John Hickenlooper has scheduled an event in Denver on March 7 where he is expected to join the throng of Democrats vying for the White House in 2020.
The former Democratic governor of Colorado, who has been mulling a run for months, received a permit to hold an event billed as a “celebration” in Denver’s Civic Center Park, the Colorado Sun reports. Sources close to Hickenlooper said Thursday that Hickenlooper would be announcing a run sometime during the first week of March.
Hinkenlooper, 67, will be part of a large field of Democratic candidates and will start firmly in the second tier, behind big names like Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Former Vice President Joe Biden and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke have yet to announce decisions on whether to run.
Andy Boian, a political strategist who has informally advised the former governor over the years, told news outlet KDVR that Hickenlooper is running. “Hickenlooper is going to announce he is running for President of the United States at this event,” he said.
The March 7 permit indicates that 2,000 people are expected to attend the event.
The Director of Special Projects for @Hickenlooper‘s Giddy Up PAC has reserved Civic Center Park for a “celebration” on Thursday from 5p-8p, in the name of JHFP Inc. Um…John Hickenlooper For President, Inc? #copolitics pic.twitter.com/8JoYdRkqwi
— Marshall Zelinger (@Marshall9News) March 1, 2019
Hickenlooper is positioning himself as as a pragmatic moderate who can work across the aisle. He has visited Iowa and New Hampshire, two early primary states.
“I think I’m the one person out there that could show again and again and again the ability to bring people together,” he told voters in Iowa last week.
Before his foray into politics, Hickenlooper was in the beer business, opening a brewery in 1988. He served as mayor of Denver from 2003 to 2011 and then as Colorado’s governor from 2011 to 2019.
Unlike other Democratic candidates vying for the White House, Hickenlooper has openly embraced the middle of the political spectrum. He and Republican John Kasich are friends and have collaborated together in recent years, including working on a joint plan to stabilize Obamacare.
Some have speculated the two moderate former governors might work together to form a unity ticket of sorts, although both have tried to tamp down those rumors.
“Hickenlooper, love him, the name is too long. Hickenlooper-Kasich, you couldn’t fit it on a bumper sticker,” Kasich told ABC in November.
If Hickenlooper announces his candidacy next week, he will join an already crowded pool of primarily progressive legislators that include Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., among others.
Hickenlooper would be only the second Democratic governor to run, joining Washington’s Jay Inslee, who announced his candidacy Friday.
