Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is the latest Democrat to drop out of the presidential race

John Hickenlooper, the Democratic former governor of Colorado, has dropped out of the presidential race, clearing the crowded 2020 field of a moderate with a record of pragmatism who never quite caught on with primary voters.

But in a filmed statement, Hickenlooper said that while he was disappointed to be leaving the race, he would “never stop believing that America can only move forward when we work together.” He added that he had “heard from so many Coloradans” that he should jump into the Senate race, saying, “I intend to give that some serious thought.”

Hickenlooper’s presidential campaign was based on using his electoral success in Colorado and his history of political moderation as selling points. Though, as my colleague Tara Golshan detailed, that across-the-aisle success was perhaps largely a product of circumstance:

He’s running on 16 years of executive experience, between eight years as Denver’s mayor and eight years in the governor’s mansion, during which time he cultivated a quirky persona as the positive beer-brewing politician who would jump out of airplanes to campaign for ballot initiatives and rail against nasty politics with videos of him showering in full dress (to drive home the point that negative ads make him feel dirty).

It’s also when he developed his moderate track record, in part because Republicans controlled one chamber of the state legislature throughout his governorship.

This centrism was core to his popularity in Colorado. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich pointed out, the only times Hickenlooper’s popularity dipped was when he adopted liberal positions around gun control, signing in universal background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines; and around criminal justice, granting a stay to a death row inmate.

He also broadcast his centrism by emphasizing his ability to “bring people together on many sides of the fence” and by pushing Sen. Bernie Sanders on the issue of socialism:

“I have great respect for Sen. Sanders. He’s provided great clarity and urgency around the major issues facing working families,” Hickenlooper said at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, according to remarks provided by his campaign. “But I fundamentally disagree that we should do away with the democratic, regulated capitalism that has guided this country for over 200 years.”

But earlier in the campaign, he said he doesn’t support labels like “socialism” and “capitalism.”

“I’m happy to say I’m a capitalist, but I think at a certain point the labels do nothing but divide us,” Hickenlooper said.

But Hickenlooper failed to stand out in a field of some two dozen candidates. Though he made it onto both debate stages so far, he was not expected to make the third round of Democratic debates in September. Since he announced on March 4, the former governor never cracked 1 percent.