Colorado presidential candidate John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet shared the debate stage in Miami Thursday.

Here’s what the had to say (except for a few stray asides or reaction comments), according to a “rush” transcript provided by debate host NBC. The text has been lightly edited for clarity.

The moderators were Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie, Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow and José Díaz-Balart.

HICKENLOOPER

On socialism

Savannah Guthrie: Governor Hickenlooper, let me get you in on this. You’ve warned that Democrats will lose in 2020 if they “embrace socialism,” as you put it. You were booed at the California Democratic convention when you said that. Only one candidate on this stage, Senator [Bernie] Sanders, identifies himself as a democratic socialist. What are the policies or positions of your opponents that you think are veering towards “socialism”?

Hickenlooper: Well, I think that the bottom line is, if we don’t clearly define that we are not socialists, the Republicans are going to come at us every way they can and call us socialists. And if you look at the Green New Deal, which I admire the sense of urgency and how important it is to do climate change — I’m a scientist — but we can’t promise every American a government job. If we want to get universal health care coverage, I believe that health care is a right and not a privilege, but you can’t expect to eliminate private insurance for 180 million people, many of whom don’t want to give it up. In Colorado, we brought businesses and nonprofits together, and we got near universal health care coverage. We were the first state in America to bring the environmental community and the oil and gas industry to address — aggressively address methane emissions. And we were also the first place to expand reproductive rights on a scale basis, and we reduced teen pregnancy by 54 percent. We’ve done the big progressive things that people said couldn’t be done. I’ve done what pretty much everyone else up here is still talking about doing.

Guthrie: Governor, thank you. Senator Sanders, I’ll give you a chance to weigh in here. What is your response to those who say nominating a “socialist” would re-elect Donald Trump?

Sanders: Well, I think the responses that the polls — last poll I saw had us 10 points ahead of Donald Trump because the American people understand that Trump is a phony, that Trump is a pathological liar and a racist, and that he lied to the American people during his campaign. He said he was going to stand up for working families. Well, President Trump, you’re not standing up for working families when you try to throw 32 million people off their health care that they have and that 83 percent of your tax benefits go to the top 1 percent. That’s how we beat Trump: We expose him for the fraud that he is.

On migrants

José Díaz-Balart: Governor, day one, thousands of men, women and children cross the border, asking for asylum, for a better life. What do you do? One — day one, hour one?

Hickenlooper: Well, certainly the images we have seen this week just compound the emotional impact that the world is judging us by. If you’d ever told me any time in my life that this country would sanction federal agents to take children from the arms of their parents, put them in cages, actually put them up for adoption — in Colorado, we call that kidnapping — I would have told you it was unbelievable. And the first thing we have to do is recognize the humanitarian crisis on the border for what it is. We make sure that there are the sufficient facilities in place so that women and children are not separated from their families, that children are with their families. We have to make sure that ICE is completely reformed and they begin looking at their job in a humanitarian way, where they’re addressing the whole needs of the people that they are engaged with along the border, and we have to make sure ultimately that we provide not just shelter, but food, clothing, and access to medical care.

Hickenlooper vs. Buttigieg

(Following a question for South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg about an officer involved shooting in his city.)

Hickenlooper: Mayor Buttigieg, if I could, if I could have one question, just because I think that the question they’re asking in South Bend and I think across the country is, why has it taken so long? We had a shooting when I first became [Denver] mayor, 10 years before Ferguson. And the community came together and we created an Office of the Independent Monitor, a Civilian Oversight Commission, and we diversified the police force in two years. We actually did de-escalation training. I think the real question that America should be asking is why, five years after Ferguson, every city doesn’t have this level of police accountability.

Climate change

Rachel Maddow: I want to bring Governor Hickenlooper into this for a moment. Governor, you have said that oil and gas companies should be a part of the solution on climate change. Lots of your colleagues on stage tonight have talked about moving away from fossil fuels entirely. Can oil and gas companies be real partners in this fight?

Hickenlooper: Well, I share the sense of urgency. I’m — I’m a scientist, so I — I recognize that, within 10 or 12 years of actually, you know, suffering irreversible damage, but, you know, guaranteeing everybody a government job is not going to get us there. Socialism, in that sense, is not the solution. We have to look at what really will make a difference. In Colorado, we’re closing a couple of coal plants, replacing it with wind, solar and batteries and the monthly bills go down. We’ve gone on — we’re building a network for electric vehicles. We are working with the oil and gas industry and we’ve created the first methane regulations in the country. Methane is 25 times worse than C02. And then we’ve got to get to that last part. I mean, the industrial — heavy industry, we haven’t seen the plans yet. If you look at the real problem, C02, the worst polluters in CO2 is China, is the United States, and then it’s concrete and its exhalation. And beyond that, I think we’ve got to recognize that only by bringing people together, businesses, nonprofits — and we can’t demonize every business. We’ve got to bring them together to be part of this thing. Because ultimately, if we’re not able to do that we will be doomed to failure. We have no way of doing this without bringing everyone together.

BENNET

Bennet vs. Bernie

Guthrie: Senator Bennet, you have said, quote, “It’s possible to write policy proposals that have no basis in reality. You might as well call them candy.” Were you referring to any candidate or proposal in particular when you said that?

Bennet: Was that directed to me?

Guthrie: Yes, that was your quote.

Bennet: That sounded like me. Thank you.

Guthrie: It was you.

Bennet: I appreciate it. Well, look, first of all, I agree completely with Bernie about what the fundamental challenge we’re facing as a country is, 40 years of no economic growth for 90 percent of the American people; 160,000 families in the top 0.1 percent have the same wealth as the bottom 90 percent; and we’ve got the worst income inequality that we’ve had in 100 years. Where I disagree is on his solution of Medicare for all. You know, I — I have proposed getting to universal health care, which we need to do. It is a right. Health care is a right. We need to get to universal health care. I believe the way to do that is by finishing the work we started with Obamacare and creating a public option that every family and every person in America can make a choice for their family about whether they want a public option, which for them would be like having Medicare for all, or whether they want to keep their private insurance. I believe we will get there much more quickly if we do that.

On health care

Lester Holt: Senator Bennet, a question for you. You want to keep the system that we have in place with Obamacare and build on it. You mentioned that a moment ago. Is that enough to get us to universal coverage?

Bennet: I believe that will get us the quickest way there. And I thought the vice president was very moving about this and Mayor Pete, as well. I had prostate cancer recently, as you may know, and it’s why I was a little late getting in the race. The same week, my kid had her appendectomy. And I feel very strongly that families ought to be able to have this choice. I think that’s what the American people want. I believe it will get us there quickly. There are millions of people in America that do not have health insurance today because they can’t. They’re too wealthy. Wealthy? They make too much money to be on Medicaid. They can’t afford health insurance. When Senator Sanders says that Canada is single payer, there are 35 million people in Canada. There are 330 million people in the United States, easily the number of people on a public option that — it could easily be 35 million. And for them, it would be Medicare for all, as Mayor Buttigieg says. But for others that want to keep it, they should be able to keep it. And I think that will be the fastest way to get where we need to go. Also, I will say — Bernie is a very honest person. He has said over and over again, unlike others that have supported this legislation, over and over again, that this will ban, make illegal all insurance except cosmetic, except insurance for — I guess that’s for plastic surgery. Everything else is banned under the Medicare for all proposal.

Trade and China

Holt: We’re going to turn to the issue of trade now, if we can. Last night, we asked the candidates on this stage to name the greatest geopolitical threat facing the U.S. Four of them mentioned China. U.S. businesses say China steals our intellectual property and party leaders on both sides accuse China of manipulating their currency to keep the cost of goods artificially low. I want to ask this to Senator Bennet, to start off with. How would you stand up to China?

Bennet: Well, I think that, first of all, the biggest threat to our national security right now is Russia, not China. And, second, on China, we’ve got — because of what they’ve done with our election. In China, I think the president has been right to push back on China, but has done it in completely the wrong way. We should mobilize the entire rest of the world, who all have a shared interest in pushing back on China’s mercantilist trade policies, and I think we can do that. I’d like to answer the other question before this [“Should someone who is here without documents, and that is his only offense, should that person be deported?”], as well.

Holt: You have the time…

Bennet: When I see these kids at the border, I see my mom, because I know she sees herself, because she was separated from her parents for years during the Holocaust in Poland. And for Donald Trump to be doing what he’s doing to children and their families at the border — I say this as somebody who wrote the immigration bill in 2013 that created a pathway to citizenship for 11 million people in this country — that had the most progressive Dream Act that’s ever been conceived, much less passed, and got 68 votes in the Senate — that had $46 billion of border security in it that was sophisticated, 21st century border security, not a medieval wall, and the president has turned the border of the United States into a symbol of nativist hostility. that the whole world is looking at, when what we should be represented by is the Statue of Liberty, which has brought my parents to this country to begin with. We need to make a change.

Grappling with gridlock

Chuck Todd: Senator Bennet, the next question is for you. On the issue of partisan gridlock, President Obama promised in 2012 that after his re-election, Republicans would want to work with Democrats, fever would break. That did not happen. Now Vice President Biden is saying the same thing, that if he is elected in 2020, both parties will want to work together. Should voters believe that somehow if there is a Democratic president in 2021 that gridlock is going to magically disappear?

Bennet: Gridlock will not magically disappear as long as Mitch McConnell is there, first. Second, that’s why it is so important for us to win not just the presidency, to have somebody that can run in all 50 states, but to win the Senate, as well. And that’s why we have to propose policies that can be supported, like Medicare act, so that we can build a broad coalition of Americans to overcome broken Washington, D.C. I agree with what Senator Gillibrand was saying. I share a lot of her views. We need to end gerrymandering in Washington. We need to end political gerrymandering in Washington. The court today said they couldn’t do anything about it. We need to overturn Citizens United. The court was the one that gave us Citizens United. And the attack on voting rights in Shelby v. Holder is something we need to deal with. All of those things has happened since Vice President Biden was in the Senate. And we face structural problems that we have to overcome with a broad coalition. It’s the only way we can do it. We need to root out the corruption in Washington, expand people’s right to get to the polls, and I think then we can succeed.

Repairing our reputation

Holt: This is a question from our viewers. …  Here’s one that came from Kathleen from Canby, Oregon, who writes, “Many fear the current administration has inflicted irrevocable harm on our governing institutions and norms and the process on our reputation abroad. The question is, what do you see as important early steps in reversing the damage done?” And we’ll put this one to Senator Bennet.

Bennet: Thank you very much. What an excellent question. First of all, we have to restore our democracy at home. The rest of the world is looking for us for leadership. We have a president who doesn’t believe in the rule of law, he doesn’t believe in freedom of the press, he doesn’t believe in an independent judiciary. He believes in the corruption that he’s brought to Washington, D.C. And that is what we have to change, and that’s why everybody is up here tonight, and I appreciate the fact that they’re up here for that reason. Second, we’ve got to — we’ve got to restore the relationships that he’s destroyed with our allies, not just in Europe. He flew to the G20 last night and attacked Japan, Germany, and a third ally of ours without saying anything about North Korea or Russia. And when you’ve got a situation where you have a president who says something happened in the Straits of Hormuz and the whole world doesn’t know whether to believe it or not, that is a huge problem when it comes to the national security of the United States of America. And we need to change that.

BOTH COLORADANS

First issue as president

Todd: President Obama in his first year wanted to address both health care and climate. And he could only get one signature issue accomplished; it was, obviously, health care. He didn’t get to do climate change. You may only get one shot, and your first issue that you’re going to push, you get one shot that it may be the only thing you get passed, what is that first issue for your presidency?

Bennet: Climate change and the lack of economic mobility Bernie talks about.

Hickenlooper:  I would do a collaborative approach to climate change and I would pronounce it well before the election to make sure we don’t reelect the worst president in American history.

Resetting relationships

Todd: This is a perfect time for me to do another one of these down the line. And this is what this question is, which is, you’re going to have to — you’re likely going to have to reset a relationship between America and another country or entity if you become president because of some — perhaps because of some relationship that you just mentioned about President Trump. What is the first relationship you would like to reset as president?

Hickenlooper: You know, I talk about constant engagement. And I think the first person — the first country I would go to, and I understand they’ve been cheating and stealing and (inaudible) would be China,  because if we’re going to do — deal with public health pandemics, if we’re doing to deal with all the challenges of the globe, we’ve got to have relationships with everyone.

Bennet: Our European allies and every Latin American country that’s willing to have a conversation about how to deal with the refugee crisis.

Final statements

Holt: Now, each candidate will have a final chance to make their case to the voters, 45 seconds each.

Hickenlooper: I’m a small-business owner who brought that same scrappy spirit to big Colorado, one of the most progressive states in America. We expanded reproductive health to reduce teenage abortion by 64 percent. We were the first state to legalize marijuana, and we transformed our justice system in the process. We passed universal background checks in a purple state. We got to near universal health care coverage. We attacked climate change with the toughest methane regulations in the country. And for the last three years, we’ve been the number-one economy in America. You don’t need big government to do big things. I know that because I’m the one person up here who’s actually done the big progressive things everyone else is talking about. If we turn towards socialism, we run the risk of helping to re-elect the worst president in American history.

Bennet: Thank you. Thank you. My mom and her parents came to the United States to rebuild their shattered lives, in the only country that they could. Three hundred years before that, my parents’ family came searching religious freedom here. The ability for one generation to do better than the next is now severely at risk in the United States, especially among children living in poverty like the ones I used to work for in the Denver public schools. That’s why I’m running for president. I’ve had two tough races in Colorado, but by bringing people together, not by making empty promises. And I believe we need to build a broad coalition of Americans to beat Donald Trump, end the corruption in Washington, and build a new era of American democracy and American opportunity. This is going to be hard to do, but it’s what our parents would have expected, it’s what our kids deserve. I hope you join me in this effort. Thank you.

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