[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 119 (Thursday, July 10, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4308-S4309]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Remembering John Stulp

  Mr. HICKENLOOPER. Mr. President, I rise today to honor my great 
friend John Stulp. John passed away this past Monday, July 7. He was 
with his family in Lamar, out on the Eastern Plains, a place that he 
loved more than anything.
  John was a good man--a great man, by any measure. Certainly, he was 
defined by his unwavering commitment to his family, his neighbors, his 
friends, and his home State of Colorado. He was the essence of a public 
servant.
  His list of contributions to our State is impressively long. He 
served as Colorado's commissioner of agriculture during my predecessor 
Bill Ritter's governorship, and I appreciate Governor Ritter 
introducing me to him, discovering him for me.
  John Stulp was a former Prowers County commissioner, a Democratic 
commissioner in a county that is not well-known for Democratic 
commissioners.
  He was also a former State board of land commissioner, a State 
wildlife commissioner, and a member of the State board of agriculture.
  And in John's mind, above all that, he was a dryland wheat farmer and 
a cow-calf rancher from southeast Colorado.
  John's reputation for patient consensus-building is well-known 
throughout our State and trusted throughout our State.
  In 2011, I was the newly elected Governor, and Colorado had already 
experienced a couple of years of drought. The years 2011 and 2012 were 
bad years for drought, and I was convinced that we needed a blueprint, 
a plan of some sort, to address the gap between the State's projected 
growth and its future water supply to make sure that we had the supply 
that could match our needs.
  I recruited John to serve as my top water policy adviser. We made it 
a cabinet-level position. He came to all our cabinet meetings. He was 
our water czar. It was clear to me that we would be hard-pressed to 
find anyone that could do the work he did. John understood the 
agricultural community in Colorado better than almost anyone.
  Maybe that is why, when I first approached him with the idea of a 
statewide water plan, he wasn't immediately convinced. Actually, he was 
far from it; he was, I would say, more than skeptical. He knew how hard 
it would be to map Colorado's water supply, to chart a plan to conserve 
water that we might need in the next 50 years, and to get everybody at 
the table. In Colorado, we talk about how whiskey is for drinking but 
water is for fighting. He didn't think it was a smart idea for me 
politically, as a new Governor, to take on an issue that had the 
potential to be so divisive, but he understood that we couldn't let our 
rivers and farms be at risk of running dry and that we needed him, 
Colorado needed him.
  He set aside his reservations and he rolled up his sleeves and he 
went to work--he and James Eckholt and a lot of other people. It was 
remarkable to watch them. He crisscrossed the State hosting 
roundtables, talking with farmers, listening to stakeholders--really 
hearing them--trying to resolve the issues and trying to align their 
self-interests.
  John poured his heart and soul into that plan, and in the end, John 
accomplished what I think even he previously believed would not be 
possible. We finalized the State's first-ever water plan in November of 
2015. It certainly would never have happened without his prodigious 
efforts. He created a framework that will evolve as our State's climate 
and demographics continue to evolve.
  More importantly, in the process, he created an ecosystem, a network, 
of relationships across geographic and political boundaries. And that 
was one of his many great legacies--his many legacies--that he leaves 
to Colorado. Certainly, his family is his greatest legacy, but he did a 
lot for the ability of Colorado's future and water.
  When you travel a lot with someone, you spend a lot of miles with 
them and you stay at their home, you share their food, you meet their 
neighbors, you get a real sense of their goodness. I am not sure there 
are gradations of goodness. But I have traveled long distances with 
John Stulp. I stayed at his home in Prowers County, where he and his 
remarkable wife Jane would cook up a barbecue and get me together with 
some of their neighbors. He even loaned my son Teddy a .410 shotgun so 
he could learn how to shoot.
  If I did believe in gradations of goodness, John and Jane Stulp would 
be at the very top. Even with all the great

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contributions he made to our State, I think John's goodness, the 
pureness and the deepness of his heart, is what I will miss the most.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tuberville). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant executive clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagerty). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask that the scheduled rollcall vote 
begin immediately.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.