Here’s the big news of the day: following shortly after some prodding on Friday from Barack Obama to run, Denver mayor John Hickenlooper appears to be ready to enter the Colorado Governor’s race for the Democrats.
“Hick is absolutely in,” said a political consultant who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak on the mayor’s behalf.
The sources said the announcement could come as early as this afternoon, as Hickenlooper wanted to enter the race before the opening of the Colorado Legislature Wednesday and in deference to Ritter’s State of the State address on Thursday.
The Denver Post’s article also cites Hickenlooper’s desire to “get out in front” of any announcement by former state House speaker Andrew Romanoff that he too might enter the now-open Governor’s race. The word yesterday was that Romanoff was “closer” to announcing than Hickenlooper, based on prodding from his own supporters to get out of his going-nowhere Senate primary bid against Michael Bennet. The question remains, now, though, whether Romanoff still gets in now that Hickenlooper got the drop on him… or if, as also rumored, Romanoff angles to get on board as Hickenlooper’s Lt. Governor? (That National Journal article also cites state Treasurer Cary Kennedy as a potential candidate, although that may have been more of a Plan B and doesn’t seem likely with Hickenlooper in now. Interstingly, it also said that Reps. Diana DeGette and Betsy Markey had considered it but were leaning against. The interest by DeGette, a long-time denizen of CO-01, shouldn’t be a surprise, but the interest of freshman Markey is… perhaps, sensing the difficulty of retaining CO-04, she’s casting about for an escape hatch.)
Also, yesterday, Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter said he wouldn’t run for Governor (perhaps he got a whiff of what was coming down the pike), and would stand for re-election in CO-07. On the GOP side in the 7th, things are definitely getting interesting in the primary between Aurora city councilor Ryan Frazier and former McCain campaign official Lang Sias. Frazier’s drop-down to CO-07 had initially seemed good for the GOP, but Sias (who has a lot of establishment backing) seemed to shake up the field. Now, Frazier’s wheeling out a big establishment endorsement of his own, from Virginia’s Rep. Eric Cantor.
UPDATE: Colorado’s GOP chair Dick Wadhams has already taken to calling Hickenlooper “Hickenritter” to handcuff him to the unpopular outgoing governor, but ColoradoPols has some nice quotes from Wadhams himself and ex-Rep. Bob Beauprez in which they publicly worried about Hickenlooper’s likely electoral dominance when it looked like he’d get appointed to the Senate vacancy that instead went to Bennet. Said Beauprez:
I’m guessing John Hickenlooper has name ID that rivals the governor’s, maybe exceeds the governor’s. I’m guessing that John Hickenlooper has 4:1 favorable/unfavorables statewide. There isn’t enough money in the world to peel that down to 1:1 – to where you could maybe beat him.