On August 22nd, 2019, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper announced he was running for the United States Senate against incumbent Republican Cory Gardner. Hickenlooper dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race just 7 days prior, on August 15th. Hickenlooper’s announcement brought up many questions, with one of the chief being “Why even is the former Governor running"?
The seat Hickenlooper is running for must be taken into consideration. Senator Gardner was elected in 2014 on a Republican wave. The Republicans flipped 9 seats, and Democrats flipped 0. By the end of the night, the GOP held a majority in the Senate, 54-44, with 2 Independents (who caucus with the Democrats). The flipped seats included Louisiana, Arkansas, Colorado, Alaska, and North Carolina. Gardner was one of the few races where the final winning margin was under 5%. He finished with only 1.94% more votes than his opponent, former Colorado Senator, and 2014 incumbent Tom Udall. Gardner barely won his seat, despite running in a cycle where Republicans outperformed Democrats.
This, in turn, allowed election prediction sites like Sabato’s Crystal Ball to throw the race into either Democrat-friendly territory, or declare it a tossup. The race was seen as tossup before Hickenlooper announced he was going to run, and the loss would mean Democrats are one seat closer to claiming a Senate majority. The seat is seen as easy pickings by many, and Gardner is viewed as an easy takedown, much to the fears of many Republicans.
This is why Hickenlooper is running, or part of it. To run for Senate is one thing, but to run for a seat that you think you’ll easily win? That’s a double confidence boost. One could even claim Hickenlooper may have joined the race only to establish stronger ties with these (possible) future fellow Senators.
A common thing politicians will do after failing on the national stage is they will get a job in politics at a lower position (a chief example is Hillary Clinton). Sometimes, politicians go to state leadership after failing nationally. This can be applied to John Hickenlooper. While former Governor Hickenlooper had less than a substantial chance at the national Democratic nomination, he won’t have those same disastrous odds in a statewide race.
Hickenlooper is now likely the favorite in his race. The former governor was re-elected to his seat in 2014 by more raw votes than Gardner was; according to Dave Leip’s US Election Atlas, Hickenlooper got 1,006,433 votes, while Gardner got 983,891 votes-a difference of 22,542. If you think more people voted in Hickenlooper’s race, you’d be correct: the total added up from the same source, was this: 2,041,607 in Hickenlooper’s race, 2,041,058 in Gardner’s race. While Hickenlooper’s race accrued more raw total votes, it wasn’t an overwhelming disparity.
Now, one final question that should be asked is, “Can Hickenlooper even win?”. Let’s disregard the fact that many forecasts are already counting the race as Likely or Lean Hickenlooper. Let’s disregard Hickenlooper's popularity as governor. We need to consider a lot of factors that forecasts in early 2019 (and some current ones) did not account for. First, the incumbent advantage; both Hickenlooper and Gardner have this factor, Hickenlooper probably more. This is because a governor (like a mayor) is usually more well-known in their state rather than representatives or state representatives. Solely basing name recognition as a factor, Hickenlooper would hypothetically beat Gardner.
Next comes the motivation factor. In the 2020 Colorado Republican primary, Coloradoans voted for Donald Trump by 92.3%, according to POLITICO (with 81% reporting). Joe Biden won only 235,091 votes (24.7% of the total vote, with 82% reporting). While Trump didn’t get as many votes as all the Democrats combined, this still means that Trump alone got over 600,000 votes while Biden got only 200,000 votes. If this enthusiasm bled down to the Senate race (which is a high possibility), then Gardner will likely be running up behind Hickenlooper by only a few points, knocking this race into Lean Democrat.
Another factor which can be considered when gauging the outcome of the race in November is approval ratings. On January 10th, 2019, Morning Consult released a quarterly update on America’s most popular and unpopular governors. Hickenlooper’s ratings were the following: 49% approved, 30% disapproved, and 21% didn’t know who he was or had no comment on him. This was based on the fourth and final quarter of 2018, which was months before Hickenlooper left office. Looking at Gardner’s approval on the same day, and we see the following: 37% Approve, 35% Disapprove, and 28% had no idea who Gardner was or didn’t have an opinion. If we take these two sources and compare them, we find this side-by-side: for approval, Hickenlooper beat Gardner by 12%. On disapproval, Gardner had 5% more disapproval than Hickenlooper. On those who have no idea who their state representatives or leaders are, Hickenlooper again beats Gardner by having 7% less responding who didn’t know who he was.
The idea that Governors are more well known than Senators seems to be a trend if one compared the two Morning Consult charts. In comparing the two charts, one finds that few Senators are more known than their governors. When this is the case, the factor these senators are known is not a large margin (of course outliers can and always will exist). If we want to go off these older numbers, then surely the situation looks terrible for Gardner. If the election were held and these numbers were what they are in reality, then Gardner would get wiped by Hickenlooper, and would probably lose by 10+ points. However, let’s add in the modern numbers for Gardner.
On the dates of writing this (April 29-May 2nd), there has not been an official “Quarterly Report” for the popularity of Senators. However, according to the quarter four 2019 ratings, Gardner was sitting at 37 Approval, 40, Disapproval, and 23 Unknown or No Opinion. From a year before, Gardner’s approval rose by only 1 point, while his disapproval rose by 5 points, and his unknown factor decreased by 5 points. However, this did not take in the post-impeachment ratings. According to a Gallup news article on March 10th, 2020, Republicans in Congress became more favorably viewed than Democrats. Considering this rise in net approval, would this mean Gardner’s approval rose as well? It’s likely, even in a state like Colorado. So could this new factor mean that Hickenlooper is still favored likely to win the race in November? I don’t personally believe so, and with the Coronavirus throwing traditional campaign methods into the air, no one can be for sure how this next election will turn out.
In conclusion, what I’m saying is that there are two possible reasons why Hickenlooper has decided to run for Gardner’s seat. Either he wants back into politics, or he wants to knock out what is commonly seen as an easy gain by many election prediction modelers. Either way, it’s suspicious that the former Governor would drop out of a national race, then jump into a state-wide race just one week apart. And the suspiciousness rises when one considers that most of the former candidates for the presidency are already in Congress, and would become Hickenlooper’s colleagues if he won his race. It can be seen as a political move, but others will consider it a normal occurrence. Anything can happen in this new environment which the coronavirus has put us into now.
All opinions expressed within the contents of this article reflect the views and values of the author, not Politics NOW.
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