High school debaters grill Hickenlooper on Senate race, Sudan protests

HANOVER, N.H. — Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper fielded well-researched questions from some of the top high school debaters in the country on Wednesday afternoon at the Hanover Inn on the campus of Dartmouth College.

The high school debaters, students at the four-week Dartmouth Debate Institute summer intensive program that has produced national champions at the high school and collegiate level, challenged Hickenlooper on a wide variety of issues, ranging from fracking to the pro-democracy protests in Sudan.

"That's the last time I invite all these debaters," Hickenlooper laughed after a question on court-packing and abortion rights. "They ask the toughest questions."

Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper addressed a first-floor conference room at the Hanover Inn in Hanover, New Hampshire. The crowd included around 30 high school debaters from across the country and 20 New Hampshire voters.

The question, phrased as a choice between hoping that Chief Justice John Roberts sides with the liberal justices or adding new justices to the Supreme Court to defend Roe v. Wade, asked whether Hickenlooper had reconsidered his opposition to court-packing in light of a recent law passed in Alabama that effectively bans abortion in the state. After ticking through his record on reproductive rights, Hickenlooper responded that he would only consider the possibility "if the basic civil rights of this country seem at risk."

The toughest query of the afternoon came several minutes later, when a debater acknowledged that Hickenlooper is "quite popular" in his home state of Colorado and asked "why not enter the 2020 Senate race" against the incumbent Republican, Colorado Senator Cory Gardner.

"A fair question," Hickenlooper said. "You're not the first person to ask that question."

The former brewpub owner began that he believed "in life you've got to do the things, or at least you're going to be more successful, doing things you're naturally inclined toward" and explained that "what I love most is putting teams together."

But Hickenlooper also expressed confidence in the current crop of Democratic candidates for Senate in Colorado. "I don't think they need me to beat Cory Gardner," he said. He argued that he was the best candidate to defeat President Donald Trump in purple states like Ohio and cited his record "doing the big progressive things that Washington hasn't been able to do."

A question on the pro-democracy movement in Sudan allowed Hickenlooper to sketch the outlines of his foreign policy with several buzzwords. "I wouldn't call myself ready to create a doctrine, but if I was, I would create a doctrine of full security and constant engagement," he said.

Hickenlooper, who cited visits to the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado and seminars at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington as the source of his thinking on foreign policy, identified economic conditions as one of the root causes of "situations like what we see in Sudan." He attempted to connect the Sudanese pro-democracy movement to the migrant caravans from three Northern Triangle countries in central America. "It is almost always some sort economic catastrophe that drives people to those kinds of unthinkable acts," he said.

Hickenlooper answered questions on court-packing, the 2020 Senate race in Colorado and the pro-democracy movement in Sudan, among other issues.

Originally a geologist by trade, Hickenlooper seemed more in his element on a question about fracking. He explained that, although he marched against nuclear power in the 1980s, his views have changed because of climate change and he now considers nuclear energy, as well as natural gas, a necessary alternative to coal.

"Fracking is a tool to get hydrocarbons," he said. He called the procedure "unsafe" in "places like Pennsylvania and New York," but said there was "less risk" in his home state of Colorado because  "the groundwater is very shallow" and described the precautions that he oversaw as governor.

"We make them drill three water wells around every oil well and measure those water wells every year at the oil well to make sure there is no water pollution," he said. "We haven't seen it. Doesn't mean there's not risk."

Hickenlooper also addressed another issue that came across his desk as governor: gun violence. He described his response to the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting, when Colorado became the first purple state to pass universal background checks on gun purchases. He said his locally-focused, data-driven approach eventually won over independents and Republicans.

"We had the national statistics on background checks, but we hadn't got the local Colorado statistics," he said. "The statistics were so powerful when they came back"

Hickenlooper listed that, in one year, a previous law which had covered 50 percent of gun purchases with background checks caught 38 people convicted of homicide, 132 people convicted of sexual assault, 3000 people convicted of violent crimes and 140 people with an outstanding warrant for arrest.

"Those are so staggering when they're in your community and we presented them to the Republicans," he continued. "Since then, we have never heard a word that any Republican senator in the state of Colorado even considers repealing universal background checks."

Yet, the question, which asked how he would address gun violence as president, invariably came back to the Senate.

"The first thing we got to do is win the U.S. Senate," Hickenlooper said. "Let me make a personal guarantee that we will win Colorado."

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.