His skeptics have accused him of hiding behind compromise and using it to avoid taking firm stances on pressing issues. Reporters have called these “ Hickenbloopers.” Aides have called it his foot-in-mouth problem. Hickenlooper was trying to say, though in the past he had called his deputy both a “rising star” and a “sex symbol.”) He once introduced his lieutenant governor as a “rising sex star,” flubbing a joke in an audience of grade-schoolers, only to make a similar mistake a few days later. It has also caused him to fumble in ways that might be problematic if he were to get to the White House. This freewheeling personality has won him many a political and business deal. His stump speeches are packed with self-effacing jokes, and friends say his deepest desire is to be liked - to connect with his audience. He often speaks about growing up as a skinny, dyslexic kid who learned to neutralize bullies with humor as an adult, he’s turned into his state’s gregarious geek-in-chief. He is also banking on his ability to charm. He says he is likely to put a Republican in his cabinet and would choose a woman as his running mate. Swift action on climate change, but not the Green New Deal. Hickenlooper is pushing middle-of-the-road policies: Universal health care, but not a single-payer system. He can also be an incrementalist, they say, demanding that adversaries move - but not too far or too fast.Īs a candidate, Mr. His allies say his deal-making skills lie in an ability to force battling factions to the table and then make them feel collectively responsible for a solution. For much of his tenure, he worked with a divided legislature. Teen pregnancy plummeted in Colorado while he was in office, thanks to a birth control program, and broadband will soon be available to nearly every city and town in the state. This is about defeating a criminal and defeating a party that has lost its way.”Īs governor from 2011 until 2019, he nudged the state to the left, passing universal background checks and civil unions, expanding Medicaid and granting drivers’ licenses to undocumented immigrants, all while creating one of the top economies in the country. “I liked him a lot,” said Michael Behrendt, 63, “but this is not about coming together. Hickenlooper to speak more urgently about climate change. “At this point, I’d have to wait and see,” said Patricia Shearin, 54, who wanted Mr. In New Hampshire, many voters were charmed but not entirely convinced.

Hickenlooper speaks about going “beyond just defeating Donald Trump” and fixing all the ways government isn’t working for Americans. Hickenlooper spoke about what he called the nation’s “crisis of division” and about identifying “bigger picture places, where we can bring people together.” Among them: untangling bureaucracy and ramping up job training in the face of a shifting economy. In the Chevy Tahoe, shuttling toward his next event, Mr. Hickenlooper believes his success in the state will help him attract a diversity of voters on the national stage, even as his skeptics warn that Colorado, with its bipartisan spirit, isn’t really a mirror of a nation now pulled apart by partisanship. Split nearly evenly among Democrats, Republicans and independents, it has significant rural and Hispanic populations and has been ground zero for many of the nation’s most contentious debates over guns, climate change, marijuana and more. “Well, it wasn’t.”īut Colorado is in many ways a microcosm of America. Hickenlooper told a crowd in a packed bar in Concord, N.H., standing on a pair of stools as he ran through his history of compromise. But none built their careers in the region.) (To be clear some past Democratic nominees, like John Kerry, were born in the West.

As governor, he brought together warring factions across the Rockies - environmentalists and oil companies, gun owners and regulators, cities and suburbs - and he’s betting that a candidate from the politically purple, deeply pragmatic Mountain West is exactly what America needs. Hickenlooper says he is simply waiting for his moment. Hickenlooper has failed to attract a buzz.īut Mr. As voters have flocked to the formerly unknown Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., Mr. Biden Jr., who announced his official campaign last week. He’s a 67-year-old white man in a field of potentially history-making candidates, and he has far less name recognition or fund-raising muscle than former Vice President Joseph R.

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