CLEAR LAKE, Iowa — John Hickenlooper threw shade at the slew of Democratic senators running for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination, saying they lack the executive experience to lead the country.
“I would like to point out one important fact: No sitting senator, no sitting senator has ever beaten an incumbent president,” the former governor of Colorado told the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding Friday evening.
“Governors are closer to the people. We balance every budget, every year, and we get things done,” he said at the fundraiser, which doubles as an important venue for White House hopefuls to introduce themselves to likely caucusgoers in the first-in-the-nation state.
Hickenlooper, a previous mayor of Denver who is struggling to gain traction in early polls and among donors, is running for the presidency on a center-left platform.
He added Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts were pushing the party too far to the left, even though contenders like Bennet are positioned closer to him on the political spectrum.
“They are proposing ‘Medicare for all,’ which will cost trillions of dollars, the Green New Deal, which guarantees a job to everyone, and in some cases they advocate for border policies, which play right into the hands of Donald Trump,” he said.
While Trump wasn’t spared criticism, Hickenlooper’s five-minute pitch to Democrats in northern Iowa had a different tenor to many of his rivals, who mostly focused on their personal story and policies and the man they are seeking to replace in the Oval Office.
Author Marianne Williamson, however, also took a dig at the party and one senator in particular: Harris.
“I’m not just prosecuting the case against Donald Trump. I’m prosecuting the case against the system,” Williamson said, parroting part of Harris’ stump speech.
