John Hickenlooper's Centrism Being Put to the Test in Colorado; Polls Show Hickenlooper Essentially Tied With Former GOP Congressman Bob Beauprez
DENVER--For much of his tenure as Colorado's governor, John Hickenlooper tried to straddle the divide between urban and rural political factions in a state where the middle seemed safest.</br></br>But Mr. Hickenlooper's centrism is being put to the test this year, and the first-term Democrat has struggled to fend off an unheralded Republican challenger in an unexpectedly tight re-election battle here.</br></br>Polls show Mr. Hickenlooper essentially tied with former GOP Congressman Bob Beauprez, who lost a previous campaign for governor in 2006 and initially wasn't viewed as a big threat to Mr. Hickenlooper.</br></br>Political experts say a confluence of factors have hurt Mr. Hickenlooper, a former Denver mayor who easily won the governorship in 2010 with 51% of the vote. He has faced general discontent with Democratic incumbents nationally, and he lost credibility with some Colorado voters after his attempts to tack to the center angered some on both sides of the political spectrum.</br></br>After Mr. Hickenlooper signed a series of gun-control laws passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature in 2013--laws that upset many rural voters--he apologized in June to a group of sheriffs that had opposed the laws, saying he didn't realize they would be so divisive. His remarks caught both Democrats and Republicans off guard, and further inflamed the situation.