U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, a moderate Democrat who campaigned last year on his ability to form bipartisan coalitions with Republicans, has an early opportunity to showcase that ability — and witness firsthand the difficulties of doing so in a deeply divided Congress.

A new and nameless coalition of 16 moderate and centrist senators — eight from each political party, including Hickenlooper — have a raison d’etre to write a COVID-19 relief package that will attract 60 votes in a U.S. Senate that’s split 50-50.

“I think everyone’s got a sense of urgency,” Hickenlooper said in a Jan. 25 interview, soon after the coalition met with White House advisors. “This has to happen in real time. I think everyone also realizes there has to be a certain amount of compromise from everybody.”

Fresh off November victories that handed them control of the presidency and Congress for the first time in a decade, Democrats must decide whether to craft a bipartisan bill or push their own legislation through Congress using a budgetary procedure known as reconciliation. It requires only a simple majority to pass through the Senate.

Some progressive activists are growing impatient with bipartisanship at a time when Coloradans are strained by the dual crises of COVID-19 and the economic downturn it has wrought.

“It’s frustrating that that seems to weigh so heavily and move the discussions,” said Andrea Chiriboga-Flor, state director of 9to5 Colorado, which advocates for working women. “Sometimes it feels like catering (to Republicans) outweighs the desperate needs of people and what they’re going through right now. There’s no question how bad people are suffering.”

The differences between a bipartisan bill and a Democratic package could be large, though much remains in flux. Democrats have pushed for an injection of cash to state and local governments, which Republicans generally oppose. Democrats have been willing to drop that from past relief bills in order to achieve bipartisanship, and may have to again this time.

“I know it’s been kind of a sticking point and the decision was to leave it for later in that last package that we did at the end of the year,” said U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, an Arvada Democrat and advocate for state and local funding. “Well, now is later. Now it’s time to do it.”

And while the group of 16 agrees on prioritization for vaccines, the senators all have a range of other priorities. For Hickenlooper, a brewpub founder, small businesses must be a focus. He was perturbed that within President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan, less than 3% of spending would go to small businesses — and he let White House advisors hear about that last weekend.

“They make up almost 50% of the private workforce,” Hickenlooper said of small businesses. “I don’t think that (funding) is sufficient and I made my little pitch that this is a place that really needs to be looked at more closely.”

Colorado’s unemployment rate is 8.4%, considerably higher than the national average and drastically higher than the state’s 2.5% rate before the pandemic. The leisure and hospitality sectors are struggling. Only moratoriums on evictions have saved some from homelessness.

“So many people in Black and brown communities are in shambles, so I do think that’s problematic, to overemphasize how important (bipartisanship) is versus meeting the needs of people,” said Chiriboga-Flor, whose group is pushing for a long-term eviction moratorium to be included in Congress’ next package. A short-term moratorium is in place through March.

Liberal critics have been irked by Hickenlooper’s steadfast faith in bipartisanship throughout his political career. His membership in the new group of 16 senators is an early test of bipartisanship’s odds, as well as his optimism, in the 117th Congress.

“With the Senate split 50-50, if you have 16 senators working together who say, listen, let’s come up with a bipartisan approach, that’s going to have an awful lot of impact,” said Joe Allen, a former staffer to Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Ind. Allen is the executive director of Bayh-Dole 40, a nonprofit that celebrates a bipartisan 1980 agreement between Bayh and former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan.

“For this group of 16 to succeed, they have to pick issues where they really can say, let’s work together on this and we’ll put the other things aside. If they try to work on everything, that’s just going to bog them down,” Allen added.

The group faces strong headwinds in trying to compile a massive — and massively expensive — relief package that can garner 60 votes in the Senate. Perlmutter, a longtime friend and ally of Hickenlooper, said this is the new senator’s strong suit.

“This is a democracy,” Hickenlooper said in an interview, “and too often when you try to jam policy positions through, it makes future improvements of the policy more difficult and makes it more difficult to get other policies through.

“President Biden ran on his belief in a bipartisan approach to solving the nation’s problems, wherever possible, and I said that myself many times during the election. I think we should try to work on things from a bipartisan perspective, certainly at first.”

Lizeth Chacon, executive director of the Colorado People’s Alliance, said the impoverished and struggling people of Colorado are “looking for folks to stop the politicking” and find solutions.

“That’s the frustration in our community. A lot of the time we just see folks going back and forth and focusing more on their political career or alignment with their party,” she said. “What we’re looking for from our congressional delegation is just to act, because our communities have been waiting for months.”

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