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Colorado Governor Delivers State of the State

Gov. John Hickenlooper likely had to rewrite the State of the State speech he delivered Thursday, or at least rethink it. He surely thought he would be addressing a Legislature controlled by Democrats working in concert with a Clinton administration in Washington. Things didn’t turn out that way.

Gov. John Hickenlooper likely had to rewrite the State of the State speech he delivered Thursday, or at least rethink it. He surely thought he would be addressing a Legislature controlled by Democrats working in concert with a Clinton administration in Washington. Things didn’t turn out that way.

 

Instead, the governor as speaking to the same kind of Legislature he spoke to last year — a divided Legislature where Democrats control the House and Republicans control the Senate. So he delivered a speech similar to the one he delivered last year. At nearly every turn, he lamented the lack of money lawmakers have to spend on “core services” in the state, including education and health care, and on long-overdue updates to the state’s transportation and communication infrastructures.

 

It was a speech designed to sell members of the public and special interests lever-pullers, hoping they might apply just the right amount of pressure on Senate Republican leaders to bring change. It included a steady mix of familiar Hickenlooper persuasion techniques. There were folksy laugh lines and Quaker-inflected requests for relatively modest investments aimed at making great improvements for those most in need.

 

“We’ve had this debate for too long,” he said. “If talk could fill potholes, we’d have the best roads in the country.”

Caroline Cournoyer is GOVERNING's senior web editor.
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