Ranting On...John Hickenlooper & the Senate

Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-CO)

We have talked about this a few times, but now that it might actually be coming into reality, I want to discuss John Hickenlooper, and his probable run for the US Senate.  Yesterday, a longtime associate of Hickenlooper's registered a number of names for a Senate challenge that would be waged by the former Colorado governor against incumbent US Senator Cory Gardner (R), arguably the most vulnerable Republican incumbent running for reelection in 2020 (in either chamber).  Colorado has gone blue in the past three presidential elections, and Gardner is currently the only Republican elected statewide in the Centennial State.  In 2018, Democrats won every statewide constitutional office, easily elected a very liberal congressman (Jared Polis) as their governor, gave the Democrats complete control of the state government by seizing control of the State Senate from the Republicans, and by besting Mike Coffman in the 6th district, taking a seat that had long been held by Coffman, a candidate who seemingly could buck coattail trends to actually win a district that Democats consistently won in presidential elections.  Suffice it to say, Hickenlooper would go into the 2020 race with a very real chance of becoming the next senator from Colorado, and helping be one of the net seats that would deliver the Democrats a majority.

This all sounds like good news for the left, right?  There are, however, a few problems with this.  The first is that Hickenlooper's associate registered these names without Hickenlooper's consent (at least this is what he publicly states), so it's not clear how seriously we should take these rumblings.  Hickenlooper is running for president (I almost said "obviously running for president" but considering what a non-entity he is in that race, I feel like his campaign shouldn't be assumed as common knowledge), and has stated that he doesn't feel he's "cut out to be a good senator" (a clip that would be in every Gardner campaign commercial you can imagine).  Hickenlooper hasn't qualified for the third debate, and probably won't at his current pace (and certainly won't if people think he's about to bolt to a Senate race), but he is still a presidential candidate, and it's entirely possible this is a trial balloon that was sent up without the governor's consent.  But let's assume that this is something Hickenlooper, a politician with no other options to stay relevant, is putting out into the world.  If this is the case, there's still a serious problem with Hickenlooper putting himself out into the Senate race-the Democrats don't need him to run.

I'm all for Democrats who aren't polling well enough to be threats getting out of the race, and a few of them I think should go and run in different races, but John Hickenlooper is not one of them.  For starters, the Democrats already have a pretty robust list of names running for the Senate from Colorado-this isn't a state where they've struggled to find a candidate who could beat Gardner.  While there are no guarantees in politics, people like House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, Secretary of State Jena Griswold, House Majority Leader Alice Madden, and US Ambassador Dan Baer are all solid options who would almost certainly beat Gardner (it's entirely possible that any non-scandalized Democrat would considering Colorado is not the swing state it once was and won't elect Gardner on the same ballot as Trump).  And these candidates, considering that they'd also likely win, are a better investment for the Democrats.

House Majority Leader Alice Madden (D-CO)

For starters, and I know we get into delicate issues here, there's age.  I'm not a big fan of picking a candidate just because they're younger (and if that were the only factor here, which it isn't, I wouldn't bring it up), but Hickenlooper at 67 is older than Romanoff (52), Madden (60), Baer (42), or Griswold (34).  He would at best be a backbencher who wouldn't be able to build up a national profile for a future national race (considering the dearth of Middle America states that have solid running-mates for a party that dominates on the coast, this isn't a small thing to dismiss) and might have to be replaced in a term or two.  More importantly, though, Hickenlooper's stances on environmental issues, specifically fracking, should be a non-starter if there are candidates (like the four I just name-checked) who aren't such ardent public supporters on an anti-fracking bill.

Because let's say, hypothetically, that we get 51 or 52 Senate seats in the next Congress (Joe Manchin is still a thing, so it can't just be 50).  The Democrats pass a direly-needed Green New Deal of sorts with the help of a President Harris or President Warren, and are able to coax Jon Tester & Kyrsten Sinema, as well as new senators like Teresa Greenfield & Cal Cunningham to get onboard thanks to farm subsidies and a few exemptions in their home states.  It is entirely possible that the fate of a massive Green New Deal would fall on Colorado's junior senator, who could either be John Hickenlooper (mandating that we include exemptions for fracking in the bill, a huge environmental concession) or someone like Alice Madden (whose name is synonymous with clean energy reform, and would back the bill without fracking exemptions).  If both of them are going to win, why aren't progressives going to back the candidate who would actually give the president they worked so hard to elect an actual green legacy that could combat climate change?

It would be one thing if John Hickenlooper was a candidate running for a seat that otherwise wouldn't go blue, but he's not.  Colorado is not West Virginia, where we have to put up with Joe Manchin because we can't do any better.  He's not Steve Bullock, where he's the only candidate who could make the seat competitive & therefore we should be rooting for him to get into the race even though he's relatively moderate (if the shoe was on the other foot and Bullock was considering a run for the Senate, I'd have just written "hooray" a dozen times here).  It's not even that he's Beto O'Rourke, where he's markedly better than the rest of the field (Texas Democrats have some respectable Tier 2 or 3 candidates, but Beto's the only one who would be Tier 1, especially when you look at poll numbers in the Lone Star State).  Hickenlooper is the sort of "safe bet" that the DSCC and DNC tries to make, frequently at the expense of the future of the party, and increasingly with poor results (look at recent campaigns from the likes of Bob Kerrey, Evan Bayh, Ted Strickland, & Phil Bredesen that went nowhere).

Essentially the Democrats who are excited about Hickenlooper are conflating him with Bullock & Beto (which he's not), and are so risk-averse in the age of Trump that they aren't willing to take any chances.  Hickenlooper, though, is worth a slight risk (and it'd be only a slight one).  He might poll a wee bit higher than the four candidates I name-checked, but not enough for Gardner to lose to him and beat the rest.  He's not strong enough that there will be a significantly different amount of money spent in this race, so it's not zapping resources from the NRSC.  It might be worth it if, say, his coattails could take down Scott Tipton in the 3rd, but he doesn't appear to hold an Amy Klobuchar-style strength where he can win districts that no one else can.  All-in-all, there's no reason the Democrats should give such a prize plum to a man who hasn't really earned it and wouldn't be the best candidate for the job.  John Hickenlooper may be the next senator from Colorado, but that'd be a damned shame for progressives that want to actually pass meaningful climate change legislation.  You might not know the names of people like Alice Madden, Dan Baer, Andrew Romanoff, or Jena Griswold, but they're better progressives than Hickenlooper and they'd be better senators as a result for the Democratic Party...and they'd still all beat Cory Gardner.  Something to think about before we pick the safest but least meaningful path (again).