John Wright Hickenlooper Jr.[1] (/ˈhɪkənluːpər/ HIK-ən-loop-ər; born February 7, 1952) is an American politician, geologist, and businessman serving as the junior United States senator from Colorado since 2021.

After a career as a petroleum geologist, in 1988 he co-founded the Wynkoop Brewing Company, one of the first brewpubs in the U.S. Hickenlooper was elected the 43rd mayor of Denver in 2003, serving two terms.

After incumbent governor Bill Ritter said that he would not seek reelection, Hickenlooper announced his intention to run for the Democratic nomination in January 2010.

He subsequently ran for the U.S. Senate, winning the Democratic nomination and the general election, defeating incumbent Republican Cory Gardner.

New York magazine reported that at this time his heroes were Neil Young, Ray Davies, and Gordie Howe, and that his pet peeves were violence and "beer boys.

[16] He and five business partners opened the Wynkoop Brewing Company brewpub in October 1988 after raising startup funds from dozens of friends and family along with a Denver economic development office loan.

[19] Campaigning on his business experience, he developed a series of creative television ads that separated him from the rest of the crowded field, including one in which he addressed unhappiness over a recent increase in parking rates by walking the streets to "feed" meters.

[21] On taking office, Hickenlooper inherited a "$70 million budget deficit, the worst in city history", which he was able to eliminate in his first term "without major service cuts or layoffs", according to Time.

[21][22] He won bipartisan support for a multibillion-dollar mass public transit project, intended in part to attract investment and funded by a voter-approved sales tax increase.

"[28] The head of the agency responsible defended the program, saying it was "still housing 300-400 people a month in varying ways", while Hickenlooper argued that the point of such an ambitious target was to focus attention and resources on the problem.

[28] In his governor's budget request for 2017–18, he asked lawmakers to allocate $12.3 million from taxes on marijuana to building homes for chronically homeless people.

In a controversial move decried by critics as breaching partisan ethics, the Hickenlooper administration arranged for the DNC host committee, a private nonprofit organization, to get untaxed fuel from Denver city-owned pumps, saving them $0.404 per US gallon ($0.107/L).

[32] Also, Coors Brewing Company, based in Golden, Colorado, used "waste beer" to provide the ethanol to power a fleet of FlexFuel vehicles used during the convention.

[5] NPR described Hickenlooper as having a "pro-business centrist profile" and as "known to try to build consensus and compromise on tough issues",[42] while 5280 called him as "one of those unicorn-rare, truly apolitical politicians", noting support from business leaders and some Republicans.

[43] On August 25, 2017, it was reported that Republican Governor of Ohio John Kasich was considering the possibility of a 2020 unity ticket to run against Donald Trump, with Hickenlooper as vice president.

[46][47] Hickenlooper received a flight on a private jet owned by homebuilder and donor Larry Mizel, the founder of MDC Holdings.

[47] Hickenlooper had previously been considered the front-runner to fill the United States Senate seat to be vacated by Ken Salazar upon his confirmation as Secretary of the Interior in the Obama administration.

[56] On June 30, Hickenlooper defeated former state house Speaker Andrew Romanoff in the Democratic primary,[57] winning the nomination to challenge one-term incumbent Republican Cory Gardner.

In the wake of the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, Hickenlooper said he would support efforts to remove Donald Trump from office, in line with most of his party.

[71] The campaign struggled to gain traction in the crowded and increasingly competitive Democratic presidential primary field, and Hickenlooper ended his candidacy in a YouTube video on August 15, 2019, and instead began exploring a run for the U.S.

[75][76] Hickenlooper granted Dunlap a reprieve, reversible by a future governor, citing inequity in the legal system and the evidence against capital punishment's effectiveness as a deterrent, saying, "It is a legitimate question whether we as a state should be taking lives".

[75][77] In Hickenlooper's 2016 memoir, he came out against the death penalty, saying his views had changed after he became more familiar with the research showing bias against minorities and people with mental illnesses.

The bills funded grants to remove flood debris from watersheds and to repair flood-damaged schools and damaged wastewater and drinking water systems.

Hickenlooper said the initiative "sends the wrong message to kids that drugs are OK" and that "federal authorities have been clear they will not turn a blind eye toward states attempting to trump those laws".

[86] He also said that the federal government should not stop states from decriminalizing illicit drugs beyond marijuana, as well as allowing for safe, supervised injection sites.

program, a career coaching initiative operated out of workforce center, community colleges, and nonprofits, with the help of a $25.8 million grant from Microsoft.

[100] The bill's provisions direct the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to "establish minimum interregional transfer capabilities", better coordinating construction of electrical transmission lines.

[103][104] Although most Coloradans supported the measures, according to polling by the Denver Post,[103] the bills' opponents gathered enough signatures to trigger special elections leading to the ousting of Democratic state senators John Morse and Angela Giron and the resignation of Evie Hudak.

[117] Hickenlooper's first wife, Helen Thorpe, is a writer whose work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, George, and Texas Monthly.

He spent a summer in his teens volunteering with the American Friends Service Committee in Robbinston, Maine, helping establish a volunteer-run free school.