Gov. John Hickenlooper would not directly say if he would run for the Democratic nomination in 2020. | Geoff Hauschild/POLITICO POLITICO Money Podcast America’s divide ‘as significant as when we had slave states,’ Hickenlooper says

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Colorado’s Democratic governor, John Hickenlooper, sure sounds like a man running for president.


In the latest POLITICO Money podcast, Hickenlooper, a term-limited moderate, discussed his recent visit to the first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa as well as his vision for fixing American’s polarized politics. “We are seeing a divide in this country that is as significant as when we had slave states and anti-slavery states,” Hickenlooper said. “This rural-urban divide, people in rural areas of Colorado and across the country feel like the urban areas have just left them behind and don’t care.”

Hickenlooper described a broad-based approach to addressing this problem, including infrastructure projects to bring broadband to everyone and skills-training programs short of four-year college degrees that would better prepare workers for jobs in clean technology and other burgeoning industries. And he suggested people listen to each other more. “As soon as you start really listening, aggressively, and asking questions, that’s when real transformations happen,” he said.

Hickenlooper would not directly say if he would run for the Democratic nomination in 2020, though he did not rule it out. But he did say speculation that he could seek to form a national unity ticket with his friend John Kasich, the GOP governor of Ohio, probably wouldn’t pan out.

“I don’t think we are ever going to be on a unity ticket; we joke about it all the time,” he said. “We just disagree on a lot of important core stuff. But we have a great deal of respect for each other and I think a genuine friendship at this point.”