Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper seems to have something of a man-crush on former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Hickenlooper admitted in a tape-recorded conversation that that he penned a “long, fawning” handwritten letter to Bloomberg in which he enumerated his favorite Bloomberg achievements.

Hickenlooper revealed his fanboy status during small talk with a reporter from Bloomberg News prior to an interview. The audio was obtained and posted by Complete Colorado.

“[W]atching what Michael Bloomberg did for New York as mayor, it made me love Bloomberg News in a way nothing else really could,” Hickenlooper said. “When [current Mayor Bill] DeBlasio took over, and basically [unintelligible] people trashed Mayor Bloomberg, I got a whole long, fawning letter up to Bloomberg just saying how outrageous it was. And then just reciting what I thought he’d be remembered for, and every big city mayor that I know thinks that he’ll go down as one of the greatest mayors, not just in New York, but in the history of the United States.”

Bloomberg, who founded the gun-control organization Mayors Against Illegal Guns, injected himself into Colorado politics in 2013, when the state legislature debated a slate of highly controversial new gun control laws. Hickenlooper admitted speaking with Bloomberg during the debate, after first denying it during a meeting with the state’s elected sheriffs — nearly all of whom opposed the new legislation and complained that Hickenlooper didn’t take time to hear their views.

And while Hickenlooper was quick to defend Colorado when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie maligned the state for legalizing marijuana, he was conspicuously silent when Bloomberg blamed the recall of two state senators — whose campaigns to retain office Bloomberg bankrolled — on voters who live so far out in the sticks that they don’t even have roads.

“The NRA went after two or three state senators in a part of Colorado where I don’t think there’s roads,” Bloomberg said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “It’s as far rural as you can get.”

Hickenlooper’s office told Complete Colorado that because the letter to Bloomberg was handwritten, no copies existed to release under the state’s open records law. A Hickenlooper representative also told the site that since the letter was personal, it didn’t fall under the public records law.

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