Matching Peña’s praise, fellow former Mayor Michael Hancock hailed Bennet����ap chief rival for the job, Attorney General Phil Weiser, as “a tremendous attorney general” and “one of the smartest people I know.”

The compliments, however, highlight what many Democrats see as a good problem to have as the primary race comes into focus: Peña, despite his high praise for Bennet, wants Weiser to win the job. Vice versa for Hancock, who’s really rooting for Bennet.

The two high-wattage candidates have effectively cleared the field of other potential high-profile Democratic candidates in the race to succeed Gov. Jared Polis, who is term-limited from running for a third time. The narrow Democratic field stands in stark contrast to the wide-open Republican contest, where 25 candidates — none of whom had raised more than $200,000 as of this fall — hope to win the Colorado governor’s office for the GOP for the first time in 24 years.

Bennet and Weiser are well-liked in party circles, and each comes with a well-established resume. They’ve likely crowded out any other serious challengers, leaving most Democratic and unaffiliated primary voters with a binary choice between two men who are both Denverites — a potentially simpler exercise than the four-way race in 2018, but it could be complicated by each’s long record for voters to compare.

Weiser, elected as the state’s top attorney in 2018 and now term-limited, has had much of his tenure dominated by legal fights with the Trump administration. He has sued the new administration this year alone. His office has claimed wins in 25 of those cases, losses in seven, and is awaiting rulings in the others. 

Bennet became a U.S. senator in 2009 and is Colorado’s longest-serving senator in 50 years. His record includes winning a key provision in the 2021 American Rescue Plan to expand the federal child tax credit — a move heralded by the Brookings Institution as leading to a “” across the country before the provision expired after about six months.

They’ve each shown fundraising prowess, raising multimillion-dollar war chests in the opening months of the governor’s race. 

All of those factors set the stage for a primary fight with more defined battle lines than the free-for-alls of the past. If no other major candidate enters, voters who cast ballots in the June primary will be asked to weigh senatorial deftness against the value of legal pugnacity in the Trump 2.0 era, Weiser’s comparatively new blood versus Bennet as the old guard — and competing visions that nonetheless broadly align along Democratic priorities. 

“They’re both incredibly smart, thoughtful people whose careers have risen during this weird period of American politics where (President Donald Trump) has become such a dominant figure and such a polarizing figure,” said University of Colorado Denver public affairs professor Paul Teske, who’s donated to each of their campaigns. “… It can lead people to nitpick more than they might otherwise. If you prefer Phil to Michael, you might have to come up with a reason why you prefer him more.”

How this shaped up as a two-man race

Weiser, 57, launched his campaign on Jan. 2 — just before Trump was sworn in for a second term, and before any other prominent Democrats tossed their hats in the ring. Affordability, housing shortages, climate change and the youth mental health crisis dominated his out-of-the-gate message.

With Colorado trending distinctly blue over the past decade, anti-Trump sentiments roiling the liberal base and no incumbent governor seeking reelection this time, it seemed like he’d be the first candidate of many for 2026.

Weiser rode the early entrance to a hefty cash haul and a slate of early endorsements while other possible contenders pondered their moves. The rumored candidates included prominent Democrats U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and Secretary of State Jena Griswold.

But no other high-profile Democrat entered the race — until Bennet, a third of the way into his latest term as a senator, decided he wanted to come home. He publicly announced his campaign in April.

Bennet’s decision is an exceedingly rare one. U.S. senators hold one of the most influential political posts in the country. Over the past 40 years, only 19 sitting or former senators have run for governor anywhere, . Four of those were Democrats. That’s out of some 500 governors’ races over that time frame.

Bennet, 60, said at his announcement event that he saw an opportunity in Colorado to “forge a better politics” than what����ap practiced in Washington, D.C. He pledged to build an economic and educational foundation to “drive a stake through Trumpism.”

“We have people all over Colorado that are working in their communities, and at the county level, who are desperate to have a partner in the statehouse, who believe that what we have to do in this state is unify the citizens of Colorado,” Bennet said, listing off priorities like cutting the costs of housing and child care and raising education levels. “… This is not a moment for rhetoric, it’s a moment for results.”

With so many other Democrats seemingly waiting in the wings, Bennet’s entrance into the race threw the political world for a loop.

“I was surprised, just because it seemed like it was outside the realm of what he was thinking about,” said U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Lakewood Democrat who’s endorsed Bennet. But like other backers, she quickly understood the move after a conversation with him.

“When you talk to him, it becomes clear that he felt like this was where he could make the biggest impact, and that’s what we all strive for in public service,” Pettersen added. “… While I was surprised, I understand that his breadth of experience — from superintendent (of Denver Public Schools) to the Senate — and (with) the opportunities he has in Colorado, I understand why he wants to do this.”

Bennet quickly lined up more than 175 endorsements from across the state, including from nearly all of Colorado’s Democratic members of Congress. (Only U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, who represents Denver, remains uncommitted.) The rollout was a show of force for the campaign, drawing on Bennet’s long history of winning statewide campaigns and his reputation among Democratic leaders.

But it wasn’t a knockout blow. Weiser’s still very much in the race.

Politicos have long joked that AG stands as much for “” as attorney general. For Weiser, himself restricted from running for the same post again and seeing fellow Democrats sitting in U.S. House or Senate seats that he might otherwise consider, the governor’s office was an obvious next move.

At a fall event with Peña and former Gov. Roy Romer that was billed as a fireside chat with “the state’s most transformative leaders,” Weiser said Colorado was at an inflection point. It must both protect its values from “the craziness in Washington,” he said, and forge its own path forward. Reflecting on Romer’s and Peña’s tenures, in which the former leaders fought to build the economic hub that is Denver International Airport, Weiser said he stood ready to take on big challenges.

“There is lower trust in our institutions right now (and) less ability to create solutions to get things done,” Weiser said. “… We have to find a way to meet this moment, create a similar can-do spirit — where we’re going to try a bunch of different things. Not all of it is going to work, but we’re going to try something.”

Weiser’s record as the state’s top attorney quickly swayed Romer, who led Colorado from 1987 to 1999, to believe in his higher aspirations. Speaking at the campaign event last month, Romer highlighted the need “to enable people to believe in government itself,” and particularly in the leadership of those in office.

“Bennet’s a personal friend. I like him. I respect him. I support him very much,” Romer said in an interview. “He’s my U.S. senator. I didn’t know he was (getting into) this race, but I like Phil anyway.

“Phil, I’ve watched for years. He’s a good man, and I just think he’ll make a great governor. Bennet, he’s my senator — and I hope he stays my senator.”

That sentiment — Bennet for Senate, and Weiser for governor — has been catchy enough among the attorney general’s supporters to make it in recent months.

The two men aren’t the only ones running for the nomination. Fellow Democrats Antonio Martinez, Carmen Broesder, Fatima Fernandez, David Hughes and William Moses have also declared for the race, though none have raised any substantial money as of the most recent campaign finance filings or stood out in other ways.

‘Ready to weigh’ state’s toughest problems

Bennet joined the Senate in 2009, appointed by then-Gov. Bill Ritter to replace Ken Salazar, whom then-President Barack Obama had just appointed U.S. Interior secretary. At the time, Bennet, after years of working mostly behind the scenes, was virtually unknown throughout most of the state.

Ritter had plucked Bennet from the role of DPS superintendent, where he had served since 2005. As the head of the school district, Bennet declining enrollment and a stark achievement gap between students of color and white students, and he made the decision to close a storied northeast Denver high school that had struggled in the decade prior.

Before that, Bennet, a Yale-educated lawyer, had served as then-Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s chief of staff. Before he entered Colorado’s political sphere, Bennet worked for billionaire Phil Anschutz, buying up and restructuring distressed businesses, including oil companies and movie theater companies, earning millions of dollars in the process.

He won a close election to a full term in the Senate in 2010, earning 48% of the vote, less than 2 percentage points over his Republican challenger. Colorado was still distinctly purple then, and his election stood out during a national red wave year.

But as Colorado turned azure in the decade to follow, Bennet����ap margins have only increased. He won by nearly 6 percentage points over the Republican challenger in 2016, and was 800 votes shy of an outright majority in a race that also had Green and Libertarian party candidates. In 2022, Bennet won nearly 56% of the vote, routing his Republican rival by nearly 15 percentage points.

He has repeatedly pointed to education and support for children of all economic stripes as key motivations for his public service. That streak continues with his gubernatorial bid.

Three of his four major policy proposals so far have circled education and child care, with ideas to tie education to job opportunities, to lower child care costs and give special benefits to child care workers, and to create new rules around online safety for children, such as social media regulations and banning cell phones in classrooms.

The fourth proposal, on housing affordability, looks to help families dig roots in the Centennial State and help their kids find their own Colorado dream. That includes expanding state-supported housing by 30% over the next decade.

“Whether you think you’re the most conservative person in Colorado, or the most liberal or progressive person in Colorado, if our kids can’t afford to live here, it doesn’t matter,” Bennet said in an interview after unveiling his child care proposal. “… We have to unify Colorado — build a coalition across our state to do hard things — and I think I’ve got the experience and the leadership skills to be able to help us.”

Former Colorado House Majority Leader Daneya Esgar said that breadth of experience — and focus on children — helped bring her into his camp early in the race. 

“When I look at Michael’s career, he has a history of governing. He’s been a senator, he’s had to really think about policy issues, he’s had to make important decisions when it comes to votes. And I think that����ap something we really need somebody (who’s) in the governor’s office ready to weigh,” Esgar said. “Specifically, I think what I’ve always appreciated about Michael is the work he’s really done and the vision he has for Colorado’s kids, throughout his entire career.”

But Bennet’s senatorial experience may also be an avenue of attack.

The question of why he’s leaving one of the most powerful political positions in the country to run for office closer to home is all but sure to follow him on the campaign trail, no matter how many times he says why. He will also have to contend with blowback for controversial votes to approve some of Trump’s cabinet nominees.

He raised eyebrows with his pronouncement that he’d time his resignation so he could appoint his own successor to the U.S. Capitol, should he win the governorship.

Former U.S. Sen. Tim Wirth, a Democrat who represented Colorado from 1987 to 1993, said he told Bennet he wished he’d stay in the Senate, where he was elected to serve, and that he was “surprised and disappointed” he would end his term early. He sees Coloradans as having an appetite for an aggressive posture against the Trump administration, and the Senate provides a unique opportunity to wage that war.

“If I were in the Senate, I’d be as visible as possible fighting Trump,” said Wirth, a Weiser supporter. “I’ve told both Michael and (now-Sen.) John Hickenlooper that I wish they were both a lot more aggressive than they’ve been. They’ve got effectively safe seats, and they ought to be outspoken.”

Willingness to ‘really fight for important values’

While Bennet wants to move to an office 1,700 miles closer to home (and one with much better mountain views), Weiser hopes to hop just a block away from the Colorado Attorney General’s Office downtown.

He has spent much of his career bouncing between Colorado and Washington, D.C. After graduating from New York University’s law school in 1994, Weiser worked as a clerk for 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge David Ebel in Denver. He headed back east to clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg later in the decade, and he returned to Colorado in 1999 to join the faculty at the University of Colorado Law School.

He moved east again to work in the Obama administration, and he returned for a final time to serve as dean of the CU law school. 

Weiser turned to elected office in 2018 — and, as with this election cycle, he faced a tough Democratic primary. He edged out state Rep. Joe Salazar by fewer than 5,000 votes to win the nomination. His two general election wins, in 2018 and 2022, were less dramatic affairs amid Colorado’s overall political shift leftward. He won in 2018 by more than 6 percentage points and in 2022 by more than 10.

As a gubernatorial candidate, Weiser has set goals of halving the state’s housing shortage and banning algorithmic rent setting by large corporations — a measure vetoed by Polis in May. He also wants to “Trump-Proof” Colorado and launch a “ColoradoCorps” service program for 18- to 26-year-olds looking at careers in firefighting, law enforcement, education and more.

Former U.S. Rep. David Skaggs, who represented a Colorado district from 1987 to 1999, crossed paths with Weiser at the CU law school after he left Congress. He was “struck from the get-go about how razor sharp his mind is, what a good lawyer he is and what an agreeable fellow he is,” Skaggs said.

But now, he points to Weiser’s willingness to “take on the Trump administration, both Trump 1 and Trump 2, and really fight for important values and legal principles.”

Weiser has been in the thick of state government for seven years now, and there’s no better preparation for managing it as governor than spending the better part of a decade lawyering for it, Skaggs said.

Hancock, the former Denver mayor backing Bennet, complimented Weiser’s legal experience but also contrasted it with Bennet’s broader base of experience. Bennet’s time in city hall, for example, gave him a deeper understanding of issues like local control and how to bring local governments along — without wielding a stick, like recent zoning battles with the state have entailed.

“Mike will have a better understanding of those issues,” Hancock said. “He knows the responsibility of local governments, particularly city councils, and how to negotiate and work those things through. I think he’ll be a little more collaborative in that sense because of that knowledge.”

While Weiser’s tenure as attorney general has turned on legal fights with both Trump administrations, he’s also overseen the distribution of tens of millions of dollars from settlements during the opioid crisis. He challenged the merger of the Kroger and Albertsons grocery chains — the parent companies, respectively, of King Soopers and Safeway — which was called off after judges blocked it. He’s backed consumer protection litigation, and his office has been front and center in negotiations over the Colorado River, the lifeblood of the state and the broader West.

But those high-profile legal fights haven’t necessarily translated into name recognition.

A June poll found Bennet with a decisive lead over Weiser — but almost half of likely voters then said they weren’t familiar with Weiser. Comparatively, 13% of likely primary voters were unfamiliar with Bennet.

Weiser’s campaign hopes that means he’ll have a fighter’s chance over the next seven months as people start paying more attention to the race.

He made an early splash by backing a proposed amendment to the Colorado Constitution that, if approved by voters, would allow the state to gerrymander its congressional districts for partisan advantage, should other states do the same — and as Texas, California and others are doing now. The vote to amend the state constitution to pause its nonpartisan congressional maps wouldn’t be until November 2026, though, making 2028 the earliest election those maps could take effect.

Weiser defended the position by saying he hates gerrymandering but “love(s) our democracy more.” Bennet, for his part, said he wouldn’t take the issue off the table, but the 2026 House elections themselves should be a bigger priority than the amendment.

Weiser plans to win a spot on the primary ballot through the state assembly, which means winning over grassroots Democratic activists.

“If you look at the numbers, we have more current and former elected officials who’ve endorsed me, we’ve got more Colorado donors, and we continue to build that momentum — literally visit by visit, community by community,” Weiser said in early October, after the event with Peña and Romer. 

Regarding endorsements, Bennet counters: “I don’t think my opponent has really added many people since I got in the race, and I think that’s exciting.”

Not all support — or opposition — is set in stone

As the race shapes up, some organizations haven’t landed on either candidate — yet. Some see the narrow field as an opportunity for the candidates to distinguish themselves and for the groups to see how closely Bennet and Weiser align with their own political goals.

Indivisible Colorado, a network of progressive political activists that formed following Trump’s first election in 2016, hasn’t typically endorsed in primary races. But, with Colorado’s regularly blue tint in general elections and a national push for a more aggressive Democratic Party, that could change, said Robin Cellars, a member of Indivisible Colorado’s leadership team.

In particular, the organization wants a governor who will fight back against “this authoritarian takeover” by the Trump administration, push for a tax system that has the rich paying more, and defend against overreach by federal immigration enforcement. The latter might include a ban on law enforcement wearing masks and attempting to prohibit the construction of immigration detention facilities in Colorado.

Organizers don’t want sympathetic social media posts, Cellars said. They want aggressive action from a blue state. She didn’t weigh in on the race between Weiser and Bennet, but Indivisible members will be watching to decide whether the group will endorse.

“We are definitely wanting to reform the Democratic Party by getting quality candidates. And the place to do that is the primaries,” Cellars said. “… In the primaries, that’s where we can really make a difference.”

The Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, is working with the campaigns to coordinate events where its members can hear directly from the candidates, CEA President Kevin Vick said. He hopes the union membership will be able to vote on its endorsements by mid-spring.

“I want to give (the candidates) opportunities to speak for themselves,” Vick said. “I know they both have long records in education. I want them to not only be able to relay their records, but if there’s any evolution or learning that they’ve done on their journey — particularly as it relates to education and how we should be treating educators — I think that would be of interest to educators across the state.”

As the race wears on over the next seven months, the victor stands to emerge covered in blue bruises — or, perhaps, campaign-tested and ready to unite the party heading into the general election.

Pettersen, the Lakewood congresswoman who endorsed Bennet, knows it as keenly as any observer of the race. Her husband, political consultant Ian Silverii, is working on Weiser’s campaign. 

“We’re lucky in Colorado to have two amazing public servants running,” Pettersen said. But she also can’t wait for the primary to end.

Then — assuming voters deliver Democrats the governor’s office, as she hopes — the work begins of steering the state through seemingly constant financial pain and the impact of a federal government hostile to Democratic policies.

“Just mitigating the fallout from the failed federal policies, and then trying to come through that while rebuilding the Colorado we want to see — governing through this is going to be one of the most heart-wrenching and difficult things I can imagine,” Pettersen said, citing Medicaid cuts, concerns that rural hospitals could close and changes to food assistance programs. “It’s going to be a gut-wrenching reality to navigate.”

After the council president read a statement criticizing as hastily drafted and outside the body’s authority, the council voted 4-3 to pull it from the agenda and table it, effectively killing it. It had passed two weeks before on an initial reading, albeit because some council members — who complained that they knew little about it — wanted more information about it before making a final decision.

The ordinance would’ve banned providers in Pueblo from receiving abortion-related materials in the mail under a federal law that’s nearly 150 years old. Experts and opponents of the ordinance cast the approach as the latest attempt by anti-abortion activists to limit abortion access nationally, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in June that struck down Roe vs. Wade. Supporters said they wanted Pueblo to be in compliance with federal law and that the ordinance wouldn’t specifically ban abortion.

Heather Graham, the council’s president, rejected that argument and said abortion access was not something the city could — or should — wade into.

“I would suggest if you want to ban abortion, you take it up with state legislators,” she said. “Or, quite frankly, you move out of Colorado because the city council is not the arena to be bringing this forward.”

Reading from a prepared statement, Graham noted that the full council had received a draft the day before Thanksgiving and had little time to consider it or receive legal advice before an initial vote on Nov. 28. She accused unnamed city officials of not caring “who they run over if it benefits their agenda.”

After Graham moved to table the ordinance, Councilwoman Regina Maestri, who introduced and supported it, defended the process and criticized Graham’s attempt to kill it.

“The voice of the people is the voice of the people,” she said. “If you want to table it, that’s on you, and whoever votes for that is your choice.”

The saga brought the national fight over abortion access to Pueblo. Two of the three men who testified in favor of the ordinance Monday are from Texas, including its former solicitor general, and similar ordinances have been introduced elsewhere in the U.S. It would’ve allowed Pueblo residents to file lawsuits — for at least $100,000 apiece — against providers who received abortion materials in the mail. It’s a similar method used under Texas law to limit abortions there, an approach that Pueblo’s city attorney, Dan Kogovsek, told the council was unprecedented.

Kogovsek, whose office previously recommended that the ordinance be rejected, criticized it and the attorneys backing it Monday night. He said the underlying federal law — pushed forward in the 1870s by an obscenity crusader concerned about pornography in the mail — had never been enforced for abortion materials.

“And our friends from Austin and Denver want the city to enact a local ordinance implementing federal law,” he said, referring to two anti-abortion attorneys who told the council the ordinance was enforceable and legal, “and they can’t show you one case where it was successfully implemented. Not one. There are no cases.”

Had it passed, the proposal would’ve been a first test for Colorado’s new Reproductive Health Equity Act, or RHEA, which passed in March. The law broadly prohibits state or local officials from limiting access to abortion services, and its sponsor — Pueblo Democratic Rep. Daneya Esgar — told the council Monday that the ordinance would violate it.

Councilman Dennis Flores asked Esgar and Kogovsek if the Attorney General’s Office would sue the city for violating RHEA, should the ordinance pass. Esgar demurred but noted that Attorney General Phil Weiser had publicly said he would defend the act.

Kogovsek was more direct.

“I think I can say with some confidence that if this passes tonight, we will be sued before Christmas,” he said.

Cobalt Advocates, a pro-abortion access Colorado group, praised the proposal’s demise on Twitter. The organization said the ordinance would’ve violated state law and gone “against what Coloradans and Puebloans have made clear they want: access to abortion free from (government) interference.”

Debate around the proposal, which was first publicly discussed on Nov. 14, drew packed crowds who waved signs and frequently jeered each other and city officials. The ordinance’s language prompted the city’s legal staff to recommend it be dropped and local OBGYNs to warn that its passage would harm reproductive health care in the region, something supporters said was false. Accusations of out-of-state interference have flown in both directions: Pro-abortion access advocates decried the influence of Texas activists in drafting the ordinance, while Maestri said the first foreign intrusion came from an abortion clinic that planned to open in town.

Maestri, who sponsored the ordinance, and other supporters have said the federal law underpinning the ordinance would trump RHEA. She repeated that position Monday in a contentious back-and-forth with Kogovsek, who repeatedly told her he thought the federal law was unconstitutional and that’s why it hadn’t been enforced before.

Maestri and other supporters of the ordinance have cast it as a response to concerns about a specific provider who in September announced plans to open a new — and only — clinic in Pueblo. Maestri and fellow Councilwoman Lori Winner both also expressed concerns about a lack of regulation governing abortion in Colorado.

It’s unclear if the ordinance will find new life in other parts of Colorado. Similar language has been passed in other U.S. towns and cities, and Marcie Little of Colorado for Life told The Post last week that she expected it to be introduced elsewhere in the state.

Councilmembers narrowly voted last week to advance in part because some wanted more information about it and an initial “aye” vote would allow for a public work session before a final tally Monday night. The ordinance would prohibit clinics in Pueblo from receiving materials through the mail to facilitate abortion care, citing a federal law initially passed nearly 150 years ago that, among other things, categorized contraceptives as obscene.

The proposal, a similar version of which , arose weeks after the Clinics for Abortion and Reproductive Excellence, or CARE, announced it would open a new clinic in town. Regina Maestri, the councilwoman who drafted the proposal, told The Denver Post that she had concerns specific to CARE and that she contacted from Texas — one of whom testified in front of the council in November — to help her draft the ordinance.

The clinic, which did not return a message seeking comment, has locations in Maryland and Nebraska,

Ahead of Monday’s vote, the council held an at times contentious special work session Wednesday night. The meeting was initially scheduled to include testimony from the city attorney and Pueblo Democratic Rep. Daneya Esgar, who sponsored a sweeping law earlier this year to protect access to abortions in Colorado.

But an attorney for a conservative organization floated potential legal action against the council because it hadn’t included anti-abortion speakers, and the council narrowed the agenda to include only comments from a pair of OBGYNs from Pueblo. Both of those providers urged the council not to adopt the ordinance.

Those doctors — Joseph Castelli and Michael Growney — told the council Wednesday that the ordinance would prevent them from ordering and receiving tools that they use daily to treat women. That would negatively impact the quality of care for women in Pueblo and southern Colorado, they said.

“My argument would be that by not having the proper medical equipment that is (the) standard of care — the standard of care — we are doing harm to our patients, and this ordinance makes it that way,” Castelli said.

Maestri questioned whether the ordinance would really impact day-to-day reproductive care. Castelli told her the same tools used in elective abortions were used by him and other providers “every single day.”

She asked the two doctors if either of them were attorneys or if they had consulted an attorney about the ordinance.

“Black and white words on paper don’t really need much of an attorney,” Growney said. “It’s right there on paper.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” Maestri replied.

“In what way?” Castelli said, shaking his head.

Maestri and others have framed the ordinance as a direct and specific response to concerns about CARE. But Maestri said in a council meeting that Pueblo should be a “sanctuary city for the unborn” and was noncommittal when asked if she would have still submitted the proposal had any other provider made plans to open a clinic there. Marcie Little of Colorado for Life told the Post that she thought the ordinance “would have been introduced regardless.”

Opponents of the proposal, including Pueblo Democratic Rep. Daneya Esgar, have said they don’t believe it will pass. If it does, the city would likely face a legal challenge: Esgar, who that prohibits state or local authorities from limiting access to abortion, said she believed the ordinance would violate that law, and the city’s legal staff have recommended the proposal be dropped. On Nov. 14, with a packed audience at his back, Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar told the council that the city was powerless to stop the clinic from opening.

“The point I want to make is that there’s absolutely nothing that I as the mayor or, in my judgment, you as the City Council, can do to prevent this clinic from opening,” he said, to yells and jeers from the crowd.

The Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that it “is monitoring developments regarding the proposed ordinance in Pueblo” but declined to comment further. Messages sent to other members of the Pueblo City Council were not returned this week. which would’ve generally prohibited abortions after 22 weeks.

Even if the proposal does fail, similar efforts are likely to re-emerge elsewhere in Colorado, Little said. Opponents described it as a new attempt by anti-abortion activists to undercut access to abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“Basically the anti-abortion movement have secured movements in a lot of states, and they’re throwing everything against the wall to see where it sticks,” said David Cohen, a professor at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law. “I don’t blame them — when you’ve got a goal, you try everything to accomplish that goal, and that����ap what they’re doing. I disagree with their goal, and this strategy is legally unsound.”

The proposal relies on the federal Comstock Act, originally passed in 1873 as the result of work by an anti-obscenity crusader who sought to prevent the distribution of “indecent” materials through the mail, including those relating to contraception and abortion.

Maestri and Little, the councilmember and anti-abortion activist, both said the Comstock Act supersedes the state law protecting abortion access, the Reproductive Health Equity Act.

Lawyers and opponents disagreed with that interpretation, as the mayor did a month ago.

“The city of Pueblo cannot violate that,” Cohen said. “So this (ordinance) — regardless of its enforcement mechanism — violates state law. Pueblo, even if it had the votes, would still be acting against state law.”

In the 1930s, higher courts determined that the Comstock Act only applied to unlawful materials, Cohen said. That’s why it hasn’t been used previously by the anti-abortion movement to limit access to the service, he said, and precedent suggests this avenue won’t be successful if it finds its way into a federal courtroom.

Jennifer Hendricks, the co-director of the juvenile and family law program at the University of Colorado’s law school, agreed. But she and Cohen said the Comstock Act leaves the door open for further court scrutiny of abortion access, particularly with the current, conservative Supreme Court.

“If you read old cases, you’d say, ‘Yeah, (the proposal’s supporters) are not reading this correctly,'” Hendricks said. “On the other hand, (the court decisions) are 100 years old, and it was a different Supreme Court. So who knows.”

Gov. Jared Polis signed into law in Pueblo. It’s set to go into effect on July 1, 2023.

The lead sponsor of the bill, Pueblo Democrat Daneya Esgar, has called the policy “monumental.”

Said Esgar Friday, “These workers staff our public health departments, maintain our roads, and keep our communities safe, and they deserve the right to join together to improve their workplaces and negotiate for better pay and benefits. This new law allows county workers to unionize if they choose to so that they can have a seat at the table to discuss decisions that not only impact their livelihood but the safety of the communities they serve.”

Esgar, the House majority leader, opened this year’s legislative session with sights on a much broader bill than the one signed Friday. Working with a coalition of labor organizations, Esgar sought to empower public workers across the state — not just at the county level, but in cities, in school districts and special districts, and at public colleges and universities — with new union rights.

The plan was to allow hundreds of thousands of these workers to form unions without needing permission from elected government leaders or from voters. They don’t have that right at present. The plan also involved conferring upon these workers the power to negotiate union contracts.

Though he declined for months to discuss specifics of that plan with reporters, Polis did make clear early in the session that the bill would have to be “much narrower” to win his signature.

After that, the first to go were workers in cities, special districts and K-12 schools. Higher education and county workers survived that cut because, at differing levels, each of those sectors is more closely connected to state budgeting than the other three. Counties, in particular, are often referred to at the Capitol as “arms of the state,” as they administer state programs in local communities.

But some labor leaders in higher education weren’t happy with where the bill was heading. Namely, they were concerned that the bill would offer no teeth to compel administrators to agree to contracts. In the closing weeks of the session, the bill was introduced such that .

The final version of the bill that Polis just signed leaves no question that county commissioners have final say over their own budgets. While they must negotiate with unions in good faith, the bill does not provide for binding arbitration — that is, a final resolution to force a contract agreement when two sides can’t reach a deal.

In that sense, county leaders can opt-out of agreeing to any new union contracts, even if they can’t stop workers from unionizing to begin with. The pro-labor advocates who backed SB22-230 are hoping that won’t happen so simply — that if and when unions form in anti-union counties, commissioners will be moved by public pressure to honestly negotiate with workers and to consider those workers’ asks.

But in the face of fierce opposition from Republican lawmakers and from many county commissioners, Democrats, who hold majorities in both legislative chambers, agreed to cuts that mean lots of counties won’t be subject to this new law at all. Denver and Broomfield counties were never going to be included, as they are combined city/county governments. A late-session amendment cut out every county with a population of 7,500 or fewer people, which lopped off about a third of counties in Colorado. The counties that remain included in the bill together employ the vast majority of the state’s county government workers.

The bill also allows for “home-rule” counties to ask voters to amend their charters to opt-out of SB22-230. For now Weld and Pitkin counties are the only two to which that provision applies, but conservative commissioners tell The Denver Post they plan to carefully consider seeking voter approval to declare themselves “home-rule” counties — a move that carries many more implications than exemption from the new labor law.

SB22-230 does not itself create any new unions, and those who crafted it don’t expect it’ll lead to a major swell of county-level labor organizing in the immediate future. The law merely opens the door for affected workers and lays out certain terms for how they and their employers must proceed if and when unions form.

Senate President Steve Fenberg, a Boulder Democrat who joined Esgar in sponsoring the policy, has for months said that while he wanted to pass a bill to empower as many public workers as possible, he always knew it would have to be compromised down. It was, after all, but Fenberg declared victory Friday.

“I am proud to have championed this new law that will give tens of thousands of unsung heroes the right to organize and negotiate for fair and safe workplaces — the same rights that nearly every private sector and state worker already enjoy,” he said in a statement. “This historic legislation will help improve lives and communities across our state, and I am pleased to see it get signed into law.”

The bill, , began as an effort to grant public employees in cities, counties, special districts, K-12 districts and higher-education institutions the right to unionize without needing recognition from bosses, plus the right to bargain collectively over wages, benefits and working conditions.

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis made clear early in this legislative session that he was open to granting only limited labor rights to county and higher-education workers, and the Democratic lawmakers leading the bill responded by cutting the other groups out. It pained them to do it, they said at the time, but it was a necessary move to calm the governor and get something passed.

Later a philosophical rift among higher-education workers led the bill’s backers to cut their policy down again, to the point that it applied just to county workers — except for those in Broomfield or Denver, the two Colorado counties that are also cities.

On Friday in the state House of Representatives, Democrats and Republicans joined to approve an amendment exempting Colorado’s 14 smallest counties from the bill: Custer, Ouray, Washington, Phillips, Costilla, Baca, Sedgwick, Cheyenne, Dolores, Kiowa, Jackson, Mineral, Hinsdale and San Juan.

None of these counties has a population of more than 5,000, so the amendment affects relatively few workers. But it’s a major concession by backers of a policy intended to hand new labor organizing rights to as many workers as possible from across the state.

“This entire bill has been a rollercoaster ride,” said House Majority Leader Daneya Esgar, a lead sponsor of the bill and a Pueblo Democrat. “From the beginning of how we wanted to do this for every single public-service employee to now we’re sitting here with county employees, it’s been difficult to not have full rights for every single person.”

The bill advanced in the House on Friday on a voice vote and is virtually guaranteed to pass before the legislative session ends Wednesday.

The latest amendment followed loud and sustained grumbling by Republican lawmakers on behalf of the consortium of counties, Colorado Counties Inc. (CCI), a potent lobbying force at the Capitol.

CCI and the many (mostly conservative) elected commissioners it represents have raised concerns repeatedly about the bill, on the grounds that it will be difficult and costly to implement. They have said that county workplaces are like families and warned that the bill would create a new and unnecessarily adversarial dynamic in these workplaces — historically a common talking point among those who would seek to thwart organized labor.

Contrary to some commissioners’ claims, the bill will not force counties to spend hundreds of millions of dollars cumulatively. That assumes every county worker unit unionizes and wins big raises in bargaining, which is not going to happen. The bill lets commissioners opt out of agreeing to a contract with a union if they don’t like the contract, as there is no binding arbitration or anything else in the bill that would compel county leaders to sign off on pay raises or new benefits.

But it is true that the bill forces counties to at least prepare for county workers to unionize. Under SB22-230, county leaders could not stop a union from forming, as they can now by declining to recognize a unit that declares intent to unionize. Few around the Capitol believe that many Colorado counties would very quickly see new unions after this bill passes, but still, CCI has said, it takes time and money to adjust to a new policy of this nature.

Esgar said she agreed to Friday’s amendment because she thinks it’s fair to leave off the tiniest counties in Colorado.

“I am listening to counties, and I am hearing what they are saying, and the legitimacy of not being able to implement some of what we’re asking them to do if they don’t even have internet or they operate off of a fax machine,” she said.

Conservative county commissioners and their allies in the legislature don’t like the bill but feel they’ve put a real dent in it.

“The commissioners, they’re in control of the budget,” said state Sen. Dennis Hisey of Fountain, a Republican and former El Paso County commissioner.

“They can opt out of participating with the unions, be a non-union shop. The union would still be recognized, there would still be the vote. But they can’t force the commissioners to agree.

“It’s something that I didn’t really think we’d get. I think it’s a win.”

The basic partisan divide on the topic of organized labor was evident in the Colorado House on Friday.

“We want to help working people in our state,” said state Rep. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat. “I’m guessing all of us have that as part of our campaign pledge.”

She added, “I wonder: How are we doing that? What are the things that we do in this chamber that help the little guy, the person working for minimum wage? … I would suggest that collective bargaining and unions have been one of the things that has been proven to help elevate working people, to help them get ahead, to help them make more money, to help them have a better job and better life.

Then Republican state Rep. Dan Woog of Erie took the lectern.

“I didn’t make a promise to lift up anyone,” he said. “I believe in Colorado residents. They’re going to lift themselves up.”

The measure, unveiled by Gov. Jared Polis, House Majority Leader Rep. Daneya Esgar, both Democrats, and Sens. Chris Hansen, D-Denver, and Bob Rankin R-Carbondale, would cut property taxes for homeowners and commercial property owners by about $700 million statewide over two years.

The pitch comes with fewer than 10 days left in this session of the General Assembly and as potential ballot measures to more drastically cap the taxes stew.

“There’s been a lot of ballot initiatives filed in this space because it’s a legitimate frustration of Coloradans,” Polis said at a news conference unveiling the measure. “Very simply, the people were demanding that the legislature do something on property taxes.”

The plan would cap how much property taxes grow, though the legislation with those details wasn’t immediately available. It would save the owner of a $500,000 home about $274 a year, Polis said, and the owner of a $500,000 commercial property, which is taxed at a higher rate, about $1,200. About $400 million in state money would go to counties, based on population size and population growth, to make sure they don’t need to cut things like fire service or school funding, backers said.

Hansen said he expects the savings will be passed through to renters or leasers either directly through contracts where the tenant pays for property tax premiums or because there is less cost to be passed on.

In short, the plan is funded like this, according to Hansen:

• $200 million from one-time surplus general fund dollars this year
• Another $200 million from projected 2023 tax collections in excess of what’s allowed under the Taxpayer Bill of Rights and would have to be returned to taxpayers in some manner
• and $300 million that wouldn’t be collected due to caps in property tax collection imposed by the proposal.

The legislation wasn’t yet introduced when it was announced Monday afternoon so some details weren’t immediately available. It still faces negotiations when it is up for debate in the legislative chambers.

State Rep. Colin Larson, R-Littleton, has filed a ballot initiative that would cap property tax increases at 3%, and cut collections by an estimated $1.3 billion. Ahead of the announcement, he told reporters some of his concerns and questions about this effort — which he characterized as not reflecting an earlier compromise to his initiative — before being ushered out of the governor’s office ahead of the news conference.

After the bill’s announcement, he said people he’s working with on the ballot initiative are assessing the proposal. Larson called the $700 million package “a cut to the increase” of property taxes many Coloradans will still be facing — not a true cut to what people will face. He also criticized it for taking money from constitutionally required tax refunds to pay for property tax cuts.

“This is the legislative process. It’s messy,” Larson said. “There’s time to fix it. But at the end of the day, this wasn’t what was discussed and wasn’t what was negotiated.”

Mike Kopp, president and CEO of pro-business organization Colorado Concern, said in a statement that his group and elected officials are focused on similar goals with property taxes.

“With a little luck, our objectives will overlap and we will not need to proceed with a ballot measure,” he said. “We thank the Governor and the legislature for taking up this important work and are pleased to lend our voice of support to these efforts.”

In a follow-up statement a few hours later, Kopp struck a more favorable tone.

“While we are eager to get into the details of the proposals, it’s clear that a tremendous stride was taken today,” he said. A spokesperson for his group added that they aren’t pulling down the ballot initiative until meaningful reform is signed into law, but that they are “very optimistic.”

Not all advocacy groups shared the aim. In a joint statement, United for a New Economy Executive Director Carmen Medrano and Colorado Education Association President Amie Baca-Oehlert accused Polis and lawmakers of working “to give some of the richest and most powerful special interests fiscally irresponsible, inequitable property tax cuts.”

“We can’t let rich and powerful special interests cut backroom deals while hardworking Coloradans and their families struggle to afford rising costs,” they said in the statement. “This is just another reason why more and more people are calling for a smarter, fairer tax code that asks the wealthy to pay their fair share to fund education, affordable housing, and an economy that works for all of us.”

However, in December, the Supreme Court’s oral arguments about a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi did not inspire confidence in some justices’ dedication to American jurisprudence.

That is why Colorado lawmakers must guarantee abortion access in this state. Supreme Court justices could revoke a fundamental constitutional right, taking rights and freedom back decades in states that refuse to protect women from government overreach, but states and Congress can make such a ruling completely irrelevant.

House Bill 1279 will ensure that every Coloradan has the right to use or refuse contraception and the right to give birth or have an abortion. It does not, as some critics have argued, allow for a baby that has been born to be killed.

Many of the Republicans in the Colorado House spoke for hours to delay House Bill 1279, talking about the moral and ethical problems of ending a pregnancy. Of course, morality drives many of our laws. Still, in this clash between personal bodily autonomy and ethical concerns, Coloradans have repeatedly said that we trust the moral compasses of women and doctors.

Almost 60% of Colorado voters rejected a ballot question in 2020 that would have banned abortions after 22 weeks of gestation (often considered the point of viability outside the womb with intensive medical interventions). It was the fourth time in about a decade that Colorado voters have refused to regulate abortion.

More than a million Coloradans have already voted to support the effect of House Bill 1279. The bill brought forward by Reps. Meg Froelich and Daneya Esgar and Sen. Julie Gonzales will only codify Colorado as a place of reproductive freedom.

We trust women and their doctors to make ethical decisions. We do not trust the U.S. government or the state of Colorado to determine whether a pregnancy must be carried to term, and while the intent of abortion restrictions is not to create reproductive disparities, that is without a question the effect. Women with the financial means to travel to other states or countries to seek reproductive care will do so, and women who are poor or who are too young to escape the shackles of reproductive oppression on their own will be forced to continue their pregnancies.

The Colorado Senate should pass House Bill 1279 and Gov. Jared Polis should sign it into law.

But we cannot stop there. We know that already women from across the nation come to Colorado to receive an abortion because the procedure is outlawed or regulated in their home state. The crisis will only worsen if the Supreme Court does what we fear and more states begin banning abortions and regulating abortions.

It is time for Congress to finally act. If the Supreme Court will no longer protect women from this gross intrusion, then U.S. lawmakers must. U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, co-chair of the Pro-Choice Caucus, pushed the Women’s Health Protection Act through the House in September only for the bill to die in the Senate on March 1.

But bringing the vote to the floor of the Senate and forcing Republicans and one Democrat to vote against it was progress for a legislative body that has for years refused to take up the issue, instead, hiding behind the security of Roe v. Wade.

America must not watch this fundamental right disappear. We can respond to the Supreme Court’s efforts to erode freedoms in this great country.

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The married couple had already given birth to a daughter in California in 2017. They conceived with artificial insemination and Snook carried their daughter. The couple paid a $20 adoption fee to make sure all 50 states recognized Dacey as their daughter’s parent, as well.

It was “insulting and frustrating” that they needed to go through an adoption for their own daughter, but at least it was relatively straightforward, Snook said.

They figured it’d be about the same in Colorado when Dacey was pregnant with their son, through in vitro fertilization, a couple of years later. Instead, they faced months of costly legal procedures that included fingerprinting and background checks — all for a judge to deny Snook’s application to adopt her own child, they said.

The reasoning, as the couple explains it: Because they were married when Dacey had their son, the state of Colorado presumes Snook to be the second parent, and how could a parent adopt their own child?

The result is a Catch 22 where other states may not recognize Snook as their son’s parent, but because their home state does, they can’t pursue stronger — and nationwide — legal protections.

The decision was “devastating,” Snook said. Dacey said it underscored how vulnerable their family is, despite the progress made for LGBTQ rights over the past decade.

“It was the first time that the differences in our family structure were so stark,” Dacey said. “We have been fortunate in that Jen and I got married a week after the Supreme Court decisions of 2015 (that legalized same-sex marriage), and we were in California where this wasn’t as much of an issue. Throughout our whole life we were able to benefit from all the progress on family equality issues. This was the first time where that wasn’t in place, so it kind of hit me. ‘Oh, I guess we’re not as equal as I thought we were.’”

Proposed Colorado law would streamline adoption for children born through assisted reproduction

The issue isn’t unique to same-sex couples, and can affect any family that has kids through assisted reproduction, such as in vitro fertilization. And while it could be “catastrophic” for families that are caught in the legal paradoxes of it, as Colorado House Majority Leader Daneya Esgar, D-Pueblo, put it, it hadn’t garnered much attention at the policy making level until recently — when Esgar and her wife, Heather Palm, encountered it first hand.

Esgar carried their daughter, though she was conceived with Palm’s genetic material. Which, in the eyes of the law, meant Palm would need to go through a step-parent adoption for her own flesh-and-blood.

“I couldn’t wrap my head around it,” Esgar said of her initial reaction. Then, she was floored by the implications for legal protections for their family.

Esgar, however, is in a place where she could act. Near the beginning of the legislative session, she introduced , which is aimed at streamlining the adoption process for parents of children born through assisted reproduction. It passed the House at the end of February on a bipartisan vote. It is scheduled for its first hearing in the Senate on Wednesday.

“Should something happen to me, and we have not completed this adoption process, Heather would have to fight to keep our child, ” Esgar said from the floor of the House of Representatives shortly before the vote. “That is not fair, that is not equitable.”

It����ap an imperfect measure, Esgar said — parents are still adopting their own kids in order to have full 50-state protections, after all — but necessary for families like hers. It����ap up to Congress to address proactive parental affirmation, she said.

Meanwhile, Snook and Dacey said they’re avoiding family vacations to some states they see as less LGBTQ friendly and less likely to recognize their parentage without a formal adoption.

It doesn’t affect Snook’s relationship with her son, though she does have that nagging lack of security in the back of her mind, she said. Dacey just looks forward to “relief and closure” if the law passes and they can button up the legal side of relationships they feel in their hearts.

“A celebration and acknowledgment of everything being official and protected,” she said of formal adoption plans. “That’s what it’s all about. We don’t anticipate it changing anything on a day-to-day basis. You do these things so protections are in place when unexpected things happen. Formalizing all of this through adoption, it makes one less thing to worry about.”

It’s now clearer than ever that such a measure is highly unlikely. Over this week and last, The Denver Post spoke to more than 15 people with knowledge of the negotiations around this not-yet-introduced bill, and gleaned new specifics about how this would-be landmark proposal stands to be neutered.

The point of the bill is to grant public workers the right to unionize and to collectively bargain over wages, benefits and working conditions. Some public workers, including the majority of Colorado educators, already have this right. But many thousands do not, and that’s why labor leaders seek a statewide policy that lets every public-sector workplace form a union without needing employer recognition, then sets out baseline terms for contract negotiations.

A number of headwinds face the bill, including the fact that lobbyists representing public employers across the state are united in opposition and already threatening lawsuits.

“We’re going to oppose everything,” said Kevin Bommer, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League.

Also, while Democrats have a huge majority in the state House, their 20-15 margin in the Senate means sweeping, progressive policy must always win over the caucus’s more moderate flank — an outcome that is hardly guaranteed in this case. With no Republican support expected, it would take just three Senate Democrats to upend the bill.

But most importantly, many sources told The Post that Gov. Jared Polis, whose signature is needed to turn a bill into law, is not interested in including people who work for cities, school districts or special districts. That alone would lop off the vast majority of the public sector.

“The governor conveyed to me that he is comfortable including county workers and higher (education),” Josette Jaramillo, president of the Colorado AFL-CIO, told The Post.

Several people told The Post that Polis is also loath to grant labor too much power in any provisions of the bill affecting conflict resolution between workers and employers. That means, among other things, that the right to strike is a non-starter. So is binding arbitration.

Even on those terms, a bill covering counties, or counties and higher education faculty both, would still arguably be the most significant pro-labor policy of the governor’s first term. In the context of the much greater ask, it’s but a narrow reform.

Jaramillo spoke of how pained the labor community is by the thought of compromising the bill in the governor’s image.

“The decision means cutting folks out,” she said. “So it����ap going to be a tough decision to make for the coalition.”

Lawmakers believe they never could have gotten this far with previous Democratic governors, like John Hickenlooper and Bill Ritter. In Polis, they’ve found more of a labor ally, though far from an unconditional one.

Polis has declined repeatedly to discuss the matter with reporters. He said in January that he could support a “much narrower” bill than what’s been drafted, and has offered nothing since then.

Most labor leaders are a bit more open than he is, but they, too, are generally unwilling to speak publicly about the bill in any detail. As has often been the case on other big, messy policy matters at the Capitol, the parties involved on this bill are working to strike a deal behind the scenes, to avoid a drawn-out public negotiation.

But as Colorado’s legislative session chugs along, now about one-third complete, tensions are rising and pressure to choose a path is mounting.

A bill of this nature will be long and detailed. It will be lobbied relentlessly and it will prompt hours of debate in both chambers. Proponents risk getting nowhere if they wait until late in the 120-day session to take the policy from private meetings and into the committee rooms and chambers of the Capitol.

That’s especially true if they push a bigger bill than works for Polis or moderate Senate Democrats.

One of those moderates, Arvada Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, said, “The advocates of the bill are going to have to make a choice: do we go ahead and make this a messaging bill and ask for what we want and think we deserve, or do we chip it down to what we think we can pass and make some progress?”

Those working on this bill are accustomed to compromising with Polis, a hands-on governor who involves himself closely in legislative affairs, unlike Hickenlooper.

It took two sessions, for instance, for Polis and Democratic lawmakers to agree on a bill granting collective bargaining rights to the state workers union. That bill affected some 30,000 people belonging to a single union, so it is unsurprising that this follow-up, which could touch hundreds of thousands more people, belonging to many hundreds of different workplaces, is even trickier.

The bill has two powerful sponsors: House Majority Leader Daneya Esgar of Pueblo and Senate Majority Leader (soon-to-be Senate President) Steve Fenberg of Boulder. In interviews, both seemed to have accepted that the bill they want to pass isn’t going to happen. Democrats are starting to try to reframe the conversation in the hope that it is not lost on the labor movement, nor on the public at large, that a bill affecting tens of thousands of workers is still a big deal.

“If we’re able to get more rights to more people in Colorado, I’m going to call that a success,” Esgar said.

Added Fenberg, “I want to introduce a bill that can pass. I don’t want to introduce a bill that’s far from reality of what we can get done.”

Fenberg said he’s gotten “no red lines” from Polis, but added, of the governor’s negotiating style, “If he makes a statement on where he is on something, he holds pretty strong. I think he comes to those conclusions with a lot of thought. I don’t think they’re random, off-the-cuff lines in the sand. … I don’t see him just rolling over.”

The labor side has wanted this policy for years, and many in that camp want to introduce the all-inclusive version and invite Polis to a public showdown. The alternative is to take what win is available and hope to build from there in future sessions.

Alex Wolf-Root, an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and vice president of Communications Workers of America Local 7799, said he wants to get the big version out in the open.

“We have to make that push and we have to try, and if Polis decides he’ll be the person to harm our public good and our public workers, at the end of the day we can’t stop that,” he said. “But just because we know he might be willing doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”

Amie Baca-Oehlert, president of the state teachers union, met with Polis along with leadership from the National Education Association. She said she didn’t get a “slammed door” from Polis, but added, “Even if there were a slammed door, we’re not willing to accept that.”

A crowd of union members, advocates and Democratic lawmakers rallied on the Capitol steps last week, a show of force outside the legislature and governor’s office. That’s a good move, said Sen. Faith Winter, a progressive Westminster Democrat who is not involved in this bill but who in previous sessions has fought Polis, the lobby and her own caucus’s moderates on paid family and medical leave policies, and on climate action.

“When you’re representing people and ideas that don’t have a lot of money behind them, you have to be more creative on bringing energy into the building,” she said.

The reality, Winter and others noted, is that the usual tactics — rallies, letters and columns in newspapers, social media campaigns — don’t work on Polis.

“To negotiate with the governor, you need to be prepared for very steadfast and passionate opinions that are unlikely to change,” she said.

Asked how to get around that, she said with a laugh, “I don’t think I’ve figured it out.”

Neither has the labor community.

“The coalition is aware of the governor’s position, and time is of the essence,” Jaramillo said. “We have to make a decision. Are we going to pull it? Are we going to move forward without everyone involved, or move forward as is, fully knowing where the governor stands?”

We are on the frontlines when our community is in danger, including during the recent Marshall Fire. Our teams worked side by side with units from Arvada, Westminster, and Louisville Fire to respond to the most destructive fire in state history, including assisting with the evacuation of Avista Hospital.

Unlike many of the brave first responders we worked shoulder to shoulder with during the Marshall fire and so many other emergencies, however, our department, of which I am the chief, has a recognized union with collective bargaining rights. Currently, only 16 of nearly 300 municipalities in our state allow their employees to unionize.

Some fire departments like ours have successfully formed unions and negotiated collective bargaining agreements in this environment. But the vast majority of people who work for Colorado’s cities, counties, and universities are not even allowed to choose whether or not they would like to form a recognized union with collective bargaining rights.

More than 250,000 Coloradans including firefighters, nurses, paramedics, and teachers don’t have the same basic union rights currently extended to nearly every other worker in America. These essential workers are denied workplace rights solely because they chose careers in public service.

That����ap wrong, and the Public Employee Collective Bargaining Bill sponsored by House Majority Leader Daneya Esgar and Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg would fix this by giving local public workers the freedom to choose whether or not they would like to form a union instead of letting politicians choose for them.

As the chief of a unionized fire department that has had a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in place for more than 50 years, this is not the first time I have heard the arguments opponents of this bill are making. I have seen firsthand how the exact same concerns raised by critics of our unionization effort simply have not happened. In most cases, exactly the opposite of what our opponents predicted occurred.

Our critics warned that a union would create tension between workers and management. Instead, our relationship has improved significantly. Our CBA has created a framework that allows for a mutually respectful relationship. It requires both labor and management to better understand each other’s positions and perspectives, strengthening our cohesiveness as a department.

This is crucial in times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for public workers who are the backbone of our state’s emergency response capacity. Our union proactively worked with management to ensure the availability of quality personal protective equipment (PPE), leave for workers sick with COVID, and contingency plans if the widespread illness were to cause staff shortages.

Because we have a union, this was done ahead of time, which allowed us to maintain uninterrupted service without having to shut down a single fire rig unlike many other departments across the country.  I still get calls from other fire chiefs asking how we have been so successful, and I always tell them it would not be possible without our union and CBA.

Critics also claim public worker unions will bankrupt public institutions, but this idea falls apart upon contact with reality. For example, If we bankrupted our department, we would all be out of a job and unable to carry out our mission to serve our community. Additionally, a collective bargaining agreement is just that — an agreement between two parties that cannot proceed without the consent of both. Why would any employer sign a CBA that would bankrupt them? We’ve now had a CBA for over 50 years and our department����ap finances are stronger for it.

Finally, our opponents are trying to scare the public with talk of potential strikes against public safety if the bill we are fighting for is passed. This is irresponsible fear-mongering and does a disservice to our state’s tireless first responders. The bill majority leaders Esgar and Fenberg are proposing prohibits public safety workers from striking. Our own CBA at West Metro Fire Rescue also contains a no-strike clause. Our critics should be honest about the real reasons they oppose this bill instead of pushing the insulting lie that people who routinely risk their lives in the name of public safety are looking for an excuse to walk off the job.

Majority leaders Esgar and Fenberg have the thanks of firefighters, nurses, paramedics, and teachers across the state for fighting for our right to choose a union with collective bargaining rights. We also know Gov. Jared Polis will stand with us on this issue, and look forward to working with him to get this bill passed and signed into law.

Don Lombardi is the Chief of West Metro Fire Rescue, a full-service, all-hazard fire and rescue agency headquartered in Lakewood, Colorado. West Metro Fire covers more than 108 square miles in two Colorado counties and serves nearly 300,000 residents, with crews at 17 fire stations. 

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