As my regular reader (Hi Jeff!) may recall, I have waxed philosophical in the past regarding the roles our elected officials choose to embrace. Back when I was teaching political science at the Air Force Academy, I would tell my cadets that there are basically two types of elected representatives: workhorses and showhorses. As the names imply, a workhorse is a person who works very hard at the policy process and is less concerned about getting public attention drawn to him or herself. The showhorse, on the other hand, is an elected official who is more concerned with the press he or she gets than the actual policy outcomes. My old boss, Colorado’s senior U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, is the epitome of the workhorse, giving up a lucrative private sector career to enter public service, first as a school superintendent and later as a U.S. senator. Bennet works extremely hard on the nuts and bolts of governance, caring little about whether cameras are watching (although, if you tick him off enough, he can launch into a brilliant floor speech attacking a showhorse or two. It’s worth a google search for “Bennet on Cruz”).

At the other end of the scale is the aforementioned Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who is not especially effective in getting any actual legislative work done, but who can be found in front of most any camera making a whirring noise. Colorado has been, in my view, fairly fortunate on this workhorse/showhorse scale, on both sides of the aisle. The recent governors named Bill (Owens and Ritter) were certainly workhorses, as was former U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, with whom I disagreed on most everything, but who worked hard at his job. We have been largely spared horrible Colorado showhorses, thought the jury is still out on rookie Member of Congress Lauren Boebert.

And so, with former workhorse Gov. John Hickenlooper now a senator, I had reason for optimism that he would follow Bennet’s example of eschewing the limelight and focusing on policy. A recent Colorado Politics story is pretty good evidence that Hick is hitting the ground running, working hard, and is focused on the policy side of things.

In the CoPo story, we learn that Hick has asked the Small Business Administration to dramatically raise the limits on COVID relief loans that can be given to small businesses. Currently, the SBA has a cap of $150,000. For most folks that is a pretty good chunk of change, but for many small businesses that limit is too low to be very helpful or, indeed, company saving. Hick proposes a max loan of up to $2 million, which would dramatically improve the survival chances of many Colorado companies.

Small businesses are the main drivers of employment in the U.S., with roughly two thirds of new private-sector jobs coming from these firms with fewer than 500 employees. Roughly one in three of these businesses is facing potential failure in the coming months if additional help isn’t provided. And while the $150K might be all that is needed for a small shop of a couple of employees, these larger, but still small-ish companies, need more liquidity now if they are to survive to the other side of the pandemic. Hick’s proposal would give businesses support for 12 to 18 months, rather than the current too-short timeframe of two to six months.

Hick’s proposal will directly help those smaller companies that do not have easy access to lending institutions, as larger companies tend to have. Thus, these loans may well spell the difference between getting through this calamity and having to shutdown (and lay off every employee).

The very thing that made some of my friends farther out on the left-ish end of the political spectrum uncomfortable with Hick – his business background – appears to be the very thing that is likely driving his hard push behind increasing the loan limits. As a man who started several business ventures in Colorado, Hick knows small business. His expertise is further heightened by his time as mayor of Denver, where small businesses are the bread and butter of a municipal economy. 

As a senator, Hick sits quite appropriately on the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. And it is from that vantage point that he begins his workhorse efforts at helping small businesses across Colorado and the U.S. While Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and many more are pushing each other out of the way to appear before network TV cameras, Hickenlooper has joined Bennet as two guys who are more concerned with results than credit. 

And that is a good thing for Colorado and the nation.