John Hickenlooper’s presidential campaign finds himself without a finance director or a campaign manager, raising questions about how much longer the former Colorado governor’s White House run can last.
Recent days have seen departures of campaign manager Brad Komar and national finance director Dan Sorenson, along with communications director Lauren Hitt, digital director John Schueler, and New Hampshire political director Nolan Varee.
With many campaign positions now vacant, Hickenlooper finds himself with major holes in his campaign structure.
Hickenlooper has always been a second-tier presidential candidate, at best. He had enough support from donors to make it into the first round of debates, in Miami last week. But during the first quarter of the year Hickenlooper, 67, brought in just over $2 million, a fraction of his more than 20 rivals. The second fundraising quarter ended on Sunday, and Hickenlooper is yet to report his cash haul for the April-June period.
Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina-based Democratic strategist, said the staff departures are predictable as Hickenlooper, a former Denver mayor and brew pub owner, failed to gain much traction in the polls.
“I’m not surprised those people left his campaign. There’s always these calibration moments in a campaign that are really evaluation moments. His campaign really hasn’t broken out generally, and it certainly didn’t after the first debate,” Seawright said. “He’s gonna have to really decide if he can deliver a serious campaign and I don’t think he’ll be the first to be doing so. I’d look at whether he decides to move forward by Labor Day.”
On MSNBC Tuesday morning, Hickenlooper said his call for moderately left-of-center policies, rather than socialist solutions in the mold of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has limited his appeal so far.
“It’s harder to raise money because we don’t — we’re not promising free healthcare or, you know, to forgive free tuition for everyone, forgive student debt,” Hickenlooper said. “We’re trying to present a picture of this country and what it can be in the future that will resonate with everyone. That’s a harder vehicle by which to get small donors.”
One thing working in Hickenlooper’s favor is that he has qualified for the next rounds of Democratic primary debates, in Detroit on July 30 and July 31. So far, only former Vice President Joe Biden, Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, California Sen. Kamala Harris and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttgieg also have qualified. Each met the Democratic National Committee’s new debate requirements of hitting 2% in multiple polls and collecting donations from 130,000 individual donors.
