Gov. John Hickenlooper at a 2011 event that celebrated allowing restaurants to sell 3.2 beer.
Gov. John Hickenlooper said a new effort to expand beer and wine sales to supermarkets and convenience stores amounts “a threat.”
The Democrat — a former brewpub owner and craft beer industry advocate — made his first comments on the new campaign after he returned to Colorado from a two-week to find a renewed “beer war.”
launched its campaign Wednesday to repeal the state’s Prohibition-era liquor laws at a King Soopers in Glendale, saying it would push legislation at the statehouse or appeal directly to voters in a 2016 ballot initiative. The effort may expand liquor sales, too.
“It sounds like a threat, to be honest,” Hickenlooper said Wednesday after an education event in Denver.
Hickenlooper has stated his opposition to such moves when legislation and ballot initiatives failed. And he said he hasn’t “heard anything to change my mind.”
“It is fair to say I’m on record in previous occasions (saying) I don’t like the idea, but that being said I want to listen to what both sides have to say and see if they are saying something different,” he said.
Hickenlooper’s concern echoes those expressed by the craft beer industry, which is against the effort. The industry is worried that big beer brands, such as Coors, Miller and Budweiser, will dominate the shelves and leave little room for craft brewers. And those that do get room will be forced to cut their profit margins. Furthermore, it could put liquor stores with strong ties to local brewers out of business.
“If you open it up to everybody it would be very hard on the small liquor stores, which most craft brewers believe is their salvation,” Hickenlooper said. “So historically I have not been really warm to the idea.”
In , Hickenlooper angered convenience stores when he sided with craft brewers to cut a regulation that helped the industry.
Interestingly, Hickenlooper’s budget chief, Henry Sobanet, of a 2009 bill on expanded sales that showed it would not spell doomsday for liquor stores. At the time, he was a political consultant.
