DENVER—Forget black ties and champagne—Colorado’s new Democratic governor celebrated with grilled cheese and barbecue after taking office Tuesday.
New Gov. John Hickenlooper left his frigid inaugural address to have a lunch of cheese sandwiches, carrot sticks and apple juice with some 300 schoolchildren who attended his inaugural.
And the new governor passed on a black-tie inaugural ball Tuesday night in favor of a Denver barbecue party at which guests wore cowboy hats and jeans, not gowns and tuxedos. Guests ate beef brisket and macaroni and cheese and listened to a country band.
On several occasions Tuesday, the new governor talked up his humble roots as the grandson of a failed distillery owner. The governor told the schoolchildren he became a successful restaurant owner and politician through hard work, not his smarts.
Hickenlooper told the students he has mild dyslexia and struggled in school.
“I had to read a few times to get things to sink in,” Hickenlooper said. “You gotta work hard.”
Hickenlooper extended his common-man theme Tuesday when he told reporters he and his wife and son won’t be moving into the elaborate governor’s mansion a few blocks from the Capitol. Hickenlooper said he’ll use the 1908 Cheesman-Boettcher Mansion on occasion, but that his family will remain in his home in a wealthy Denver neighborhood.
And at his inaugural party, when Hickenlooper addressed a few thousand supporters, Hickenlooper sent his first thanks to the bus driver who drove his campaign bus.
The inaugural party included plenty of bubbly, though—beer, not champagne. In a nod to Hickenlooper’s experience as a brewpub owner, the inaugural party featured more than a dozen beers. Guests took home pint glasses printed with a picture of the new governor raising a glass of “Inaugurale,” a brown ale created in his honor by his former brewpub, The Wynkoop Brewing Co.
