Bob Beauprez, the Republican nominee for governor, will hold a press conference Monday to lay out his plan to create job, if he beats incumbent John Hickenlooper in November. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)
So far this campaign season, Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob Beauprez has kept his economic message simple and clear: cut regulations, get government out of the way, make Colorado’s business environment warm abd fertile. Those bones of an economic plan could flesh out some Monday.
Sunday afternoon, Beauprez’s campaign announced a 30-minute press conference for Monday morning — the day before about 3.6 million ballots hit the mail — to unveil “an initiative to improve Colorado’s economy.” He also will announce a coalition called Job Creators for Beauprez, a group that the campaign says includes several hundred members. The announcement will be made at the Denver offices of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association.
Incumbent Gov. John Hickenlooper has wielded the economy as a weapon in his re-election battle. A quick Google search yields numerous independent sources that call Colorado’s economy one of the fastest-growing and strongest in the country.
In one of his first public moves of his re-election campaign back in July, the the campaign called Business Leaders for Hickenlooper.
It’s vital for each candidate to try to win the issue. A is the top issue on voters’ minds — 39 percent cited it as the factor that will help them pick a governor. That compares to 17 percent who chose energy, 17 percent who picked education and 15 percent who said gun rights.
Soon after Hickenlooper took office in January 2011, he and his staff started work on the in districts across Colorado, with the state helping out after local residents and leaders cited their strengths and needs. The plan was published in October 2011.
Hickenlooper, like Beauprez, has acknowledged that the state’s economic rebound hasn’t helped a lot of folks at the bottom of the economic scale. The governor had a press conference with the Associated General Contractors of America and the Colorado Contractors Association last month to announce BuildColorado.com. The website aims to help connect job seekers with skilled positions in the state’s fast-growing construction industry.
In an interview later that day, he said in the next four years the state could help do more of the same to grow the the idea that there are good jobs to be had that don’t require a college education and the years of tuition debt that can along with it.
“We want to keep Colorado at the top of the national economies, but as we do that it’s not just about technology,” Hickenlooper said. “It’s also about construction and building roads and bridges and developing our resources.”
