Hear the full interview with John Hickenlooper, or download the file to listen on the go.
[F]ormer Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper took the stage Saturday night at the Flynn Center in Burlington — or as moderator Jen Kimmich of The Alchemist called it, “Bernie country.”
Hickenlooper announced earlier this month that he’d be among the Democrats competing against Sen. Bernie Sanders for the 2020 presidential nomination. But when asked why he’d make a better president than Sanders, Hickenlooper hedged. “You will not hear me criticize Senator Bernie Sanders,” he said.
Hickenlooper says Sanders crystallized the income inequality problem facing the country. “I don’t agree with all of his solutions,” Hickenlooper said, “but I really salute his ability to create that clarity.”
Over the course of the 80-minute conversation, Hickenlooper discussed his economic development strategy, first as mayor of Denver and then as governor of Colorado for two terms.
“What we really tried to do was become a place where young people — young entrepreneurs — wanted to set up their businesses,” he said.
One sector he nurtured was the cannabis industry. In 2014, Colorado became the first state to implement a legal marijuana market.
“The marijuana boom is a social phenomenon,” he said.
Hickenlooper believes the federal government should declassify marijuana from its current status as a Schedule 1 drug. But he said states should be allowed to make their own rules about whether and how to legalize it.
The governor said his administration worked to build a system that would encourage startup entrepreneurs, moderate pesticide usage and energy consumption, and regulate commercial products like edibles and extracts.
“This is a new industry,” he said. “And to think that industries are going to regulate themselves is naive.”
But cannabis was just one of the areas where Hickenlooper focused on younger populations.
“We decided that we would take our capital investments and try to imagine that we were millennials,” he said. That meant expanding broadband across the state, installing light rail and bicycle infrastructure in cities and suburbs, and bolstering the state’s education and health care systems.
“That kind of investment has really turned Colorado around in the last 15 years,” he said.
Watch the full interview:
