The Denver Gazette asks whether Jared Polis’ supposed “independent streak” will define his legacy, using three major fights as evidence: organized labor’s effort to rewrite Colorado’s union rules, the rural backlash over wolf reintroduction, and Polis’ commutation of Tina Peters’ prison sentence. The article presents a governor who sometimes sides with Democrats, sometimes blocks them, and occasionally leaves everybody wondering what game he is playing.
But this reads less like a personality profile and more like a preemptive buff-and-wax job on the Polis legacy. The preferred storyline is that Colorado’s quirky tech-libertarian governor courageously charted his own course. The less flattering version is that Polis spent eight years riding shotgun in Colorado’s progressive machine, occasionally tapping the brakes when the engine started smoking, then asking to be remembered as the mechanic.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Labor learned that progressive slogans have business hours. Polis twice vetoed legislation aimed at eliminating Colorado’s second-election requirement for union-security agreements after business and labor failed to reach a compromise. Democrats and labor groups acted betrayed, apparently shocked to discover that the governor occasionally remembers employers also live here. Polis got to pose as the reasonable adult after letting everyone else turn the Capitol into a bargaining cage match.
- The wolves were somebody else’s mandate until they became Polis’ photo opportunity. He stayed officially neutral during the 2020 campaign, then joined the first release in Grand County. Ranchers and local officials said they were not notified. When Western Slope lawmakers sought a pause, Polis vetoed it in the name of the voters. More than 100 livestock were later killed, roughly two dozen wolves died, and program costs blew past estimates. Front Range voters ordered the entrée. Rural Colorado got the check.
- The Tina Peters commutation scrambled Colorado’s tribal wiring. Polis reduced her nine-year sentence to just over four years, arguing that the punishment was excessive for a first-time nonviolent offender and pointing to sentencing disparities. Democrats reacted like he had commuted Benedict Arnold. Some Republicans reacted like Ronald Reagan had risen from the grave wearing a Polis campaign button. Everybody settle down. One commutation does not erase eight years of governance.
- The media loves the “brake pedal” description because it cleans up the wreckage. Yes, Polis blocked some bills from an increasingly progressive legislature. He also governed alongside a Democratic trifecta while Colorado became, according to critics cited in the article, the sixth-most regulated state in the country. A brake pedal is useful, but it does not make you independent when your party built the car, chose the route, and kept running over rural Colorado.
- Polis’ real talent may be political product placement. He waits, triangulates, irritates the activists, reassures business, lectures the opposition, and sells the resulting mess as bold independence. Every controversy becomes another scene in Jared Polis: The Man Above the Fray, even when he helped create the fray, funded the fray, or signed the fray into law.
My Bottom Line
Polis can point to genuine moments when he resisted the progressive herd. His labor vetoes mattered. His decision on Peters required political nerve, whether you view it as justice, calculation, compassion, or all three wearing the same expensive jacket. He was also more restrained than several other Democratic governors during portions of the pandemic. Credit where it is due.
But independence is not measured by how often your own activists yell at you. Sometimes they are yelling because you finally noticed voters exist outside Denver committee rooms. Democrats do not get to act betrayed every time Polis remembers that businesses sign paychecks, ranchers own livestock, and normal Coloradans are not obligated to salute every bill wrapped in activist bumper stickers.
Republicans should keep their party hats in the closet too. The Peters commutation may have corrected a disproportionate sentence, but it did not transform Polis into Barry Goldwater with better sneakers. He still presided over a Colorado government that became more centralized, more regulated, more expensive to navigate, and increasingly comfortable using rural communities as a testing ground for policies dreamed up by people who think a cattle guard is security at a steakhouse.
So what is the Polis legacy? Independence, opportunism, or high-end political brand management? Probably a little of each. But the “independent streak” looks less like a governing philosophy and more like a luxury accessory bolted to the hood of the same progressive machine that kept running over everybody else. Nice trim package. Same vehicle.
Source: The Denver Gazette
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