John Wright Hickenlooper Jr. is an American politician, businessman, and geologist. He is the United States Senator-elect from Colorado, having defeated incumbent Cory Gardner in 2020. He was mayor of Denver from 2003 to 2011 and governor of Colorado from 2011 to 2019. He unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic nomination for president of the U.S. in 2019.
About John Hickenlooper in brief
John Wright Hickenlooper Jr. is an American politician, businessman, and geologist. He is the United States Senator-elect from Colorado, having defeated incumbent Cory Gardner in 2020. He was mayor of Denver from 2003 to 2011 and governor of Colorado from 2011 to 2019. After a career as a petroleum geologist, he co-founded the Wynkoop Brewing Company in Denver in 1988. His great-grandfather was a Union general, and his grandfather was a United States federal judge. He unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic nomination for president of the U.S. in 2019 but dropped out before primaries were held. He won the general election and is expected to assume office on January 3, 2021. He has been described as a “pro-business centrist” with a “tough-on-tough” profile. He previously served as vice chair of the Democratic Governors Association. He served as a member of the Colorado House of Representatives from 1999 to 2003. He lost his bid for re-election in 2010 to then-Governor Bill Ritter, who had been re-elected the previous year with 51% of the vote. In 2011, he was sworn in as governor and was elected to serve a second term in 2011. He introduced universal background checks and banned high-capacity magazines in the wake of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado mass shooting. He expanded Medicaid under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, halving the rate of uninsured people in the state. He initially opposed marijuana legalization, but has gradually come to support it.
He also established the Denver-based college scholarships to high school graduates, providing needs-based scholarships to graduates. He resigned as mayor just before his inauguration in May 2007, but was reelected with 88% of vote. He went on to serve as mayor for a third term in 2012, and in 2013 he was elected as the Democratic chair of The Democratic National Committee. In August 2012, he became the Democratic Chair of the National Governors Association, a position he held until December 2013. He received a B. A. in English in 1974 and a master’s degree in geology in 1980. He worked as a geologist in Colorado for Buckhorn Petroleum in the early 1980s. He and five business partners opened a brewpub in October 1988 after raising startup funds from dozens of friends and family along with a Denver economic development office loan. TIME Magazine named him one of America’s five best big-city mayors in 2005. In 2003, he announced a ten-year plan to end homelessness in Denver, citing it as one of the issues that prompted him to run for mayor. In 2015, Denver’s city auditor released a scathing audit faulting the plan’s implementation. The head of the agency responsible defended the program, saying it was still housing 300-400 people a month in varying ways. In May 2007 HickenLooper was re elected as mayor, and he was the second Denver mayor ever, winning 15 points by 15 points.
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