Engage Colorado – John Hickenlooper for U.S. Senate

Newsletter — Issue 19 — June 16, 2026

This newsletter has been published by Engage Colorado.

An Endorsement — and an Honest Ask of a Friend

John Hickenlooper for U.S. Senate

This Engage Colorado Newsletter reflects the personal opinions of Dan Caruso, written with the support of the Caruso Ventures team. The Ensuring Colorado's Innovation Future Coalition did not review and has not endorsed this Engage Colorado Newsletter.

I am endorsing John Hickenlooper — "Hick" — for re-election to the United States Senate.

I have known Hick for a long time, and we have spent meaningful time together as recently as last month. This endorsement is the considered judgment of a friend who has watched him in public life across mayor, governor, and senator — and who is going to vote for him on June 30.

I want to be honest, as Hick knows I would be, about the two areas where I am most asking him to lean in during his second Senate term.

First, Hickenlooper is uniquely positioned to be the voice Colorado needs right now. The Innovation Vision for Colorado — the affirmative agenda for Colorado to become the world's leading innovation ecosystem — depends on the leadership of our three most influential statewide officeholders: our Governor and our two United States Senators. Hickenlooper is one of the three. Colorado has lost significant momentum as a geography that attracts the founders and investors who build America's innovation economy, driven by the rhetoric and policies of our state's political leadership. Hickenlooper has a meaningful opportunity to help right the ship — to champion the Innovation Vision and rebuild collaboration between Colorado's political leadership and our business and tech community.

Second, Hickenlooper has the opportunity to be a more public centrist Democratic voice in the United States Senate. His pragmatic instincts and his business background give him unique standing in that chamber. Despite his centrist positioning, he has rarely shown public support for positions more balanced than his party's. Across both the Biden and Trump administrations, there were moments — votes, public statements, coalition-building — where he could have stepped forward as a centrist bridge-builder. I know he did this privately. But there were times he could and should have been more public. We need leadership-by-example to combat the divisive extremities of both parties.

This endorsement is therefore as much an ask of Hick as it is an endorsement of him. I want to see Hickenlooper step more fully into the role of bridge-builder — and into a stronger, more visible leadership role for Colorado, helping our state regain its positive momentum as a geography that people want to live in, build their lives in, and invest in.

Hickenlooper's Opponent Is an Insurgent Progressive Who Will Accelerate Colorado's Negative Momentum

State Senator Julie Gonzales — Hickenlooper's opponent in the June 30 Democratic primary — is, by her own description, an "insurgent progressive." Her platform centers on taxing billionaires to fund universal child care, universal elder care, and Medicare for All. Her campaign is endorsed by the national grassroots progressive group Indivisible. She characterizes much of the Democratic Senate caucus, including Hickenlooper, as "do-nothing" Democrats who have failed to deliver for working Americans, and she has framed her candidacy as an explicit disruption of the establishment wing of the party.

This is precisely the kind of political posture that has accelerated Colorado's loss of momentum. The data in The Honest Assessment is clear: capital, talent, and companies are leaving Colorado in response to the rhetoric, the regulatory environment, and the political signals coming out of the state's leadership. A United States Senator from Colorado who arrives in Washington intent on pulling her party further to the left, raising taxes on the most successful builders in our state, and framing the Democratic caucus as an obstacle to her movement is a senator who will deepen — not reverse — the trajectory Colorado is already on.

Hick's Long Track Record as a Colorado Builder, Leader, and Champion of Our Business Community

John Hickenlooper has spent his entire adult life building in Colorado.

He came to the state in the mid-1980s as a geologist. When the energy industry collapsed and he lost his job, he didn't leave Colorado — he stayed and built. In 1988 he opened the Wynkoop Brewing Company, one of the first brewpubs in the United States. He grew it into a Denver institution that helped catalyze the revitalization of LoDo into the neighborhood it is today. He is, in every sense that matters, a Colorado entrepreneur. He has actually built a business, made a payroll, navigated real-world economic cycles, and lived with the consequences of his own decisions — long before the government ever paid his salary.

He carried that builder's sensibility into public life. Two terms as Mayor of Denver (2003–2011). Two terms as Governor of Colorado (2011–2019). One term in the United States Senate (2021–today). As Mayor he revitalized downtown Denver and led a city through a difficult economic period. As Governor he presided over one of the strongest economic expansions in Colorado's history — with the state consistently ranking among the top in the country for business climate, job creation, and net domestic migration. The tech and innovation economy that Engage Colorado now points to as Colorado's foundational strength reached its current scale and maturity in significant part because of how Hickenlooper governed.

Across all of it, Hickenlooper has been a steady, visible, and genuine partner to Colorado's business community. He has shown up — at dinners, at company milestones, at investor gatherings, at the kinds of convenings that make our innovation ecosystem cohere. He has treated Colorado's founders, investors, and operators as partners in the work of building the state, not as adversaries to be managed.

I would love to see Hickenlooper — the builder, the entrepreneur, the partner to Colorado's business leadership — use his platform as a United States Senator to help Colorado's political leadership craft the policies and rhetoric that will regain the momentum our state has lost.

What I Heard at My Home on May 22

On Friday, May 22, I hosted Senator Hickenlooper at my home in Boulder for a Tech Conversation with twenty-five Colorado tech innovators — founders and CEOs across quantum, space and aerospace, AI, energy, digital infrastructure, outdoor recreation, biotech, and the creative economy. The room included leaders from:

Everyone in the room loves Colorado. Everyone in the room shares a common belief about the importance of a vibrant tech ecosystem for the entire state — for every Coloradan, every community, every corner of the economy.

And everyone in the room is expressing real frustration with our current Colorado political leadership. The frustration is not partisan. It is the frustration of builders watching political leaders prioritize the politics of the moment over the long-term needs of the state — and watching capital, talent, and companies make logical decisions about where to invest in response. What twenty-five Colorado tech leaders are asking for is straightforward: political leaders who focus on the needs of Colorado, who can separate and differentiate themselves from the parts of their national party's agenda that harm the state, and who will support policies that invest in Colorado even when those policies cross party lines.

This was the message we gave to Hick that evening. We need Senator Hickenlooper — one of the most seasoned political leaders Colorado has ever produced — to use his Senate platform to help guide Colorado's political leadership to recognize the importance of a vibrant innovation ecosystem for the lives of all Coloradans. Colorado needs to develop the policies and the rhetoric that will regain our state's momentum in partnership with the Colorado business and tech community — not in opposition to it.

Colorado's Lost Momentum

The numbers tell the story. Net domestic migration turned negative for the first time since 2004.

Ninety-eight companies have relocated out of state since 2019, eliminating more than 13,000 jobs. Forty-five percent of Colorado businesses now plan to make their next investment somewhere else. Eighty-one percent of Colorado executives say state policy is negatively impacting their business.

These outcomes are not the result of natural forces. They are driven primarily by the rhetoric and policies of our state's political leadership — the accumulated cost of choices made, votes cast, lawsuits filed, and public statements made over the past several years that have signaled to capital, talent, and companies that Colorado is no longer competing for them.

The Innovation Vision for Colorado

The Innovation Vision for Colorado is a twenty-year, bipartisan strategy. It emerged as Action Item #2 of the March 2026 Open Letter — Ensuring Colorado's Innovation Future — signed by 435 Colorado business and community leaders.

The Vision itself is a single statement:

Both the Innovation Vision and its diagnostic companion, The Honest Assessment, are direct outgrowths of the Open Letter. I led the preparation of both — and, as I have noted across earlier Engage Colorado pieces, neither has been formally reviewed nor endorsed by the full coalition that signed The Open Letter.

We need Senator Hickenlooper and his entire staff to read and embrace the Innovation Vision — and to be a partner in how it gets executed. The Innovation Vision is published at visionforcolorado.org. The Honest Assessment is published at thehonestassessment.com. The Open Letter — Ensuring Colorado's Innovation Future — is published at ensuringcolorado.com.

The Ask

I am voting for Senator Hickenlooper on June 30.

And I am asking him, publicly and directly: be the Hick we know you to be. Step more visibly into the role of bridge-builder and centrist Democratic voice in the United States Senate. Step into the role of the strong, visible leader Colorado needs — one of three statewide officeholders whose example can help restore the momentum our state has lost.

We are with you, Hick. We are asking you — and your entire staff — to partner with us in helping Colorado regain its momentum and become the most attractive innovation ecosystem in the world.

— Dan Caruso

Managing Director of Caruso Ventures, Host of The Bear Roars Podcast, and Board Chair of Boulder Roots Music Fest