not constructed in plain view and transparently and therefore it is corrupt and bad,” said Kyle Saunders, an associate professor of political science at Colorado State University. “That’s not necessarily the case, and there’s no evidence of it with Gardner. I think Gardner made the decision seeing the winds that are out there. It wasn’t a backroom deal. It was politics.”

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