John Hickenlooper, we gotta talk.

You’re giving people the wrong idea at an unfortunate time with some of the things you’re saying and doing, like ditching a subpoena and flubbing your take on race at a tense time in our political conversation.

If the former governor gets past the former House speaker, Andrew Romanoff, in the June 30 Democratic primary, he’s got a fight on his hands with Cory Gardner, one that won’t give ground in a nationally critical race for control of the U.S. Senate and the national agenda.

When he was governor, my friend Jacque Montgomery, Hickenlooper’s press secretary then, once squeezed me in for a meeting, after I agreed to keep it to 20 minutes, sharp.

Hick was barely turning the corner on his first story 20 minutes in, as the chat stretched to 45 minutes. He followed me to the door talking as Jacque shooed me out. 

Once aspiring to be a journalist, Hickenlooper used to be readily accessible to the press. Now he nearly never is. For a guy who loved shooting the breeze the way Michael Jordan loved shooting jumpers, his silence speaks volumes. The question is, do his many gaffes speak to preparedness for the job?

Gardner, just the same, clams up on one important subject: Donald Trump, and, really, what can he say? That’s a different problem for a future Insights: Cory and Donald, the odd couple.

When you consider his history of flubs, perhaps silence is the golden ticket to Washington for the former governor sitting on a mountain of campaign cash.

In a question at a racial justice forum on May 30, Hickenlooper said, “every life matters,” close enough for horseshoes and politics to “all lives matter,” a pejorative that diminishes “black lives matter.” That slip probably falls into the “that didn’t come out right” category.

Still, that was much better than what he said during his run for governor in 2014 — words his senatorial press person was unaware of, until I sent her the video. Keeping up with what Hick says is a full-time job.

“If I was to describe a scheduler, a political scheduler, imagine an ancient slave ship, with the guy with the whip, and you’re rowing,” he said in the speech, apparently shot by a tracker. “We elected officials are the ones that are rowing.”

Four-hundred years of chains, inequality and injustice is like attending a white coat fundraiser? Chalk up another one in the “not what he meant” column.

Is climate change like slavery, then? Not at all, but in 2009, Hickenlooper thought so, a little bit.

“It reminds me a little bit of slavery,” he said on “Democracy Now.” “… It’s an intra-generational problem that’s been intensely polarizing. I think what Obama is trying to do is thread the needle and bring the country together around this issue. My belief — this is nothing, I have no inside knowledge — I think he’s trying to find some moderate goals we can all accept.”

It’s not just race he gets tangled up on. Hickenlooper’s primary opponent, Andrew Romanoff, accuses the ex-governor of being soft on the industry he used to work in, fossil fuels.

In 2014, the governor told my pal Peter Marcus, then the political ace for the Durango Herald, about the Keystone XL pipeline.“I’ve avoided taking a position, because it’s just going to piss off a lot of people in Washington that I don’t need to piss off, and my opinion is not going to change anybody’s opinion there,” he said.

And 9News tagged Hickenlooper in January for stumbling over the name in the NAACP on the Brother Jeff Facebook broadcast. 

“(Inaudible) American Advancement of Colored People,” stumbled Hickenlooper, according to another pal, Marshall Zelinger, who first reported the flub on the state’s largest TV station. How did Hick or his staff not see that coming? Just months earlier the same question on the same show kneecapped the Denver mayoral run of Jamie Giellis. It’s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. It matters. Learn it.

Then there’s the CBS4 debate on June 10, when Hickenlooper referred to when “the shooting of George Floyd took place, everyone was in their living room” and saw it. Apparently Hick didn’t. Floyd died from having a police officer’s knee on his neck for almost nine minutes as he gasped that he couldn’t breathe.

One more? The conservative Daily Caller tagged Hickenlooper for referring last September to the Greater Denver Ministerial Alliance — a group that is predominantly black pastors — as being “so articulate,” a description with a deep pejorative history for black people. Watch the video by clicking here.

I asked Hickenlooper’s campaign — ideally, Hickenlooper himself — to talk about the unfortunate run of Hickenbloopers, and rattled off the examples I could think of. The press secretary handled it.

“As John said, sometimes he trips over his words,” said Ammar Moussa in his entirety. “He isn’t a fast-talking politician. He’s a geologist and small business owner who got involved in public service to get things done for Colorado.”

Throw in Hickenlooper’s ethics woes over luxury travel as governor, and the June 30 primary will tell us if that answer flies with voters.