GRAND JUNCTION — While they disagreed plenty about policy, the candidates on stage on the evening of Saturday, Sept. 6 at the Club 20 gubernatorial debate differed most in the leadership styles they displayed.

Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper stressed his approach of finding solutions collaboratively — “there’s no margin in making enemies” in the restaurant business, or governing a state, the one-time brewpub owner contended — while former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez, his Republican challenger, adopted a more pugnacious stance, slamming the incumbent for indecision and bowing to Washington on everything from water projects to a proposed out-of-state oil pipeline.

The two are locked in what looks to be a tougher reelection bid than Hickenlooper had planned, with recent polling showing a dead heat.

The one-hour debate was sponsored by Club 20, a venerable advocacy organization representing the interests of the Western Slope, and is part of a series of candidate matchups that has long been considered the kick-off to fall campaigning in Colorado. Legislative candidates squared off all morning at Two Rivers Convention Center and candidates for federal office followed the gubernatorial debate late into the night.

Beauprez and Hickenlooper painted contrasting pictures of the state, with the Republican repeatedly pointing to Utah as a state that has figured out how to spur growth by getting government out of the way and the Democrat touting an expanding economy that has persevered in the face of an unprecedented string of natural disasters and tragedies.

“The state I grew up in, the state I love, is better than what we’ve been getting,” said Beauprez in his opening remarks, claiming that Colorado’s job growth lags behind neighboring states, crushed by excessive regulations. The election, he posited, is about the question of whether “you believe and trust in government or do you believe and trust in people.”

Despite rosy statistics the incumbent would cite, Beauprez maintained, Colorado has tumbled in recent years from second-place to 22nd-place in an annual ranking of economic opportunity in the states compiled by conservative economists for the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, an organization sponsored by major corporations and devoted to limiting government interference in the economy.

Hickenlooper made a case that Colorado is doing better than Beauprez is willing to admit.When he took office, Hickenlooper said, Colorado faced a budget shortfall of nearly $1 billion and ranked 40th in the nation in job creation. Since then, he said, the state has balanced its books and seen 33 consecutive months of job growth, taking the state to fourth in the nation in job creation. Last month, he noted, its economy was ranked top in the nation by the publication Business Insider. “The only thing trending down is unemployment,” the governor said with a broad smile.

And this has all been achieved, Hickenlooper said, while facing droughts, wildfires and destructive floods, resulting in 13 federally declared disaster areas, more than any other state has endured in that short a time.

It’s about collaboration, Hickenlooper said, “not about picking fights and attacking people.”

But Beauprez sounded ready to pick some fights and go on the attack as soon as the questions from a panel of journalists and civic leaders began.

“High and dry is not a water plan,” Beauprez responded to a question about water storage. “We simply must put a shovel in the ground.”

Saying he supports building water storage, no question, Beauprez contended that regulation gets in the way of building the projects Coloradans need. “A governor needs to lead on behalf of the people to eliminate regulatory hurdles, not add to them,” he said.

Hickenlooper countered that any big water storage project will take decades to complete and that “Every conversation has to start with conservation.” He also declined to take a position on the Northern Integrated Supply Project, a proposal to build reservoirs on the northern Front Range. “I’m not allowed to take — if I took a stand on NISP, it would jeopardize the entire federal process,” he said.

“On my watch,” Beauprez rebutted, “we’re going to build”

“You should be running for Congress if you want to go back and tackle a federal issue,” Hickenlooper told Beauprez after the former congressman attacked him for embracing the federally funded Medicaid expansion, calling the deal a “Medicaid bomb” that will lead to “financial default” after the feds start requiring states to pick up some of the tab.

Beauprez tipped his hat to nearby Utah multiple times. On day one, he said, his administration plans to examine every state regulation, just as Utah’s Republican governor did when he took office. “If it isn’t pro-job, pro-economic growth, pro-opportunity, let’s get rid of it,” Beauprez said.

“These problems weren’t created in a day, and they’re not going to be fixed in four years or eight years,” Hickenlooper said in response to a question about education, but he could have been offering his take on any number of topics that came up in the debate.

Asked about hydraulic fracturing and other energy concerns, Beauprez blasted state regulations on oil and gas extraction touted by Hickenlooper as the strongest in the nation, arrived at in collaboration between energy companies and environmentalists.

“It’s chasing investment, it’s chasing jobs, it’s chasing energy development out of Colorado and punishing what we ought to be celebrating,” Beauprez said. “There’s an element of this argument that doesn’t want safe and clean energy development in Colorado,” he added. “They want nothing.”

Hickenlooper shot back that it was Beauprez who was fomenting uncertainty in the marketplace when he opposed a compromise brokered by Hickenlooper last month that led to the withdrawal of competing ballot measures and the creation of an 18-member commission tasked with proposing solutions to disputes over fracking.

On the question of returning federal lands to the state, Beauprez said he was ready for a fight, while Hickenlooper urged cooperation with the feds and neighboring states.

The state would have to come up with some $200 million annually to tend to federal lands inside Colorado’s border, Hickenlooper said. “I don’t like the federal government telling us what to do all the time more than anyone else does,” he said, but when it comes to land management questions, the best solution is to make sure the federal government does a better job, and that’s done by joining together with other western states to figure out what works.

“This is a fight we have to wage if you believe in state sovereignty, if you believe this is the way the republic is supposed to work,” Beauprez countered, adding, “You do need to stand up and push back on the federal government. This is supposed to be Colorado’s land, not the federal government’s.”

“You can pick these fights and keep going on, it’s certainly the way it’s always been done,” Hickenlooper responded. Long term, he said, the state benefits more by getting the federal government to handle its lands better.

In the fast-paced “cross-examination” portion that capped the debate, a feisty Hickenlooper emerged, pressing Beauprez on his voting record in Congress and his willingness to let the fracking measures go to the ballot rather than head them off with a compromise.

Last year, Hickenlooper said, 98 percent of the bills passed the Legislature with bipartisan support, but when he was in Congress, Beauprez voted with his party 98 percent of the time. “How is that leading?” he asked. “Because we were in the majority,” Beauprez shot back.

Then Hickenlooper asked why Beauprez was happy to see competing fracking measures head to the ballot, risking investment in the meantime, rather than broker a compromise.

Beauprez said the governor’s commission was just “kick[ing] the can down the road, as you have a habit of doing.”

Kicking the can down the road would be letting the question go to the ballot, Hickenlooper responded, “and spending $60 million on a food fight, and then have the same thing in two years, and the same thing in two years.” Doesn’t it make more sense, Hickenlooper asked, to “take the time to really hear each other” and work toward a solution where communities and energy extractors can live side by side?

When it came his turn to question the governor, Beauprez bored in on Hickenlooper’s decisions to stay the execution of death-row inmate Nathan Dunlap and to sign contentious gun-control legislation.

However the election turns out, Beauprez pressed, will Hickenlooper say that he won’t grant clemency to Dunlap, as he suggested he might in interview footage that surfaced late last month?

“My decision stands,” Hickenlooper said. “My opinion, still, is that the government shouldn’t be in the business of taking people’s lives.”

“What I have is a very firm maybe,” Beauprez grinned.

Only the most devoted politico could have followed Beauprez’s next line of questioning, well into the weeds over a discussion Hickenlooper had about gun legislation with Colorado sheriffs.

“Why did you let a staffer decide whether or not you should sign one of the gun bills?” Beauprez asked. He also asked why Hickenlooper claimed he didn’t talk with then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg during the gun debates, when phone records showed otherwise.

Calling Beauprez’s attacks “the Washington way,” Hickenlooper countered, “There was no decision made by a staffer” and claimed he talked to Bloomberg after, not before he made the decision to sign the bills.

“I haven’t been in politics, Bob,” Hickenlooper added, drawing hoots from the audience. (Hickenlooper served eight years as Denver mayor and is finishing his fourth year as governor, nearly three times the duration Beauprez served in Congress before losing a race for governor in 2006.)

— Ernest@coloradostatesman.com

See the September 12 print edition for full photo Coverage.