I never was a real Hickenlooper supporter but my sister was from day one. She loved the quirky commercials he did, especially the one where he rode the little scooter.  I think that it was called a Vespa.  Anyway, she really liked that particular commercial and she was one of his biggest fans.  She was always trying to convince me of what a great governor he would be because he didn’t fit the regular politician mold: he was his own man, she said.

After all of this time I have finally come to agree with her. Why now?  Because I followed his 2014 midterm election campaign closely and listened intently to all of the rhetoric that surrounded it.  The Republicans were doing everything within their power to force him to resort to negative ads against his opponent.  He refused to take the bait.

When he continued to run on his record and avoid the negative advertising despite all of the pressure that the Republicans were applying, they made their own add that said he was lying when he said he would not run negative ads. I can’t remember for sure but I think they showed excerpts from the Bob Beauprez ad where he sold a bank that he owned in Colorado and it later failed and taxpayers had to foot the bill.  The point was that this was a negative ad and the implication was that Governor Hickenlooper was responsible for it.

As it turned out, the race was really tight. I can imagine that key members of his own campaign staff were pushing him to go negative, but Hick – I read somewhere that this was an affectionate name used to refer to him by some of his closest allies, so no disrespect intended – stuck to his decision.  If I’m right in my assumption about members of his staff pushing him to go negative, they must have been going crazy and pulling their hair out by the time that the final numbers for each candidate were tallied.  But all of them must have made it through okay because I didn’t see any bald staffers, at least none who had hair just before things really got tight during the race, accompanying him at his victory press conference.

Okay, I admit that I drifted when I started to have fun with this article and strayed from my initial point, which was that I never was a real Hickenlooper supporter. So permit me to get back to that point.  As I watched his campaign progress through until the end and he never ran any negative ads but talked about Colorado and his record the entire time, I found that very refreshing.

Although I voted for Governor Hickenlooper in the previous election it wasn’t with the same gusto that I now feel. I’m a real Hickenlooper fan just like my sister was.  So, Congratulations, Governor!  More politicians should be like you!

Eulus Dennis