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This year, like every election year, candidates in pursuit of needed votes are once again catapulting themselves into public events and across Colorado’s airwaves to present themselves as the true champions of local small businesses and workers, and as the rightful reformers of all things wrong with Washington.

For far too long, politicians of all political stripes have attempted to appeal to our sense of community and commonality by saying one thing at home and then doing the opposite in Congress. And it’s taken its toll in terms of jobs, unnecessary hardships on families and stripping local communities of needed resources.

Over the last several election cycles, voters were promised everything from lower health insurance premiums and pledges we could keep our doctors as a result of Obamacare to countless new jobs created from massive spending programs to lower energy costs from new regulations. Instead, the exact opposite has occurred with trillions in new debt accumulated as a result.

Predictably, many of the candidates who supported these policies are now running for re-election on the promise of helping small business. Don’t buy it just because they say they will. This year, Colorado’s small businesses don’t plan to, and neither should you.

To this end, the 2014 elections can and should be viewed as a referendum on the need for Washington to restore trust with the small businesses and workers who are the backbone of local economies in Colorado. And America’s small-business community has created a simple means to certify if someone is in fact “Small Business Certified.” The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), on behalf of its 350,000-strong membership of small-business owners, has outlined five commonsense reforms that serve as clear indicators of whether a candidate can or will truly support local employers and workers over the special interests in Washington. These measures include:

• Mandating the federal government to certify that Obamacare is not having a negative economic impact on small businesses

• Curbing regulatory overreach by ensuring new federal regulations are sensible and affordable

• Repealing Obamacare’s discriminatory small-business health insurance tax (HIT)

• Requiring Congress to pass a balanced federal budget each fiscal year

• Restoring the definition of a full-time work week to the traditional 40 hours

Generalities and talking points and slogans are nice, but they’re no substitute for specific commitments on real ideas or policies that would immediately help small businesses and workers.

Ask Cory Gardner and Mark Udall, for example, who are locked in a tight race for U.S. Senate. Sen. Udall voted for the Affordable Care Act, which has been a disaster for Colorado small businesses. He has supported the administration on a whole range of policies that have battered Main Street communities across the state for several years.

Gardner, on the other hand, has been a solid supporter of small business, not merely in his rhetoric, but in his life as an actual small-business owner and through his actions as a policymaker (with a 100 percent NFIB voting record). We’ve endorsed Cory Gardner, but it’s worth asking both candidates where they stand on the five “Small Business Certified” policies. So this fall, when you hear Mark Udall and Cory Gardner salute Colorado’s small business, as they should and will, put them to the test. Ask tough questions and see who commits and who seeks to avoid the challenging problems.

It’s time to start holding politicians accountable. This year, we’re asking voters to send a message to politicians: Don’t say you’re for small business. Be for small business.