In trying times, Coloradans do what we always have done: pull together and get it done.
— John Hickenlooper
When people think of the West, it's easy to envision wagon trains, Buffalo Bill, the glory days of the Gold Rush. Cowboy hats come to mind.
What I remember most vividly was the sense of always being a little behind the other kids in class - that sense of I wasn't cut out for class or I wasn't cut out to read.
What I want most is for my son to be proud of me.
This is a generous country that realizes people want to work hard.
In the restaurant business, you learn quickly there's no margin in having enemies.
Bernie Sanders deserves a lot of credit because he has raised issues.
We will see the increasingly rapid rate of growth we've already been seeing in Colorado continue.
Denver is a city that will be far more defined by its future than its past.
I think we're in good shape, but the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina is in some small way mitigated by the fact that we now have more people talking about it, thinking about it and working on it, so that we will be more vigilant and ready.
Today we're dealing with metropolitan Shanghai, metropolitan New Delhi or Paris. If we're competing at that level, our diversity, that richness of people coming from so many different backgrounds, is one of our greatest advantages.
If it was really successful, it was a life calling, a career I was excited about doing, so I didn't think the overall risk was anywhere near as high as what the reward was.
The world has become rapidly more competitive.
Last, in restaurants you spend a lot of time dealing with people who are very unhappy. Soup has been spilled on their laps, they've waited 10 minutes to get their check so they can leave, and you learn how to listen, I think, in a much more proactive way than government does.
A mayor is a symbol and a public face of what a city bureaucracy provides its citizens.
Especially during the first nine months, there was so much going on with trying to hire 55 people to run the city, it was hard to imagine any honeymoon.
Money isn't everything, but the gaps between rich districts and poor districts ultimately mean a workforce that won't be as competitive as it could be, and individual Coloradans won't be as successful as they could be.
In the end, I did end up repeating seventh grade.
Government doesn't have a high tolerance for failure.
No matter how the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, states are making progress in developing strategies to provide more access to quality health care coverage.
Secure the border; have an ID system that works. Have a guest worker system. And then, finally, hold businesses accountable. Once you do that, most of the chambers of commerce and those who are clamoring around immigration will take a deep breath and relax.
Wellington Webb was one of the most significant mayors of the latter half of the 20th century. His natural political instincts are almost unrivaled.
Let's face it: the War on Drugs was a disaster. It may be well intentioned... but it sent millions of kids to prison, gave them felonies oftentimes when they had no violent crimes.
Given that, and assuming that we begin to adjust to issues like climate change and the greenhouse effect, Denver's location in the center of the country becomes a tremendous advantage.
There could have been more planning in New Orleans, but you look at all the devastation that happened there - have we gotten to 3,000 deaths yet? For that magnitude of a disaster, that's not all that bad.
We are, by many measures, one of the more diverse cities in the country, growing more diverse all the time, and one of the more harmonious in terms of how we live together.
Oftentimes, when constituencies or sectors of opinion are distinct, when they are confronted with a situation where they're going to have to make a serious compromise, they react very negatively publicly, but they also recognize when they step back that this is right.
For me, the risks in terms of opening that brewpub were fairly high. I put my house up as collateral, I invested the liquid money I had and two years of my time to get it over, but that's really not much of a risk for what the potential reward was if it worked.
I would argue that one of the issues which the public should be much more emphatic about with all politicians... is patronage, appointing people to high positions because they supported your campaign or helped you raise money.
Of everyone else who was running, and there were some very talented people, none of them had anywhere near the experience I had in hiring people, holding them accountable, creating systems for accountability.
Some day, someone will do something wrong and there will be a scandal to report in the paper. When that happens, we will address it honestly and openly and try to deal with it as quickly and as fairly as we can, and keep moving the city forward.
From my subjective position, there was no honeymoon.
I started out here in Colorado as a geologist. During a downturn, everyone in our company got laid off.
I think I was in 10th or 11th grade before I ever read a book for pleasure.
I was an entrepreneur myself and often say that I'm on loan to public service.
The Affordable Care Act was passed in large part because of recognition that our nation's health care system is not working. The act is not perfect, but it is a starting point, and we have been using it to improve the health of Coloradans.
The one thing that I don't think the Obama administration gets anywhere near enough credit for is the high level of administrators. They meet all the time so they can synergize the federal investments. That's the way any corporation would do it.
In 1999, I found myself the unlikely leader of a community-based effort to protect what was arguably Colorado's most important brand, and one once thought to be untouchable: the 'Mile High' part of Denver's Mile High Stadium.
We need to recognize that we can't allow people that are aberrations of nature to take away the joys and freedoms that we enjoy.
I assume we will have figured out a way to efficiently utilize solar energy and tied that to an efficient way to use nuclear energy in such a way that it doesn't pose a serious environmental issue.
Is there some risk every day we walk out our front door? Every time we get in our car? Yeah. Are we materially less safe now than we were 10 years ago? Whatever delta there is, it's very small.
America is always attracting people, from all over the earth.
And if I lost I would have gone back to 12 weeks of vacation, because I was successful enough that I was spending much more time on non-profit boards and traveling a lot.
You looked at Stanford or Harvard, or the University of Colorado, these were powerful engines just turning out people ready to create and grow businesses.
In the restaurant business, you never want to have enemies, whereas it seems that many politicians judge their success by how high their enemies are and whether they can show that they can hold their ground and give a punch for every punch they take.
The most important thing a mayor does is hire talented people to run the city.
I would argue that's because we had a bunch of smart people running around here. They were coming in and working very hard and many of them had left jobs in which they made significantly more money.
