Gov. John Hickenlooper speaks to Democratic volunteers at a campaign office in south Denver on Saturday Nov. 1, 2014. (John Frank, Denver Post)
Gov. John Hickenlooper speaks to Democratic volunteers at a campaign office in south Denver on Saturday Nov. 1, 2014.In his campaign’s closing argument, Gov. John Hickenlooper is reminding voters about where he started when he took office and what the state endured in his first term.
“When we came in four years ago, we were $1 billion in the red in the state budget. We were 40th in job creation, the economy was upside down,” the Democrat told a group of campaign volunteers in Denver on Saturday morning. He noted the Colorado is now 4th in job growth and recently put $650 million in a budget reserve.
“Mother nature threw everything but the kitchen sink at us,” he continued. “We had 13 federally declared disasters. We had the two worst droughts since the Great Depression. We had the worst wildfire seasons in successive years that we’ve ever had and last September was the most destructive flood we’ve ever had — and that doesn’t even mention the shootings in the movie theater. All this stuff come at us and we never broken apart we’ve never stopped working together.”
The resilience he describes in Colorado is what he hopes to find in his political life.
The first-term governor and former two-term Denver mayor is facing the toughest challenge in his political career with polls showing a dead heat against Republican rival Bob Beauprez.
Hickenlooper told the volunteers the stakes in the race are clear. “If we lose, we turn around and go backwards,” he said, acting out his message by turning around and walking to the wall a few steps behind him.
Later in an interview in the back of his campaign bus, which is stopping in Aurora, Denver, Pueblo and Colorado Springs on Saturday, Hickenlooper said that he always knew it would be a close contest. And he made no apologies for a sometimes-partisan-tinged term that .
“We know that a lot of the things we did alienates some part of the population,” he said, mentioning legislation to legalize civil unions, allow Colorado’s undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition, impose tougher limits on guns and his reversal on the death penalty. “You’re out there making 100 decisions a day when you’re governor, so there’s always somebody that doesn’t get what they want. We knew it would be a battle.”
(To make matters worse, Hickenlooper is batting a head cold that makes him sound congested and weathered on the campaign trail.)
The reflective mood applies to his campaign, too. His family, top campaign staffers and a handful of his cabinet aides joined him on the bus tour, including the heads of the state departments of human services, corrections, environment and transportation.
“One of the great things about campaigns is you are forced to analyze everything you’ve done,” he said in the interview. “There’s just a big magnifying glass on your previous four years. And I feel pretty good.”
“I’m not sure we did everything (right),” he said about his campaign. “But most of the decisions I feel pretty darn good about.”
Betsy Metzger, a 57-year-old Democratic campaign volunteer who attended Hickenlooper’s event in south Denver, said she’s miffed the race is so close.
“Whatap surprising to me is that usually when the economy is going well, people want to keep the party in power in power. And if we are going to believe the polls, Democrats are in trouble,” she said.
Hickenlooper said most people are about six to nine months from feeling the effects of the improving economy because the rapid decline in unemployment hasn’t led to wage increases yet. It takes time to rebound, he said, and “people forget it was the worst recession since the Great Depression.”
At Sam’s No. 3 restaurant in Aurora earlier in the morning, he emphasized the importance of turning out the Democratic vote.
Republicans hold a nine-point registration advantage among the voters so far and Hickenlooper said the race “is going to be down to the wire.”
“All of our polling we’ve assumed a six- or seven-point spread, so we are not far away from where we need to be to win,” he said in an interview. “We just need to get there and make sure everybody votes.”
Before he left the restaurant, Troy Johnson approached him and asked, “Do you embrace every voter?”
Johnson, 50, pointed to his Seattle Seahawks T-shirt and hat. Hickenlooper chuckled and agreed to take a photo with the fan from the Denver Bronco’s arch rival. “He embraces all voters,” Johnson said afterward, “so he’s the governor for me.”
