June 05, 2013 04:41 PM UTC

The Year of No Vetoes?

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• by: Colorado Pols

FOX 31's Eli Stokols reports an unusual fact of this year's legislative session just now becoming clear, following Gov. John Hickenlooper's signing today of dozens of remaining bills:

“Our goal was no vetoes,” Hickenlooper said. “There are a number of these bills where there were things we weren’t crazy about, but it didn’t come up to the level of a veto. Politically, it would have been better to have a few vetoes.”

Hickenlooper lauded his chief strategist, Alan Salazar, and legislative liaison, Christine Scanlan, for ironing out the issues with all of the legislation that got to his desk.

“They did too good a job, they mitigated too many of the problems,” Hickenlooper said.

We wrote during the session about Democratic hard feelings surrounding the failure of a bill to repeal the death penalty, and allegations from some lawmakers that Gov. Hickenlooper had put his thumb on the process to ensure the bill's failure. Hickenlooper was also closely involved with the killing of a number of oil and gas protection bills from Democrats just as the session ended.

On the other hand, he didn't have to veto them.

Setting those two significant exceptions aside, it is a remarkable feat to have had no legislation reach Hickenlooper's desk that he was compelled to veto–a dramatic contrast to what many pundits forecast would be a contentious struggle to 'rein in' majority Democrats, and showing considerable negotiating skill in getting controversial bills modified to his liking. Overall, Hickenlooper and his legislative outreach team did a better job "herding cats" this year than anyone we can remember, or would have predicted in January.