Colorado Today: An Interview with Gov. Hickenlooper

“The negative ads we’ve kind of moved into, starting in the nineties, have gotten worse and worse. You never see businesses do attack ads, right? If Coke did an attack ad against Pepsi, Pepsi would have to attack Coke…. You could suppress down an entire product category.”

John Hickenlooper is nearing the end of his second term as Governor of Colorado. Before becoming the state’s 42nd governor, he was Mayor of Denver for eight years, and before that, a geologist and brewery owner. He gained national attention for his work as Mayor of Denver in working to address the City’s homeless population. He also served as the Chair of the National Governors Association. On June 12th, Governor Hickenlooper joined Merion West’s Erich Prince to discuss the divide between rural and urban Colorado (what The Denver Post called the “two Colorados”), polarization, and promoting a small business agenda.

In an appearance on CNN earlier this year, you discussed the divide between urban communities and rural communities on the gun control debate, stating that “[rural communities] don’t want someone in the cities coming in and telling them anything to do with their guns.” So this divide is something we’re talking a lot about in the news, and it might be especially true when it comes to social issues. As governor, how have you worked to bridge this gap between rural and urban communities and represent the interests of those who live in both?

It is about social issues, but it’s also about economic issues. So many of the great social challenges that large cities have faced in the last twenty years are facing rural areas on about the same level. On a per capita basis, opioids have about the same instances of abuse in rural areas, as in urban areas. All kinds of issues [such as] depression, other mental health issues—which we think of as more urban issues—we’re seeing them at a similar level [in rural areas].