DENVER — Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bob Beauprez continues to stick to the issue of public safety in the closing days of his campaign to unseat Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper.

He’ll kick off a six-day tour across Colorado with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and several local law enforcement officers at a press conference Thursday afternoon in Colorado Springs.

Beauprez has spent much of the last month attacking Hickenlooper on public safety matters: his indefinite reprieve for murderer Nathan Dunlap and Dept. of Corrections policies that he argues have placed too many dangerous offenders back on the streets and made it harder for prosecutors to charge juveniles as adults.

On Thursday, Democrats responded to Beauprez’s line of attack with a new 30-second ad, which will mostly run online in the final days of the election.

In the spot from the 527 group “Making Colorado Great”, Beauprez is shown shaking hands with Hickenlooper during a September debate, sealing an agreement to run only positive ads as Hickenlooper has always done.

“But his latest ad falsely exploits a murder,” the narrator explains, showing a spot from Beauprez’s campaign that referenced the 2013 killing of former Dept. of Corrections Chief Tom Clements by parolee Evan Ebel that was taken off the air and re-cut without that reference after Clements’ widow wrote Beauprez a letter expressing anger that he was politicizing her family’s tragedy for his political gain.

The narrator also cites an editorial by The Denver Post that blasted Beauprez’s ad.