Over the weekend, Centennial Institute Director and former Colorado Senate President John Andrews published an op-ed in the Denver Post that called into question a sense of so-called inevitability about the re-election of liberal governor John Hickenlooper.
Andrews’ extensive article outlined a stinging litany of the governor’s broken promises, failed policies, and poor judgement. And he didn’t even get to Hickenlooper’s support of disastrous legislation regarding anti-growth business policy, gun control, and impediments to the state’s promising oil and gas industry.
But Andrews did go straight after the governor on numerous issues that have been ignored by the headline-grabbing disasters of recent weeks:
- His “still-TBD jobs creation plan”
- High unemployment rate compared to regional peers (Colorado has the highest in the region outside of trainwrecks AZ and NV)
- His proposal to raise the state income tax
- Poor student performance and his reluctance to adopt pro-student policies that have proved successful in states such as Florida, Arizona, and Louisiana
- Unacceptable traffic situations on I-25 and the roads leading to the mountains, and how that threatens to impact economic growth
During the last several months, Hickenlooper made a deliberate choice to align himself with the most extreme left wing of his party, which, when finally given control of both houses of the legislature and the governor’s mansion jammed through unpopular legislation that hampered economic growth, made things more difficult for job creators, and even make the state the punchline of pathetic jokes from coast to coast.
While social issues that had little impact to Colorado’s struggling middle class sucked most of the air out from under the dome this year, Hickenlooper’s incremental march towards more government dependency for a less well off Colorado continued with little resistance. What Andrews laid out was just the tip of the iceberg for Hickenlooper’s hyper-partisan agenda.