Several top-level campaign staffers left John Hickenlooper last week and a wave of news stories questioned his ability to turn around his presidential run By Alexandra Jaffe, The Associated Press PERRY, Iowa — Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said Sunday “the vast majority of the problem with the campaign was me,” but promised to stay in the Democratic presidential race and become a better candidate. That is despite calls from his own staff for him to exit the presidential race and run for Senate instead. “Certainly the vast majority of the problem with the campaign was me not being as good of a messenger as I need to be, but you can’t switch or trade in a new candidate,” he said in an interview with a local reporter after a town hall in Perry, Iowa. Hickenlooper acknowledged that “there’s just a bunch of skills that don’t come naturally to me” that are essential to campaigning — “like being a really good debater, being real smooth with wealthy donors.” But “I’m committed to growing and working and getting better,” he added. The frank assessment of his challenges come after a number of top staffers on Hickenlooper’s presidential campaign left the team, after Hickenlooper failed to gain traction in early polls and has struggled to raise money in the first few months of his campaign. But he told the Perry voters that, despite pushback from his staff, he plans to stay in the race and sees Iowa as his opportunity to break out. “I realize I’m at 1% in the polls, and you know some of my own staff said, ‘Run for Senate’! I think Iowa is where that can be changed,” he said, citing the “pragmatism” of Iowa voters. He joked that “I’m unemployed, so I’m gonna spend a lot of time in Iowa.” Still, Hickenlooper faced that same skepticism from some members of the audience, with one voter asking the former governor why he’s opting not to challenge Colorado Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner. Hickenlooper replied that “you’ve gotta love it to give your life to public service,” and suggested he’d prefer the work of being president to that of being a senator. But speaking after the event, Hickenlooper expressed optimism in the face of what he acknowledged were tough odds. “Sometimes, the longshot becomes the legend,” he said. Source: https://coloradosun.com/2019/07/08/john-hickenlooper-presidential-campaign-us-senate/  

John Hickenlooper, Colorado’s two-term governor whose 2020 Democratic presidential bid morphed into a Senate campaign, wants voters to know he’s not an average politician. The former Denver mayor is trying to unseat freshman Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, and his campaign literature is sprinkled with references to his small-business beginnings and the brewpub chain he created with a loan from the city more than three decades ago. Hickenlooper would go on to sell his stake in the chain for a reported $7 million.   “Change is on tap,” his website bio page proclaims, describing Hickenlooper’s “different path to public office.” The life story is accompanied by beer-tap icon and black-and-white photo of a 1980s-styled Hickenlooper and his three business partners, all clad in T-shirt and jeans, standing below a Wynkoop Brewery-coming-soon sign that promoted the undertaking as a project of the city and county of Denver’s Revolving Loan Fund Program. Now that a global coronavirus pandemic has workers locked down in their homes and more than 22 million Americans out of work, business-friendly Democrats like Hickenlooper are urgently pressing for more loans and action to help small businesses survive. “We must accelerate our efforts to enable small businesses to keep workers on payroll,” Hickenlooper said in a statement over the weekend. Last week he unveiled his multi-point plan to do just that. It starts out by acknowledging that “half of small businesses only have about a two-week cash buffer before they collapse.” Meanwhile, Democratic leaders in Washington, D.C., have been  holding up hundreds of billions in federal funds intended to rescue the same kind of restaurants, stores, breweries and other small businesses across the country. A $350 billion loan program, part of the CARES Act, was paused last Thursday after quickly burning through all of its money. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders have been facing heat over the last week for their role in the stalemate. While acknowledging that small businesses are being crushed, Democrats have insisted on tying the rescue to their own priorities, including $150 billion funding for state and local governments that are facing spiraling budget deficits – many COVID-related, but some not — and some $75 billion for hospitals. All of this is occurring during an election year, and Republicans have hammered Democratic candidates over it while playing up what they see as a wildly out-of-touch moment for Pelosi last week. The wealthy Democratic Party leader joined comedian James Corden from her California home on his late-night show, taking shots at President Trump’s handling of the pandemic while showing off how much designer ice cream she has in her two gleaming sub-zero freezers. “While Nancy Pelosi sits in her ivory tower in San Francisco eating $13 dollar a pint ice cream out of her $24,000 fridge, she is cheering on Democrats for blocking coronavirus relief aid that has so far been distributed to 1.3 billion small businesses that is about to run out,” Republican National Committee spokesman Steve Guest tweeted. “Question for Nancy Pelosi: How many more jobs will you eliminate while you and your fellow Democrats continue to block more funding for the Paycheck Protection Program?” Guest followed up in an email to reporters on Monday. Critics on the left also panned the appearance as unseemly. “Millions of Americans are waiting for crappy one-time 1200 checks that Congress passed before they went on holiday, and the Speaker is on a late-night comedy program showing off how much ice cream she has stored in her freezer,” tweeted Mehdi Hasan, a columnist for the Intercept. The Trump campaign this week started running a brutal digital ad showing the pain of out-of-work people looking into their own near-empty refrigerators intercut with Pelosi’s comedy segment where she titters about how much ice cream she’s eating while under lockdown. The ad ends with the words, “Let them eat ice cream—Nancy Antoinette.” Stalling legislation to get more of what you want is part of normal Washington sausage-making. But during a pandemic with the economy cratering, two days can make or break companies, advocates warn. The National Federation of Independent Business released a survey on the small business loan program Monday, showing that 80% of small business applicants are still urgently waiting for financial assistance and many have no idea of where they are in the application process. “Every day that goes by without financial support for these small firms is hugely detrimental for those who have to adjust their workforce or operations to keep afloat,” Holly Wade, NFIB director of research and policy analysis, told RealClearPolitics. “It’s incredibly stressful, frustrating and scary.” The urgency certainly isn’t lost on Hickenlooper and other prominent Democratic candidates with business backgrounds, but most have tried to frame the debate as Washington politics delaying the funds, instead of Democrats wanting add-ons that could be pursued later. Astronaut-turned-small-business-owner Mark Kelly is one example. The husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords is challenging Arizona Sen. Martha McSally in a closely watched election battle. Kelly, a part owner of near-space tourism company World View, recently said he is acutely aware of how difficult it is to start a small business in the best of times, never mind trying to keep it running during a pandemic. “Washington needs to get out of its own way, immediately put more resources into this program, and fix some of the issues that have made it harder for Arizona small businesses to get this relief,” he said. “The Arizona small businesses I've spoken with aren't receiving the help they need and can’t wait any longer.” M.J. Hegar, an Air Force veteran and teacher who also has her own business consulting firm, casts her frustration over the delays in similar terms. Hegar is challenging Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn. A spokeswoman for her campaign told RCP the Democratic candidate “has been clear that Washington needs to put politics aside and provide immediate relief for Texas small businesses.” She also faulted Cornyn for the $2.2 trillion relief package Congress passed in early April for failing to fund enough virus tests, which could, if conducted extensively enough, help state and local leaders in Texas assess how to best open the state’s economy. Less than 1% of Texans have been tested for COVID-19, the spokeswoman said. “Texas small business owners deserve both economic relief and peace of mind that, because of adequate testing, once they can reopen, they will stay open,” she added. Other Democrats with business backgrounds in tough races argue that it’s good policy to delay the funds to make sure they’re going to the small businesses that need them the most. Clearer guidelines are desperately needed, they say, after embarrassing examples of the loans being awarded to more than a dozen companies with annual revenues in the hundreds of millions, such as Ruth’s Chris Steak House chain and Shake Shack, which received $10 million but has since pledged to give it back. Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, whose state of Michigan is getting hit hard by both the pandemic and the accompanying economic free fall, said Democrats have delayed the new funding to try to fix a problem with the first tranche already passed, namely that many small businesses were left waiting while bigger businesses, restaurant chains and some big hotel groups were given money instead. “We need to be focused on those businesses that are most damaged – folks that need the help the most,” he told MSNBC on Monday. “Help can’t wait much longer, but we want to do this right as well and to make sure there’s proper accountability,” added Peters, who has an MBA and spent his early career as a Merrill Lynch financial adviser before becoming an executive at PaineWebber. Peters, one of the most vulnerable senators this cycle, maintains only a four-point lead over challenger John James, according to a poll conducted in January, before the pandemic. Republicans say they were close to a deal late last week but Democratic leaders are still not appreciating the urgency of the situation. “Apparently, Senate Democrats decided over the weekend that providing financial relief to small business owners and their employees was not an urgent priority,” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Jesse Hunt told RCP. Moe Vela, a former senior adviser to Joe Biden who now works for TransparentBusiness, a consulting firm, brushes off the notion that voters will blame Democrats for holding up the funds for two weeks. Vela, who sat on the White House emergency preparedness and continuity of government council during Barack Obama’s presidency, argued that Democrats are fighting to ensure that the money goes to those who truly need it, such as minority- and women-owned small businesses -- and voters are smart enough to see that. “Shake Shack got some, but Mrs. Gonzales’ tortilla factory didn’t?” he asked. A spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee pressed similar points. “Democrats had to fight for more money for small businesses in the original relief package, and are now fighting to ensure this aid actually gets to small businesses, including those that work with community leaders, are in rural communities or are owned by veterans, people of color and women,” said DSCC spokeswoman Lauren Passalacqua said in a statement. “They’re also fighting for more hospitals and coronavirus testing so we can safely reopen the economy – why aren’t Republicans?” But at least one prominent Republican, President Trump himself, has expressed concern over bigger businesses getting the loans while smaller ones struggling to find the money to stay afloat are having more trouble. “Some people will have to return it, if we think it’s inappropriate,” he pledged during Monday’s press conference. “If somebody got something that they think is inappropriate, we will get it back.” When it comes to more money for testing, Trump was less trusting of Democrats’ motives. Earlier Monday, he tweeted that Democrats are pushing for more testing as a way to shift responsibility onto the federal government for any problems involved in re-opening state and local economies. “States, not the federal government, should be doing the testing,” he said. “But we will work with the governors and get it done.” Source: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/

The 2020 Democrats again take the debate stage Thursday, filling millions of family rooms across America with their faces and voices. With the field of presidential contenders essentially cut in half, it will be a very different event than the previous two sessions. For the first time, all the front-runners will be on the stage the same evening. Pundits have already started to handicap the event and create the narratives that will invariably dominate the post-debate news coverage. The composition of the field tells us a great deal about what Democrats value. The number of candidates on the stage who have ever run a business has fallen from four to one. The field is dominated by the three A’s – academics, attorneys, and activists. The three White House aspirants with business experience who failed to make the cut -- John Hickenlooper, Michael Bennet, and John Delaney -- are too practical to make the big policy promises that capture the hearts of the liberal base of the Democratic Party. They comprehend the unintended consequences of these sweeping agendas and were unwilling to fully embrace them. They equivocated when it came to eliminating private health insurance, making college “free,” and imposing a new “wealth tax” on the richest Americans. Their reluctance to participate in this attack on the free market system rendered them irrelevant inside their own political party.   This isn’t surprising. There appears to be a fundamental disdain for successful business people among Democrats. In 2016, Michael Bloomberg was greeted with chants of “one-percenter” as he stood up to support Hillary Clinton at the party’s convention. Howard Schultz was accused by Democrats of being a billionaire egomaniac – despite providing tens of thousands of jobs to returning soldiers, and health care, tuition reimbursement, and stock options to hundreds of thousands of employees. Some of the attacks on Schultz were motivated by fears that he would run as an independent and possibly compromise Democrats’ 2020 chances of defeating President Trump. Yet Tom Steyer, who along with Bloomberg has been one of the most dedicated financial supporters of Democrats, received similar treatment when he decided to run as a Democrat. The ridicule with which his campaign has been met should send an unmistakable message: “We love your money, but not you.”  Some will argue that this isn’t news. Arnold Schwarzenegger often pointed out the Democrats’ institutional confusion by suggesting that “you can’t love jobs and hate the people who create them.” Once upon a time, the party of Franklin Roosevelt accepted this as a tenet of the faith. Over the last three decades, however, party elites have been steering their brethren in a different direction. Since Michael Dukakis’ disastrous 1988 campaign, Democrats have tried to argue that they support the private sector and economic growth. With this campaign they are amending that stance. The new credo is: “We support economic growth, provided it’s driven by government programs.” With all due respect to Bill Clinton, “the era of big government,” which never really went away, is back with a vengeance. This approach carries consequences both electorally and from a governance perspective. The Democrats are effectively working for President Trump by rejecting the private sector. He wants to position this race as a choice between socialism and capitalism; they are beating him to the punch. Instead of a referendum on Trumpism, the election could turn on the relative merits of two competing economic systems. While polls differ on the number of voters who prefer socialism, the average is less than a third of Americans. Those tend to be younger citizens who vote less frequently. From a governance perspective, it also likely means any new administration would be long on big government programs. If this is the direction our country takes, I hope Democrats take a moment to evaluate prior big government engineering. Yes, Medicare has helped take care of our most vulnerable citizens, but it’s also helped usher in four decades of runaway health care inflation. Medicare Part D has enabled many Americans to afford their prescription drugs, while simultaneously driving up the costs for millions of others. Likewise, the $150 billion we’ve spent every year trying to make higher education accessible to more Americans hasn’t led to affordability; rather, it’s led to inflation. Democrats would be wise to involve some of those business people they so easily cast aside -- the ones who understand how markets work. Otherwise, they may win the White House while designing a future filled with unintended consequences, further antagonizing an already alienated American electorate. Source: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/