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Hickenlooper looks to 2nd term

Issues include possible refunds to taxpayers under constitutional amendment
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper – serving pie during Thanksgiving Day dinners to more than 500 homeless people at the Denver Rescue Mission in Denver – emerges from the November general election bruised at home but in the discussion as a possible presidential candidate in 2016.

WESTMINSTER (AP) – As he stepped to the microphone at an event for the nation’s governors outside Denver earlier this month, Gov. John Hickenlooper interjected an answer to a question no one asked.

“And no, I’m not running,” he said.

The question Hickenlooper ostensibly sought to squelch: Is he considering a bid for president in 2016?

His unequivocal declaration came amid a discussion with leading Democratic governors about the party’s future after a brutal 2014 election.

Hickenlooper is emerging as part of that conversation after the midterm elections left him as one of the few Democrats in the nation to claim a solid victory in a Republican rout that toppled even reliably blue states.

“He dodged a significant bullet,” said Eric Sondermann, a Denver-based political analyst. “He has a completely new lease on political life.”

But even as his national political prospects rise, the 62-year-old chief executive is facing a number of challenges at home as he seeks to regain momentum after a campaign that left him bruised and unpopular.

And much like his campaign, Hickenlooper continues to stumble into controversy. Two weeks after the campaign ended, the governor said he was open to considering allowing teachers to carry guns in schools and angered the Latino community for his remarks downplaying the importance of a path to citizenship as part of an immigration deal in Washington.

“I think he won by touting that he’s going to be a different governor in the second term,” said Owen Loftus, the state Republican Party spokesman, noting Hickenlooper’s emphasis in the election about working across the aisle. “Now he actually has to show that he can be that moderate leader in this moderate state.”

‘A real dog fight’

Days after the election, Hickenlooper traveled with his 12-year-old son Teddy to Iceland for a four-day vacation to decompress.

On the 7½-hour direct flight from Denver to Reykjavik, Hickenlooper spent time trying to formulate a system to incentivize political candidates not to run negative ads.

His focus speaks as much to his quixotic mission for positive-only campaigns as to how $3 million in television attack ads left their mark.

“We were in a real dog fight in a year in which every Democratic governor candidate in a purple state didn’t do very well,” he said in a recent interview.

The campaign against Republican Bob Beauprez represented the toughest political fight of Hickenlooper’s career and highlighted his shift from an independent-minded former two-term Denver mayor to politician with a partisan record.

Hickenlooper signed an aggressive Democratic legislative agenda in the last two years that tightened controls on guns, allowed civil unions, gave children of those in the country illegally in-state tuition and increased renewable-energy mandates at the same time he reversed his stance on the death penalty.

Hickenlooper also made missteps, and the campaign hurt his once-impenetrable popularity. Days before the election, a Democratic pollster put Hickenlooper’s approval rating at 40 percent and his disapproval at 48 percent.

But his allies believe the governor’s brand remains intact. And they point to the election results to bolster their argument.

Hickenlooper didn’t claim victory until the morning after the election, and his margin appeared slim. But after the ballot counting ended, his winning margin grew to 3.35 percent – larger even than Republican Cory Gardner’s 1.95 percent victory in the U.S. Senate race.

Hickenlooper’s re-election essentially mirrors the margin of victory in his 2010 campaign when considering the total conservative vote that split between two candidates.

“I think he comes out stronger,” said Doug Friednash, a Denver attorney and former state lawmaker who played the role of Beauprez in debate preparations for Hickenlooper.

“Gov. Hickenlooper enters his second term after winning a very solid victory in a tough year for Democrats,” added Craig Hughes, a prominent Democratic strategist in Denver. “This is not about re-inventing the brand, which continues to serve him well.”

An unusual candidate

This is why Hickenlooper, the chairman of the National Governors Association, is being mentioned once again by the national media as a contender for higher office.

His position in Colorado, a purple state that Democrats need to win again in 2016, and his outsider story as a geologist-turned-brewpub founder with a quirky political image make him attractive, said Paul Maslin, a Democratic strategist based in California who has advised six presidential candidates. The possibilities include a federal cabinet post or the vice presidential short list.

“Does he have a big profile? No,” Maslin said. “But is it the kind of story that could be intriguing and ... does he offer some elements that not a whole lot of people can? Yeah, I think that’s true.”

On the other hand, the weaknesses exposed in his re-election campaign work against him. And as a vice presidential pick, he would make an unusual candidate, given that he relishes the executive role and disdains the political attacks the running mate often delivers.

In the interview, Hickenlooper again was quick to extinguish such talk, saying he remains solely focused on Colorado and won’t get distracted.

“We have come so far, so fast and we have so much momentum,” he said. “If it was a company, and I was the chairman of the board and my CEO was contemplating his future, fire his ass.”

‘The compromiser’

In his wood-paneled office, a vestige of the campaign, a colorful banner made by children to welcome him to an event, is still splayed on a large table he often uses as a desk.

But the challenges of a second term are coming fast. His closest outside advisers are helping to pick his next chief of staff – a position he is likely to split into two – and he is sketching out a tentative agenda for the second term ahead of his State of the State address in early January. Hickenlooper said he isn’t looking to recast himself:

“The basic framework that we used in the first term, which was to try and bring as many people from different backgrounds together and get the most talent in the administration; and then to be relentlessly pro-business but with very high environmental standards and very high ethical standards; and hold ourselves to the highest level of transparency and accountability – we still stand behind all that.”

One change that will work in his favor is the divided partisan control of the state legislature, where Republicans control the Senate and Democrats run the House, each by a one-seat majority.

A similar partisan dynamic in 2011 helped Hickenlooper find his political sweet spot when he was first elected because he only received bills on which the two parties compromised. And right now, he isn’t looking at another bid for office, a freeing proposition.

But at least three thorny political situations will complicate his second term’s first months.

The state’s revenues are expected to exceed the constitutional Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights ceiling, prompting the need for refunds, which Hickenlooper has endorsed. But incoming Democratic House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst is suggesting lawmakers may go in a different direction.

Citing the potential lost revenue of refunds, Hullinghorst said it “doesn’t seem to make a lot of common sense to me.”

At the same time, Republicans will push Hickenlooper to address economies in outlying areas of the state that haven’t seen an economic recovery.

“There is a lot of the state that quite frankly doesn’t feel like he was the governor of the entire state,” said House Republican leader Brian Del Grosso of Loveland.

Both sides will push Hickenlooper on oil and gas, as the commission he created to look at fracking and other energy issues may end in a split decision.

“Let’s hope the lesson he learns (from the campaign) is to be more of a leader and less of a pleaser,” Sondermann said. “Not so focused on winning a popularity contest ... and more of a demonstrated willingness and ability to call a hard shot and make it stick.”



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