If former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper walked into the Starbucks nobody would know who is is--or care.
San Francisco, Chronicle
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| John Hickenlooper |
Presidential candidate John Hickenlooper spoke in Berkeley, California yesterday.
Tony Farrell is a member of the Berkeley Tennis Club and was in the room yesterday when John Hickenlooper spoke.
Hickenlooper addressed about 200 members.
Hickenlooper got his start in business as the founder of a successful brew pub in Denver, which he sold for six million dollars. He then turned to public service and served two terms as Mayor of Denver and then two terms as Governor of Colorado.
Farrell is a college classmate. He had a highly successful career as a branding expert, doing strategic branding and product positioning work on behalf of the Gap, Banana Republic, The Sharper Image, and, most famously, Trump Steaks.
Farrell filed this report.
Guest Post by Tony Farrell
Berkeley, Calif., Friday, May 31, 2019
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| Tony Farrell |
John Hickenlooper was introduced by his half-brother, Sydney Kennedy, a Berkeley Tennis Club member. The Club is a certified bastion of left-coast liberalism. This was a friendly gathering that normally would not be on Hickenlooper’s agenda.
In his introduction, Kennedy told a childhood story of young John Hickenlooper. During the Suez Canal crises, then 4½ years old John was playing war games with toy soldiers, calling one side the English, the other the Egyptians; Kennedy said that he, age 11, had no idea what he was talking about but their mother said, “Don’t worry about it. John is already an expert in international affairs.”
That got a big laugh.
John Hickenlooper then started his standard stump speech, which begins with a very strong anti-Trump message, saying he is dividing the country and taking it backwards. But he goes on the say that while beating Trump is necessary, it is far from sufficient.
He described his background and then political accomplishments as Denver mayor and Colorado governor, and those stories are quite convincing: Securing the agreement of all 31 mayors in the Denver metro area to add 120 miles of light-rail transit; bringing broad-band to all of the state, a sort of rural electrification for the 21st century; getting strict background checks for all gun purchases in the face of strong NRA opposition; cutting methane gasses.
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His message, which comes across as honest and convincing, is that he is the only candidate who has actually done what others are merely promising.
Positioned as a moderate. He got some of the left-coast audience animated when he positioned himself strongly against the “socialist” messages of some of his opponents. He accepts that the Republicans have weaponized the “socialist” label, and while perhaps not merited, they will succeed in that. Moreover, Hickenlooper comes across more like an old-fashioned, small-business Republican of an earlier era, and has little patience for ideas like guaranteed federal jobs or easy forgiveness of student loans.
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| Hickenlooper at the Berkeley Tennis Club |
Practical. Incremental. He’s all practical in his approaches to solving problems without attaching labels or being grand in his ambitions. Sure, it’s okay to have a goal of universal healthcare; it’s okay to regard healthcare as a right and not a privilege; but, given that, how practical or necessary is it to push 140 million people off of their current private health-insurance plans just to quickly achieve a single-payer program? He would argue, you don’t have to go that far; the public doesn’t want to go that far; just take the first steps toward your goal and succeed with each step.
An Iowa strategy. He joked about his astounding rise from 1% to 2% in polling. But he is laser-focused on winning Iowa, which does not seem impossible. For one thing, his name recognition (at least among anyone over 60 in the state) is astoundingly high because his great-uncle, Bourke Hickenlooper, was an Iowa Congressman, Lt. Governor, Governor, and three-term Senator, retiring from the Senate in 1969 (died in 1971). Moreover, John sees tremendous similarities between Colorado and Iowa, and his Colorado story is a good one, especially in building bridges between urban and rural, conservative and progressive, etc.
So, while Governor Hickenlooper may not command the national stage, he is as well-positioned as anyone to succeed in Iowa, and to build on his “retail” political skills that had him winning “un-winnable” contests for mayor and governor in his home state.
Plus, he said, “they” always say you should vote for someone you’d like to sit down and have a beer with…and he’s that guy!
Tony Farrell
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