Former governor of Colorado set to vie for Senate
John Hickenlooper, the former Colorado governor who ended his presidential campaign last week, announced Thursday he will run for a U.S. Senate seat in his home state, instantly making him one of the Democrats’ best hopes in their quest to retake the chamber next year.
Hickenlooper was resistant to the idea of running for the Senate while he was still in the presidential race, telling reporters that he was “not cut out to be a senator.”
But discussions about a bid grew serious in recent weeks as his campaign faded, senior aides abandoned his team and he failed to secure a spot in the next Democratic debate.
“I’ve always said Washington was a lousy place for a guy like me who wants to get things done,” Hickenlooper said in a video posted on his campaign website Thursday morning. “But this is no time to walk away from the table.”
Hickenlooper, a twoterm governor who is also a former Denver mayor, brew pub owner and geologist, will seek to challenge Sen. Cory Gardner in a contest that Democrats view as all but necessary to win if they have any hope of flipping the Senate in 2020.
While Hickenlooper’s laid-back style and moderate politics never caught on in the presidential race, he remains popular in Colorado, a battleground state.
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.
The advocacy group that commissioned one of the polls, 314 Action, hailed Hickenlooper’s decision Thursday. “With Governor Hickenlooper in the race, we have a stronger chance to flip the Senate and take real action on climate change,” said Shaughnessy Naughton, the president of the group, which supports scientists running for office.
Hickenlooper’s exit from the presidential contest may have presaged a new phase of the race, in which candidates who cannot make the debate stage will find it increasingly difficult to sustain their campaigns. On Wednesday, Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, who also struggled to break through in the polls, said he was ending his bid for the Democratic nomination.
With Hickenlooper and Inslee out of the race, Bullock is now the only Democratic governor, current or former, seeking the presidency.