Hickenlooper ends struggling presidential bid
John Hickenlooper, the former Colorado governor whose low-key brand of moderate politics made him popular in his home state but limited his appeal in a Democratic primary filled with urgent progressive energy, announced Thursday that he was ending his presidential campaign.
Hickenlooper has been seriously considering a run for the Republican-held Senate seat in Colorado that is up for election in 2020 — a key pickup target in the Democrats’ strategy to try to retake control of the Senate.
“Today, I’m ending my campaign for president,” he said in a videotaped state- ment. “But I will never stop believing that America can only move forward when we work together.”
“I’ve heard from so many Coloradans who want me to run for the United States Senate,” he added. “They remind me how much is at stake for our country. And our state. I intend to give that some serious thought.”
Hickenlooper’s White House bid never gained sig- nificant traction and strug- gled so acutely that top staff members departed. He failed to break through in the polls, raised less money than most of his competitors and was all but certain to miss the cutoff for the Democratic debates in September.
A failure to qualify for the debates would have added to a growing list of humbling moments for Hickenlooper, 67, who is also a former Den- ver mayor, brewpub owner and geologist. All too often he found himself in front of small, distracted crowds at campaign events. He was mistaken at one point for a member of the news media and at another for a different candidate.
Hickenlooper is the second candidate to withdraw from the Democratic presidential field since it expanded significantly in the spring; Rep. Eric Swalwell of California exited the race in July. Twenty-three others are still seeking the nomination.
Hickenlooper had been in discussions about withdrawing from the presidential primary since at least early this month and running for the Senate instead. Colorado is a purple battleground state, and flipping the seat currently held by Sen. Cory Gardner is all but mandatory if Democrats hope to have any chance of retaking the Senate.
A recent poll showed Hickenlooper with more than a 50-point lead over the current leading Democrats in the race for the party’s nomination for the Senate seat; another poll showed him ahead of Gardner by 13 percentage points in a head-tohead matchup. Those surveys were conducted by Democratic polling firms.