John Hickenlooper the lonely tractor, gets beat by AOC

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So, former Colorado Governor/now Presidential Candidate John Hickenlooper is an easy topic for us because it blends national politics with Colorado. We are the Colorado Citizens Press after all (major announcement coming soon)!

So let’s do a tale of the tape:

• Hickenlooper announces for president with little fanfare
• Hick denounces socialism at a Dem Convention in San Francisco and gets booed (even though he supported such policies as Governor of Colorado)
• Hick is under 1% in most polls
• Hick’s senior campaign staff jumped to other campaigns telling the press Hick should drop out and run for Senate in Colorado
• Hick gets lampooned by satire website The Onion, and that’s the best press he’s had in a while

Not exactly how Hickenlooper envisioned it, and he is probably done. So let’s pile on, shall we!

AOC information covered below!

Shaun Boyd, with the local CBS affiliate, talks about how Hick sought out advice from former Colorado US Senator and former Dem Presidential front-runner Gary Hart (1988 until he got caught cheating on his wife). Hart told Hick that running for president isn’t like running state-wide in Colorado, and he had to cart left and cater to the base. Hick ignored the advice, and you can see the result in his performance so far. Arrogance or stupidity? We report – you decide!

Also, last week the liberal Washington Post did a feature piece on Hickenlooper – useful if you’re a Democrat? Wrong. The author, Holly Bailey, basically compares Hickenlooper to a little lonely old tractor in the field that no one cares about. She talks about how nobody knows who he is, and how Hick does nothing on the campaign – he would rather talk shop with brewers than meet voters.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has met Hick. He is not that personable, and his speeches are horrible – he always had a hard time connecting with people. However, Colorado Republicans could never field a quality candidate against him. Plus, through some quirky commercials, he built a false persona amongst the average Joe in Colorado. Hick has been lucky and had some good ad people around him, but his luck (and staff) may have run out.

There’s also this nugget from the Washington Post article that we think sums up our perception of Hick (ignore the Trump snark it is from a Dem activist):

That message, along with Hickenlooper’s mellow demeanor, doesn’t always play well with Democratic voters eager to wage war. Within seconds of Hickenlooper wrapping up the event in Mason City, Craig Wollman, a 71-year-old retiree from Clear Lake, declared the ex-governor a “lightweight.”…
Wollman said he had a hard time imagining Hickenlooper going toe-to-toe with Trump on a debate stage. “How is he going to have the charisma to overcome Mr. Fake News?” Wollman said, referring to Trump.

The Washington Post, July 8, 2019

Hick is NOT charismatic, and he IS a lightweight. This also shows how weak the Republican competition was in 2010 and 2014.

But there’s more! Colorado Politics’ Mark Harden reports on the recently released campaign finance reports. As you probably guessed, Hickenlooper is at the back of the pack. Hick only beat out de Blasio (we’re going to do an article on this clown), Tim Ryan, and John Delaney in the presidential race. Our guess is you’ve never heard of at least 2 of those people.

To make matters worse, Hick’s fundraising numbers were less than half ($1.15 million) of milquetoast Colorado US Senator Michael Bennet who raised $2.8 million. Hick also only has $836,276 cash on hand, not much to even run a competitive state campaign.

We’re going to give Harden props here for a little snark, and it was good clickbait for us (we fully admit this!):

Hickenlooper raised less money in the second quarter for his presidential campaign than did U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, for her re-election bid ($1.2 million).

Colorado Politics, July 16, 2019

YES, AOC, IN HER LITTLE COMMUNIST CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN raised more than not just Hick but three other presidential candidates.

Needless to say, we think (as we reported last week) Hickenlooper is done. Sorry, Lynn Bartels, we love you and your optimism, but we feel confident that Hickenlooper’s campaign is over. Start the deathwatch…

So, what’s next for Hick? He keeps saying he doesn’t want to run for US Senate. However, Hick has spent half his life in the limelight from popular beer brewer in the late 1980s to Mayor of Denver to Governor of Colorado. The limelight can be an addiction, how will Hick get his fix?

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