John Hickenlooper

Born in Narberth, Pennsylvania, Hickenlooper is a graduate of Wesleyan University. After a career as a petroleum geologist, in 1988 he co-founded the Wynkoop Brewing Company, one of the first brewpubs in the U.S. Hickenlooper was elected the 43rd mayor of Denver in 2003, serving two terms. In 2005, TIME named him one of America's five best big-city mayors. After incumbent governor Bill Ritter said that he would not seek reelection, Hickenlooper announced his intention to run for the Democratic nomination in January 2010. He won an uncontested primary and faced Constitution Party nominee Tom Tancredo and Republican Party nominee Dan Maes in the general election. Hickenlooper won with 51% of the vote and was reelected in 2014, defeating Republican Bob Beauprez.


As governor, he introduced universal background checks and banned high-capacity magazines in the wake of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting. He expanded Medicaid under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, halving the rate of uninsured people in the state. Having initially opposed marijuana legalization, he has gradually come to support it.


He sought the Democratic nomination for U.S. president in 2019 but dropped out before primaries were held. He subsequently ran for the U.S. Senate, winning the Democratic nomination and the general election, defeating incumbent Republican Cory Gardner.^[2] At 68, Hickenlooper became the oldest first-term senator to represent Colorado and the only Quaker member of Congress.^[3]

Early life, education, and career[edit]

Hickenlooper was born in Narberth, Pennsylvania, a middle-class area of the suburban Main Line of Philadelphia.^[4] He is the son of Anne Doughten (née Morris) Kennedy and John Wright Hickenlooper.^[5][6][7][8] His great-grandfather Andrew Hickenlooper was a Union general, and his grandfather Smith Hickenlooper was a United States federal judge.^[9][10]


Hickenlooper was raised by his mother from a young age after his father's death. He is a 1970 graduate of The Haverford School, an independent boys school in Haverford, Pennsylvania, where he was a National Merit Semifinalist. New York magazine reported that at this time his heroes were Neil Young, Ray Davies, and Gordie Howe, and that his pet peeves were violence and "beer boys."^[11]


Hickenlooper attended Wesleyan University, where he received a B.A. in English in 1974 and a master's degree in geology in 1980.^[12][13] He recounted first smoking pot when he was 16 and using lithium carbonate capsules to go through with his final exam.^[14]


Hickenlooper worked as a geologist in Colorado for Buckhorn Petroleum in the early 1980s. When Buckhorn was sold, Hickenlooper was laid off in 1986.^[15] He and five business partners opened the Wynkoop Brewing Company brewpub in October 1988 after raising startup funds from dozens of friends and family along with a Denver economic development office loan. The Wynkoop was one of the nation's first brewpubs. By 1996, Westword reported that Denver had more brewpubs per capita than any other city.^[16] Hickenlooper claims his restaurant was the first in Colorado to offer a designated driver program.^[17]


In 1989, Hickenlooper was arrested in Denver for "driving while impaired" and did community service.^[14][17]