The cold-blooded murders of three teenagers and a manager late one night in a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora two decades ago have taken center stage in the political theater of this year’s race for governor.

Gov. John Hickenlooper has weathered political blows from the right since May 2013,when he granted the killer, Nathan Dunlap, a reprieve on his death sentence.

Hickenlooper’s actions then reignited the hot topic over the weekend after Todd Shepherd of The Complete Colorado presented audio of Hickenlooper suggesting to a CNN film crew, in an interview for a segment of a documentary series set to air the evening of Sept. 7, that he could grant Dunlap clemency if he were to lose his re-election bid in November.

Besides reintroducing a wedge issue — capital punishment — that has a perception of marshaling Republican voters, the incumbent Democrat gave fresh life to Republicans’ campaign narrative that Hickenloooper doesn’t make forceful decisions.

Republican nominee Bob Beauprez has repeatedly vowed on the campaign trail to execute Dunlap — an applause line for GOP voters.

“I believe we need this option on the table for the most heinous crimes where a jury believes it is necessary,” Beauprez told The Denver Post last week.

Polling last April indicated Colorado voters support the death penalty 2-to-1.

“This is a big issue,” Owen Loftus, spokesman for the Colorado Republican Committee, said of the death penalty. “He’s making it a bigger issue. The question of whether Gov. Hickenlooper is going to enforce justice or not — that gives people pause.”

Rick Palacio, chairman of the state Democratic Party, counters: “I don’t think it’s an issue that’s on the top of anybody’s mind. People in Colorado are concerned about the economy, about jobs, about their well-being going forward.

“John has done a tremendous job of not only leading the state out of the recession, but putting Colorado at the top of the list nationally for job creation. That’s an issue people will vote on.”

Shifting position

Hickenlooper’s spokesman, Eddie Stern, also points to Hickenlooper’s performance on the economy, saying the governor’s choices on business issues reflect the way he’s evolved on the Dunlap issue.

“Before he makes important decisions, he gives them intense due diligence, and his process on this issue is no exception,” Stern said.

When he ran for governor four years ago, Hickenlooper was vocal about being pro-capital punishment. His decision-making around the issue in 2013 has left some in his own party, and nearly everyone who opposes him, questioning his rationale.

The governor explained in his Dunlap decision that he believed Colorado’s capital punishment system was “imperfect and inherently inequitable.”

The arguments began anew last weekend when news surfaced that Hickenlooper raised the possibility of clemency — which no Colorado governor has ever granted in a death penalty case.

The governor reiterated his evolution on the issue this month when he told a television news reporter he opposes the death penalty.

The governor’s position is likely to get more emotionally charged in Colorado the closer James Holmes is to being tried on charges he murdered 12 people inside an Aurora movie theater in 2012.

Holmes, who faces the death penalty, was originally set to stand trial in October, weeks before the Nov. 4 election. However, the case is now set for trial in December.

“This was made political by John Hickenlooper,” said George Brauchler, the Republican district attorney whose office is trying Holmes and who supports capital punishment.

“Remember what he did. He said to the state of Colorado: I’m not going to act on the order from a jury, from a court. I’m going to let another governor do that.”

Paul Teske, dean of the school of public affairs at the University of Colorado Denver, questioned whether Hickenlooper would lose any voters he might have had otherwise.

“It could have a small influence, but the voters who are likely to be motivated by this issue probably weren’t going to vote for Hickenlooper anyway,” he said.

But it could fit into a larger narrative.

“I think Republicans will pair this with the gun issue to say that Hickenlooper is soft on public safety.”

Denver pollster Floyd Ciruli said Hickenlooper can only blame himself for repeatedly reviving an issue that repeatedly hurts him.

The issue was part of Hickenlooper’s tipping point in 2013, Ciruli said, when he granted Dunlap the reprieve, helping drive down his approval ratings from results above and just below 60 percent to the low 40s.

“It was the first issue that clearly put him on the wrong side of the public,” Ciruli said. “He had been a pretty popular governor up to that point in his first term, and it handed a very good issue to the Republicans to hammer him with.

“But it had kind of gone away. But now (since the CNN interview) he’s reopened it.”

By saying he might grant clemency if he loses, Hickenlooper didn’t portray himself as a thoughtful leader, the pollster said.

“Speaking in a hypothetical about what if he loses, what he might do, that comes across as politically manipulative,” Ciruli said.

Slipping support

The Economist magazine — a favorite read of conservatives — looked at the issue in a piece in April titled, “The Slow Death of the Death Penalty,” noting that the 33 people scheduled to die across the country in 2014 is the fewest since 1994, down from 98 in 1999.

Last year, the 80 people sentenced to death row represented the lowest number in four decades, the magazine noted, stating, “America is falling out of love with the needle.”

The Economist said some of the reasons include those cited before by Hickenlooper: the cost of legal appeals and the lack of evidence to show the penalty deters crime.

However, the death penalty issue appear to be the ally of Hickenlooper’s opponents.

A Quinnipiac University poll in February indicated Coloradans by a 36 percent to 28 percent margin disapproved of Hickenlooper’s handling of the Dunlap case. Meanwhile, 63 percent favored keeping the death penalty while 28 percent supported abolishing it.

“There has been strong, unwavering support for the death penalty and a sense that the governor’s ‘not on my watch’ position on the issue could hurt him on Election Day,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac’s polling operation.

Thirty-two states, the federal justice system and the U.S. military have the death penalty, but six states in the last six years have abolished capital punishment — Maryland, Connecticut, New Mexico, Illinois, New York and New Jersey.

All have a lot in common with Colorado, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that is a clearinghouse of studies, polls and expertise on both sides of the issue.

Each state had rarely used capital punishment and had a very small number of people on death row. Colorado has three.

Colorado has executed only one person in the last 47 years, kidnapper, rapist and murderer Gary Lee Davis, who was put to death in 1997.

“Red, blue, purple, as far as politics go, people aren’t wedded to the death penalty as an issue,” Dieter said. “Elections aren’t usually won or lost on a candidate’s position on the death penalty; rather, many other issues — the economy and jobs, immigration, many things.”

Even those who support the death penalty, as a group, don’t agree it’s the best option in every case, and they’ve proved more willing to abolish capital punishment when it’s rarely used.

Dieter, however, said governors and attorneys general, including Eric Holder, have opposed the death penalty but maintained their roles as a representative of the people’s will. But governors also have the authority to substitute their judgment and moral convictions on putting another person to death.

“An election is when the people can choose,” Dieter said of a vote on abolishing the death penalty.

Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174, jbunch@denverpost.com or twitter.com/joeybunch