Democratic incumbent Gov. John Hickenlooper (Colo.) said Wednesday that he is refusing to take a position on building the Keystone XL pipeline because it would "piss off a lot of people."
The Durango Herald reports:
Gov. John Hickenlooper on Wednesday told a room full of Western gas and oil executives that he hasn’t taken a position on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline because he hasn’t wanted to "piss off" the powers that be in Washington, D.C.
"I’ve avoided taking a position (on the Keystone pipeline) 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," Hickenlooper said during a panel discussion at the Rocky Mountain Energy Summit at the Colorado Convention Center.
The panel was titled "Unscripted Ascent: Energy the Western Way," and it was clear after the governor’s remark that the discussion indeed was "unscripted."
Hickenlooper’s Republican challenger Bob Beauprez, a former congressman, attacked the Governor for being "far too concerned with what other people think."
"Whether it’s Barack Obama, Michael Bloomberg, Jared Polis, ‘large donors’ or now generally ‘people in Washington,’ there’s an endless list of people John Hickenlooper will carry water for, but what Coloradans want to know is this: Where do you stand, and will you stand up for us?" Beauprez said in a statement to the Herald.
Sixty-six percent of Coloradans support building the Keystone pipeline, according to a poll conducted earlier this year.