On Tuesday, Polis rejected , which would’ve prohibited companies from using the vast amounts of data collected on Coloradans to set individualized prices on goods like groceries and electronics. The bill also would have barred companies like Uber and Lyft from using that information to set differing wages for drivers.

Supporters of the bill, which was passed with support only from Democratic lawmakers, argued that the technology was used to set prices at the highest level a consumer was willing to pay — or the lowest wage that a worker was willing to accept — based on that person’s location and other characteristics.

Polis had already signaled his skepticism of the bill because, his office said, it might “interfere with the free functioning of markets.”

In his veto statement Tuesday, he echoed objections raised by the business and tech communities, which opposed the bill en masse, that HB-1210 was too broad and would prevent those companies from offering lower prices and discounts to consumers. The bill carved out discount and loyalty programs, but Polis said he “found little comfort” in those exemptions.

What Colorado bills are becoming laws?

"I am concerned that instead of advancing a policy to specifically target clearly egregious price gouging practices," he wrote, "this broader framework will inadvertently capture innocuous uses of technology that in no way harms -- and indeed benefits -- consumers and workers."

The bill was backed by progressive organizations and consumer groups. Amid growing interest among policymakers in regulating the practice, it would've been the strongest regulation of its kind in the United States.

"Everybody is talking about how concerned they are with the rising cost of living, and this bill was about preventing companies from spying on us to price gouge us," Rep. Javier Mabrey, a Denver Democrat who sponsored HB-1210, said Tuesday. "I don't know how anyone can credibly make the case that it's a good thing for the biggest companies in the world to know everything about us in how they set our prices."

HB-1210 was the latest in a slew of pro-tech and pro-business vetoes by Polis in recent years, and it was the only one of Democrats' three marquee affordability measures to pass the legislature this year.

Its demise came almost exactly 12 months after Polis vetoed another Democratic priority bill, 2025's . That measure would have prohibited landlords from using algorithmic software to set home rental prices, a practice that cost Denver renters more than $1,600 per year, according to a study by the Biden administration.

On Tuesday, Polis also vetoed , which would've reformed parts of the state's arbitration rules, and , which sought to curb the distribution of single-use serviceware by restaurants and delivery services. The latter bill would have required them to provide single-use utensils, napkins, condiment packets, straws, chopsticks and other items to customers only upon request.

Tuesday's rejections bring Polis' veto total for the year to nine, two shy of his single-year record. He has until mid-June to sign or reject bills, or to allow them to pass into law without his signature.

“If you Google ‘lawn mower recycling,’ I’m the only one that comes up,” he said.

The 60-year-old owner of All-Pro Lawnmower Sales, Service & Recycling at 555 Santa Fe Drive in Denver spends his days toiling on small engines. He’s been working at the shop for a decade and has owned it for five.

The business brings in $250,000 annually with $160 carburetor fixes and $140 tune-ups. But the number of lawn mowers he services goes down each year.

“So many people have jumped on the electric [mower] that gas has slowly phased out,” he said.

The shop used to be a two-man show. When Mason started working there, one person would go out and buy unwanted mowers to resell; the other would repair ones that came into the shop.

The business would spend between $3,000 and $5,000 each winter to get enough stock in store for when the spring used mower season begins. Now, with recycling in the name, people bring in enough products for him to sell so that he can spend all his time making repairs. All customers have to do is roll them through his front door during business hours. He said he made the change after seeing how many people were taking their old, “perfectly good” mowers to the landfill.

About 20% of his revenue comes from selling used mowers. And for the used mowers that can’t be fixed, he’ll take the working parts and slap them on other ones to save money.

That����ap a boon for the small-business owner, who doesn’t have to pay another employee Denver’s nearly $20 hourly minimum wage.

“They’re lawn mowers. You’re not going to make a ton of money,” he said. “But I make a living.”

During the busy season, about 10 mowers come through the doors each day needing service. Most of the work is replacing a faulty carburetor, usually because the owner left gas inside the mower all winter.

It takes Mason just a half hour to do the repair.

The Arvada native has spent much of his life in Colorado. His dad was a diesel mechanic for Safeway, working on its truck fleet at its distribution center off of 40th and Colorado.

“I always loved little engines,” Mason said.

He served in the Army at Fort Hood and painted custom homes in Austin, then returned home to paint schools for Jefferson County.

But all the while, he battled alcoholism and wound up in trouble with the law, serving a 10-year sentence related to his addiction. When he was released, the first job he applied for was at All-Pro Lawnmower.

In the years since, he’s worked on everything from the traditional lawn mower engine to an antique John Deere. Last week, his shop had a moped and jet ski inside, with dozens of push mowers around them.

He’s seen seven competing shops go under during his time working there. He doesn’t repair electric mowers, which he said are “disposable.”

“There’s nothing to work on,” he said. “It����ap not like the old days where everything can be replaced.”

Read more from our partner, .

IonQ, the largest independent player in quantum computing, has chosen Boulder as the site of a new research and development facility, joining Google Quantum AI, which made a similar move in March.

“This is a big bet for us,” said IonQ chairman and CEO Niccolo de Masi, during a ceremony on Tuesday to unveil a 22,000 square feet lab at Boulder 38, which is at the intersection of 38th Street and Arapahoe Avenue.

The company plans to invest $100 million in the new R&D facility, which is expected to be completed in late summer to accommodate new quantum computers arriving from the United Kingdom later this year.

Once those are set up, a team of engineers and computer scientists will monitor hardware performance and test how they handle different software configurations and algorithms. The location will also serve as a quantum data center handling real-world applications.

In February, the Colorado Economic Development Council approved $2.76 million in Job Growth Incentive Credits for IonQ, conditioned on the creation of up to 150 new jobs paying an average annual wage of $168,422.

The EDC has also designated those state tax credits as refundable, meaning they could be sold to raise funds. Boulder’s Gunbarrel area also received a CHIPS Zone designation in November, which opens up additional credits.

Incentives aside, Boulder beat out its competitors because of the technical expertise residing at the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology and other federal labs, IonQ executives said.

The Boulder area has the highest concentration of quantum researchers, companies and workers in the world. Getting those experts to leave is a tough task, said David Allcock, vice president of Quantum Computing Science with IonQ, and the executive who will be in charge of the new lab.

Although IonQ is based in Maryland, the company’s core technology, like so much in quantum computing, traces back to Boulder.

Company co-founder Chris Monroe, together with Nobel-prize-winning physicist David Wineland, developed the world’s “quantum logic gate” in 1995 while working at NIST, home to the atomic clock.

That set the stage for the use of trapped ion technology in computing, which was further developed at the University of Maryland.

“In so many ways, we see IonQ’s decision to choose Boulder as the site for this facility as a reflection of the community’s longtime commitment to innovation, entrepreneurship and emerging industries,” Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett said.

IonQ went public in November 2020 and on Thursday had a market value of $21.4 billion, making it the largest standalone quantum computing company in the world.

Its growing financial cloud has allowed it to make several big acquisitions, including the $1.8 billion purchase announced earlier this year of SkyWater Technologies, a large U.S. semiconductor foundry based in Minnesota.

In January, the company ., a California company with a large presence in the Broomfield area. Skyloom has developed technologies for transmitting data via lasers through space instead of through land-based fiber optic cables.

“The conversation is shifting from can we do quantum to how do we scale it,” said Jessi Olsen, CEO of Elevate Quantum, a Boulder-based association working to promote the commercialization of quantum computing within the state. “Colorado is where the quantum future is being built.”

Google Quantum AI, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is another leading player in the quantum space that set up shop in Boulder after previously concentrating most of its investments in California and Washington.

In March, it established a new research and development team under the direction of CU Boulder professor Adam Kaufman to build quantum computers using what are known as neutral atoms.

The , which has primarily focused on superconducting or the use of extremely cold temperatures to harness atoms.

Practicality versus supremacy

Quantum computers operate at a power of magnitude so far beyond existing systems that it can be hard to describe them without evoking terms from the supernatural.

Classical computing systems are binary, where bits function like light switches, either on or off. Information is processed in a linear sequence, one step at a time. The bits can be in one place at a given time, and their paths can be traced, making error detection and correction possible.

Quantum computers use “qubits,” which can access subatomic states. One state is , allowing them to be both on and off at the same time and in multiple places at once. And there is entanglement, where qubits can be linked regardless of distance, say a computer in Boulder and one in Maryland, using a Skyloom laser.

If bits are mere mortals, occupying space and time, qubits possess omnipresence and telepathy. But they are “wild” in their natural state and not easy to tame.

Historically, extremely cold temperatures, near absolute zero, were used to put them in a quiet state, which required bulky and expensive systems. IonQ, by contrast, initially used a series of laser “lassos” to control the atoms and drain them of their kinetic energy.

While a big step forward from cryogenic systems, scaling requires a complex array of precise lasers. IonQ will be testing systems in Boulder that use on-chip electronics to do more of the gatekeeping, making for an easier commercial transition.

Quantum computers can handle a massive number of mathematical possibilities at once and complete calculations once considered impossible. Computations that the world’s most powerful conventional supercomputers could never hope to complete can be done in minutes and hours with quantum computers.

But qubits, despite their superpowers, are incredibly fragile and require isolation from the outside world.

Even the tiniest disruptions, whether in temperature or electromagnetic waves, can make them unstable. Qubits are so unstable that even observing them to see if they are behaving properly can upend the process.

For years, adding more qubits to correct errors was the attempted solution, but it only increased unreliability. Recent advances have resulted in lower error rates as more qubits are added.

IonQ uses individual atoms of Ytterbium and Barium as qubits within an ultra-high vacuum, protecting them from the outside world. Once trapped, the ions are reduced to a ground state through lasers, similar to what freezing them at absolute zero achieves.

Rather than focusing, as Google has, on “quantum supremacy,” IonQ has put its energy into running a smaller number of qubits at a much higher accuracy rate. All major cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, and even Google Cloud, are customers.

Its trapped ion systems are shrinking in size and can operate at room temperature with fewer lasers; they can now fit into rack-mounted systems compatible with standard data centers.

One rack-mounted IonQ system could, in theory, replace thousands of energy-hungry GPUs for AI training tasks, said Chris Ballance, president of Quantum Computing at IonQ.

Investors are pouring billions of dollars into AI-related companies that are promising to resolve bottlenecks, from building more data centers to providing more power to increasing chip capacity to photonics.

But quantum computers have shown they can learn complex patterns from much smaller datasets than classical AI and they can resolve complex problems using a fraction of the energy.

If conventional chips represent the information age equivalent of fossil fuels, quantum chips represent the coming “clean energy” alternative.

“It can solve problems for far less power,” Ballance said.

That in turn could make the expansion of AI, which relies heavily on data centers, more palatable to the public.

Gallup, , found that 7 in 10 Americans are opposed to the construction of data centers in their communities, with nearly half “strongly opposed.”

Key concerns include the raw land that centers use, the diversion of water resources to cool servers and electricity requirements, which is putting strains on the grid and driving up residential electricity prices.

Americans are now more accepting of nuclear energy plants in their communities than data centers, Gallup has found.

Because quantum computers can handle complex calculations in a fraction of the time conventional computers require, less energy per solution is required.

One transition scenario involves hybrid data centers where quantum machines do the heavy mathematical lifting while traditional servers handle the interactions with users.

How fast that day arrives remains to be determined. But the new research facilities that Google and IonQ are launching in Boulder could play a key part in whatever comes next.

And for the second consecutive year, Gov. Jared Polis has greeted the bill with a cold shoulder.

The state Senate passed on Wednesday on a 19-15 vote, putting the attempt to ban “surveillance pricing” on a glide path to Polis’ desk. If signed into law, the measure would generally prohibit companies from using the mountains of data collected on consumers to set individualized prices on items like groceries, plane tickets and electronics. It would also block companies like Uber or Lyft from using that data to set individualized wages for workers.

The measure is similar in intent to last year’s , which targeted the algorithms that the Biden White House found had been used to increase rents in Denver and elsewhere in the United States. Polis vetoed that measure.

In the debate over this year’s measure, critics argue that companies use the technology to set prices at the highest point each consumer is willing to pay, based on the data collected about that person. That means the price you pay may depend on how close you are to a store or whether the algorithm has determined that you’re particularly desperate for diapers.

The bill’s opponents, which include a number of prominent business and technology groups, have countered that the technology is used to provide discount programs for customers and to increase pricing efficiencies.

“We appreciate the sponsors’ work to address our concerns; however, our members continue to tell us that the bill remains overly broad and creates uncertainty around routine business practices,” Brittany Morris Saunders, the president and CEO of the Colorado Technology Association, told lawmakers during an earlier committee hearing.

While other states have debated — and, in — limitations on price surveillance, Colorado’s bill would be the strongest in the country, said Lee Hepner, a senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project.

HB-1210 is “truly a first-in-the-nation bill to curb surveillance pricing,” Hepner said in an interview last month, after the bill had passed the House.

Whether it now becomes law is another question.

Polis’ office has declined to say whether the governor intends to sign the bill once it passes a final procedural vote and moves to his desk. On Wednesday, Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama referred The Denver Post to an earlier, lukewarm statement on the bill.

“Governor Polis is concerned with policies, including price-fixing and restrictions on demand-informed pricing, that further interfere with the free functioning of markets,” spokeswoman Ally Sullivan wrote last month.

Rep. Javier Mabrey, a Denver Democrat sponsoring the bill, said Wednesday that he hadn’t received direct feedback from the governor’s office and had heard about Polis’ position only through his statement to The Post.

“But I would expect, given the governor’s focus on affordability, that he does the right thing and signs the bill,” Mabrey said. “Coloradans don’t want to be spied on and scammed.”

HB-1210 is among the few remaining marquee affordability-focused bills backed by House Democrats this year; three of those bills were touted at a news conference earlier this year. Another bill in that package, which would’ve curbed prices at concert venues and sports stadiums, died in its first committee hearing, and a third affordability measure was never introduced.

Polis is often skeptical of bills that regulate tech companies or products, and that skepticism has butted up against Democratic lawmakers’ plans in the past. Last year, the governor rejected the legislation banning algorithms that had been used to hike rent prices in Denver and elsewhere, despite a letter from the House Democratic caucus urging him to sign it.

The 2026 sessions ends next Wednesday. Once HB-1210 reaches Polis’ desk, he will have 30 days to sign it, veto it or let it pass into law without his signature. If it becomes law, the bill would take effect in August.

Once it goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2028, will only allow pet stores to host animals from adoption or rescue services, so long as the stores don’t charge fees and the animals are sterilized. It otherwise prohibits those stores from selling dogs and cats in an effort to curb commercial breeding and sales from “puppy mills.”

, there are seven pet stores in the state licensed to sell the animals and five more that serve as brokers.

As Polis prepared to sign the bill, five black-and-white, 13-week-old puppies — Benedict, Daphne, Violet, Eloise and Hyacinth — lounged, climbed over one another, leaned into a reporter’s mic and cuddled in a pair of pens on the Capitol foyer’s floor. All of them .

The governor also brought his dog, Gia, who hopped off her chair and wandered under the bill-signing table to investigate the newcomers.

“We’re sending a very powerful message with this bill — first of all: Adopt, don’t shop. Little Gia is here, we adopted her 16 years ago,” said Polis, who had scooped up the little brown dog. His husband, animal rights advocate Marlon Reis, stood beaming nearby.

“If you do want to purchase … some people want (a) purebred or a specific breed, (and) there are many wonderful home breeders, legitimate breeders in our state, people who have a litter of dogs in their home and sell them,” Polis added.

The new law will not apply to the sale of specially trained animals — like those used by law enforcement, hunters or people with disabilities.

The bill took eight years to pass, according to Polis and the bill’s primary sponsor, House Majority Leader Monica Duran. Duran officially named the bill after her late Pomeranian, Pistol.

Polis said 26 jurisdictions in Colorado have banned puppy mill sales in retail stores. Denver joined them when its City Council passed an ordinance last year, though the city had no stores selling dogs and cats at the time. Several other states, including and , have adopted similar bans.

HB-1011 was also sponsored by Democrats Rep. Karen McCormick and Sens. Robert Rodriguez and Dylan Roberts. The measure passed the Senate earlier this month on a 19-16 vote, with all Republicans and some Democrats opposed. It had cleared the House 44-21, with only one Republican — Rep. Rick Taggart — voting in support.

“Today, this bill has lived in my heart for eight years,” an emotional Duran said. “Eight years of conversations, eight years of setbacks, eight years of (the time for this law) being not yet, not now and maybe never. But here we are.

“And today, I don’t stand alone. I stand here with every voice that refused to give up on the animals who could not speak for themselves.”

Ahead of the bill signing, the Best Friends Animal Society hailed the legislation and expressed hope it would help reduce euthanization of shelter pets in Colorado by increasing adoptions. In a news release, the group cited recent data showing a nearly 16% increase last year in the killing of shelter pets across the state, though the vast majority of shelters are considered “no-kill.”

“Best Friends has been working to make the country no-kill and it����ap incredible to see the continued momentum in Colorado to help save every healthy and treatable dog and cat,” the society’s CEO, Julie Castle, said in a statement.

Welcome back to the Capitol, where Colorado lawmakers will pass the midpoint of the 2026 session later this week.

That threshold — the 60-day mark — will hit Saturday, when lawmakers will (likely … hopefully) be home for the weekend. Before that happens, legislators in the House will vote on several bills that have been tabbed as priority measures by the Democratic lawmakers who have near-supermajority control of the statehouse.

Today, the House is set to vote on and send it to the Senate. The bill would repeal a unique provision of Colorado’s labor law, which requires that newly formed unions pass a second vote before they can begin negotiating the collection of union dues.

Colorado lawmakers aim to ‘assert state authority’ amid federal gaps on vaccines, worker safety and other issues

The bill is almost certain to pass the House today and the Senate later this session. It's a priority for the unions that form a significant part of the Democratic base, and a similar version of the bill passed last year.

From there, though, HB-1005 is likely to run into the same end that met its 2025 version: a veto at the hands of Gov. Jared Polis.

Elsewhere today, the House Finance Committee is scheduled to vote on three Democratic measures that would limit several business-friendly tax incentives. The state would direct the savings from the bills toward a new tax credit, which would go to lower-income families with children, mirroring another credit that's run into trouble. The measures are House Bills , and .

Here's what else to expect this week, with schedules subject to change.

AI task force recs

For the radar this week: Polis' latest artificial intelligence task force, which has been tasked with rewriting Colorado's artificial intelligence regulations, is finally nearing its last hours. The task force is expected to vote at some point soon on a framework that can then be sent to the legislature for consideration for a new AI bill.

Tuesday

The House's Judiciary Committee will vote on , which seeks to expedite how quickly social media sites and other tech companies respond to search warrants. That bill has already cleared the Senate.

Wednesday

The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on , which would decriminalize prostitution across the state.

The Senate Education Committee will also weigh whether to provide initial approval for , which would institute state-level protections against disability discrimination in Colorado schools.

Thursday

The House Business Affairs and Labor Committee will debate , another Democratic priority bill. The measure would prohibit companies from using data they've picked up through digital surveillance to customize either the prices they charge or the wages they pay to workers like Uber drivers.

But first, the Senate is set to have the first floor debate and vote today on . The measure is the first of Democrats’ trident of immigration bills, and it would allow Coloradans to file lawsuits against federal agents if residents are injured by those agents during immigration enforcement operations.

The bill was one of the first measures introduced this session, and it cleared its first committee earlier this month on a party-line vote. It’s likely to pass the full Senate, too, and today’s vote is the first of two it’ll need before it can move to the House.

After SB-5, the Senate is also scheduled to debate initial approval for , which would automatically seal most minors’ name-changing records. That bill was significantly amended in committee amid opposition from Gov. Jared Polis’ office. The governor has also made noise about killing SB-18 entirely and replacing it with a new bill, but the bill’s supporters told us they have no intention of playing along.

Elsewhere today, the House Finance Committee is set to debate a pair of housing-related measures. First is , which would set up incentive programs for communities to build up their ancillary public transit infrastructure, like signs and lighting. The bill would also create additional financial support to build affordable housing.

The committee will also debate , which would give tax breaks for land that’s been purchased for the purpose of later development into housing.

Later in the week, the full House will chat about which would prohibit local governments from establishing minimum lot sizes of more than 2,000 square feet. Basically, that would allow for more density, though it would do so by tipping into the land-use debate, where local governments have opposed state intervention at length.

On the Big Data front: Lawmakers of both parties have proposed legislation that would take various steps to limit law enforcement access to personal data.

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee will take up and . The former would generally block government agencies from accessing license plate reader databases without a warrant. The latter is more expansive and would put restrictions on accessing technology like facial recognition software and traffic and drone cameras.

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee will weigh a similar proposal, . That bill would generally prohibit private companies from selling your data to law enforcement agencies.

Here’s what else is afoot this week, with schedules subject to change.

Tuesday

House Judiciary will debate , a tenant-protection bill.

Wednesday

The House Ethics Committee will vote on a complaint against Republican Rep. Ron Weinberg. The legislature’s Audit Committee will receive a report on the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s DNA evidence testing program, after last year’s intense focus on the agency’s testing backlog for sexual assault kits.

Both hearings are scheduled for first thing Wednesday morning.

Thursday

The Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee will debate , which would undo lawmakers’ decision last year to maintain state income taxes on overtime.

The House’s Business Affairs and Labor Committee will that essentially would create state-level workplace standards, in a bid to step in for lapsing federal standards and oversight. On that same front, the House’s Education Committee will vote on , which would establish state-level protections against discrimination in schools.

All consumers who purchased items from the Google Play Store between August 2016 and September 2023 and “were harmed by Google’s anticompetitive conduct” are eligible for part of the settlement, according to a from Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office.

The settlement was first announced in December 2023, , but is still in the process of being approved.

“This settlement is a win for Coloradans and consumers across the country,” Weiser stated in the release. “We use our mobile devices more than any other form of technology. Google’s anticompetitive practices with the Play Store forced higher prices on consumers.”

Affected Coloradans began receiving notices about the settlement distribution process on Dec. 2. Eligible consumers do not have to submit a claim, and most will not need to take any further action to be paid.

Weiser and a sued Google in 2021, alleging the company unlawfully monopolized the Android app distribution and in-app payment processing market.

Google signed anticompetitive contracts to prevent other app stores from being preloaded on Android devices, bought key app developers who might have launched rival app stores, created technological barriers to deter consumers from directly downloading apps to their devices and imposed monopoly prices on in-app purchases, according to the lawsuit.

The court granted preliminary approval of the $700 million settlement on Nov. 20, triggering the notification process, according to Weiser’s office. A judge will decide whether to approve the final settlement in a hearing on April 30, 2026.

Once the settlement has been approved, consumers will receive an email from PayPal or a text from Venmo notifying them of their incoming payment at the email address or mobile phone number associated with their Google Play account.

If the phone number or email associated with the consumer’s Google Play is associated with a PayPal or Venmo account, then the payment will be made directly to that account. If not, consumers will have the option of creating an account or directing the payment to a different account.

There will be a after automatic payments are made for consumers who:

• Do not have an existing PayPal or Venmo account and do not want to sign up for PayPal or Venmo,
• No longer have access to the email address or mobile phone number associated with their Google Play account,
• Or were expecting to receive a payment but did not.

Google Play customers who do not want to receive payment from the settlement fund and want to bring their own case against Google must submit a request to be by Feb. 19, 2026. Consumers must also file any objections to the settlement by that date.

Whitehorn’s firm had signed on to support state Sen. Julie Gonzales’ impending campaign to unseat U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, and the caller — Chris Rork — ran a party campaign fund. He also once for Hickenlooper.

During the call, Whitehorn recalled, Rork told him that it wasn’t too late for Whitehorn’s firm to avoid being blacklisted for working on a campaign that they were “going to lose anyway.” Whitehorn said Rork told him that if Gonzales’ primary campaign didn’t go forward, he could “guarantee” that Whitehorn’s firm would be hired to work for the unified Democratic campaign next year.

Rork also allegedly proposed an “alternative path” for Gonzales, Whitehorn said.

“And that would be the Denver mayor’s office. He implied there would be some version of more support for a race like that than there would be for a Senate race,” Whitehorn said. He added that Rork didn’t provide any other details, including the timing — Mayor Mike Johnston is midway through his first term — or what sort of support could be available.

Whitehorn and Gonzales’ two other consultants described the call as part of a “pattern of pressure,” undertaken since September, to try to dissuade Gonzales from entering the race. It didn’t work: On Monday, the progressive state senator launched her campaign with a video criticizing Hickenlooper for voting to confirm nominees put forward by the Trump administration, part of her broader criticism of establishment Democrats’ approach to governance.

Speaking to The Denver Post about the pressure campaign, Whitehorn said he was taken aback by Rork’s suggestion that Gonzales pursue a future mayoral campaign. He recalled telling Rork that Gonzales wasn’t interested in running for mayor, and the call ended soon after.

Attempts to reach Rork and the Hickenlooper campaign for comment Tuesday were not successful. In a statement, Colorado Democratic Party spokesman Andrew Nicla wrote that Rork “believed that his comments were given in a private capacity as a friend. He was not speaking on behalf of the Colorado Democratic Party.”

He added: “We encourage anyone with a spirit of service to run. We are neutral in primaries.”

The call was not the only sign of opposition to Gonzales’ candidacy. In September, several website addresses referencing a Gonzales Senate run were registered by someone unaffiliated with her campaign. Anyone trying to visit the sites has instead been redirected to Hickenlooper’s campaign site. Recent Google searches for Gonzales’ name first returned a Hickenlooper ad, paid for by his campaign.

A former Hickenlooper chief of staff, who now works for an NFL team, also texted Whitehorn, writing that he hoped “Gonzalez” would reconsider “before she takes the focus away from fighting republicans.”

Days after the websites were purchased and rerouted in September, a text message poll was sent to some Colorado voters, according to images reviewed by The Post. The survey sought voters’ opinions on Hickenlooper and Gonzales. It also included a lengthy question touting Hickenlooper’s achievements and asked whether they were convincing reasons to support him.

A little over a week later, Gonzales said, she had lunch with Rork. In her datebook entry for Oct. 2, reviewed by The Post, she wrote that Rork told her, “I can absolutely guarantee you that you will not win this primary.”

Gonzales said she took that to mean, “I’ve seen what these races will do. Don’t do this.”

Rork did not return a voicemail or text message seeking comment Tuesday. Hickenlooper’s campaign did not respond by the early afternoon to an emailed list of questions also sent Tuesday.

Rork is the executive director of the Democratic Senate Campaign Fund, Whitehorn said, which as an “initiative of the Colorado Democratic Party.” The fund is used to raise money for Democratic state Senate candidates.

The state party . The policy applies to elected party officers and prevents them from making endorsements in contests in their jurisdiction, like individual legislative races.

Gonzales’ consultants — Whitehorn, Annie Orloff and Claire Simonson — all said they’d never faced a similar effort to head off a political campaign. The consultants’ firm, MAC Group Consulting, is also representing Melat Kiros, who among candidates running a primary campaign against Democratic U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette. They said they faced no similar pressure related to that contest.

To be blacklisted, the consultants said, would mean losing the ability to work for more prominent and established Democratic candidates and officials.

“My reaction was (a) hard pass,” Orloff said of Rork’s offer. “We do not want to be part of this culture of consultants and insiders in the establishment who pick who’s going to be in primaries behind the scenes, and then go to Democratic voters and expect them to dutifully and loyally vote for the people who they already picked.”

Gonzales is the best-known of seeking to supplant Hickenlooper, who previously served as Colorado’s governor and Denver’s mayor before winning a Senate seat in 2020. The primary election .

When he was the general manager of the Dodgers from 2004 to 2005, Los Angeles Times columnist T.J. Simers nicknamed the It wasn’t a compliment.

DePodesta, now 52, has learned to take it all in stride, even with a sense of humor.

“I think my labels are probably always a step behind where I am in my life,” the 1995 Harvard graduate said with a chuckle.

Now, as the Rockies’ new president of baseball operations, someone charged with reversing the team’s fortunes and reshaping its culture, he wouldn’t mind being tagged again. “Miracle worker” has a nice ring to it.

After all, DePodesta inherits a team coming off a 119-loss season, three consecutive 100-loss campaigns, and a single (wild-card) playoff win in the past 18 years.

“Today is the first day of our future, and we will not accept anything other than progress,” Walker Monfort, the club’s executive vice president, said when he introduced DePodesta last month.

No pressure or anything.

DePodesta, who spent the past 10 years with the NFL’s Cleveland Browns as their chief strategy officer, has a to-do list stacked a mile high. His new job kicks into high gear starting Monday when baseball’s annual winter meetings begin in Orlando, Fla.

Josh Byrnes, introduced as Colorado’s new general manager Friday, said he left his job as senior vice president of baseball operations with the World Series champion Dodgers in part because he wanted to work with DePodesta.

“It was tough to leave (Los Angeles), but I have known Paul for 30 years. And we have always both embraced challenges,” Byrnes said. “I think there is a lot that we can both bring to this … and create a new future for this franchise.”

Any understanding of DePodesta’s modus operandi must include his days at Harvard, where he played baseball (pitcher, center fielder) and football (wide receiver) while earning a degree at one of the world’s elite universities.

“I loved it there; I really did,” he said. “I had a tremendous experience and wanted to do whatever I could to take advantage of it. And it was incredible to be surrounded by those people for four years. Not just the professors but my classmates as well. It was an extraordinary group of people.”

Michael Hill, Major League Baseball’s senior vice president of on-field operations and the former general manager of the Miami Marlins, has known DePodesta for more than 30 years. Hill, who also played baseball and football at Harvard, was two years ahead of DePodesta.

“Paul always struck me as very sharp, very focused,” said Hill, whose front-office career started at age 24 with Tampa Bay in 1995 as an assistant in scouting and player development. He then joined the Rockies’ front office in 2000 as their director of player development before moving to the Marlins in ’02 as an assistant GM.

“I think it’s awesome to see Paul back in our sport because he’s got a great baseball mind,” Hill continued. “He went to a different industry, in football, with Cleveland, and I think he can bring some of those nuances with him to Colorado.

“I’m looking forward to seeing what he can do for an organization that is near and dear to my heart from my time there.”

DePodesta was not a great player at Harvard in baseball or football, but he had a passion for both sports. An injured shoulder suffered in the spring of his sophomore year hindered his ability to throw, so he decided to focus solely on football. He was a spindly, 5-foot-11, 160-pound wideout.

He played his senior year in 1994 under former Crimson coach Tim Murphy, who had just arrived from the University of Cincinnati.

” ‘Depo’ was not the most talented kid on the team, but he was a smart, tough, high-character guy,”

The highlight of DePodesta’s college football career, at least according to DePodesta, came in Week 2 of his junior season in 1993. The Crimson lost, 45-17, at William and Mary on that September Saturday, but that’s not what stuck with DePodesta all these years later.

He recounts the tale as if it happened yesterday.

“This will probably give you more insight into my personality than you want,” he said, laughing at the memory. “It was a fourth-and-short play around midfield, and we decided to go for it. The ball was on the hashmark closest to our sideline. I was the wideout on the short side of the field.

“Our quarterback audibled to an option, coming my way, tight to the sideline. I knew at that point that my block on the corner would be critical to getting our first down. My heart was beating fast because I knew that at my size, that really wasn’t my strong suit.

“But I went out and dropped the guy, and while I was on the ground, I saw our quarterback running by me, and our whole sideline was going crazy. That embodied more of what I was as a player, instead of spectacular highlight catches or things like that.”

DePodesta earned a degree in economics at Harvard but also took many psychology courses because he’s always been interested in why people make the decisions they do.

According to a , DePodesta consciously shaped his image:

“DePodesta did his best to ensure people were aware of that intelligence, often wearing a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and glasses (rather than his preferred contact lenses) around campus so people did not view him as ‘a dumb jock.’ ”

Today, DePodesta doesn’t dispute that characterization.

“Yeah, to some degree, I was conscious of how I appeared in class,” he said. “I didn’t want to be perceived that way by classmates who were super bright and inspiring. I didn’t want to be thought of as a dumb jock.”

He certainly wasn’t that, even though he’s spent his entire professional career in pro sports.

In 1996, DePodesta got his first professional baseball job, with the Cleveland Indians, where he spent three seasons. During his first spring training, he spent part of his time shuttling around minor league players in a van.

Following the ’96 season, although he was just 24 years old, DePodesta was named Cleveland’s advance scout. Late in the 1998 season, he was appointed special assistant to general manager John Hart.

Then in November 1998, DePodesta was called into Hart����ap office and told that the Oakland A’s had called, asking for permission to interview him for the assistant GM position. He was being asked to work under Billy Beane, who believed that DePodesta’s expertise in sabermetrics could help the Athletics win, despite their relatively low team payroll.

DePodesta was just 25, but he took on the challenge. The Beane-DePodesta relationship was famously depicted in Michael Lewis’ book, “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.” Later actor Jonah Hill played Peter Brand in the movie “Moneyball.” Brand was loosely based on DePodesta, but DePodesta had another label stuck to him.

“When I went into pro baseball, they started calling me ‘the Harvard guy,’ and suddenly, it was a knock when I first went to Cleveland and then Oakland,” he said. “It probably wasn’t until I left to go to Cleveland and the NFL that I was known as a ‘baseball guy.’ And now that I’m coming back to baseball, I’ll probably be known as the ‘football guy.’ ”

Now he’s the Rockies’ guy. The organization is counting on him to turn things around. DePodesta’s skills in baseball analytics and his approach to reshaping a franchise have manager Warren Schaeffer pumped up.

“I think the first thing you notice about Paul is he’s a process-oriented guy,” Schaeffer said. “You know how important the process is to me, and putting legitimate processes into play that push this thing forward and that can create a sustainable winning culture — because that����ap the goal, to bring winning baseball back to Denver.”