Bulwark Takes - This Democrat Knows How To WIN (W/ Gov. Jared Polis)

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

Colorado Governor Jared Polis is showing how to govern in the age of Trump. He’s normal and actually getting things done for his people. Polis joined Tim Miller on stage at Principles First to talk about his record and what comes next.

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It's an honor to have him here. In conversation with him today will be Mr. Tim Miller from the Bulwark. You heard him yesterday. He is back to have a conversation with Colorado's Governor Jared Polis. Yes, please. You know, we've been talking this conference about thinking outside of the box, being principled, pushing back against, having the courage to push back even against those against your own party. I think Governor Polis is, you know, really a solutions-driven governor who has really shown

the ability to work with anybody and everybody in his state who is willing to tackle the affordability crisis across a number of metrics. Prior to being governor, Mr. Polis started a number of businesses and then became an education leader in the state where he served on the State Board of Education. As serving on the State Board of Education, he worked to obviously improve education, he raised teacher pay and helped reduce class sizes for students. He then went on to serve as the congressman from the second congressional district of Colorado in Congress. As governor, has tackled a number of issues to reduce the cost of living in Colorado.

One of them is housing. A lot of innovative ideas that he's brought to bear in the housing market there to actually reduce, I didn't even know it was possible, I was talking to him backstage, reduce rents in Denver by increasing supply, allowing builders to build modular homes using single staircase layouts that are basically more efficient, and even, I read, pairing with faith-based initiatives to open up their land so that you can build housing there as well to increase supply and I think I think he or some of them in the state call call it using God's backyard to reduce the cost of housing so that's pretty good but health care you name it he's a he's an outside-the-box thinker, and we're delighted to have him.

So without further ado, please welcome to the stage Tim Miller and Governor Jared Polis. What's up, man? Thank you, buddy. What's happening, everybody? As much as I like Heath's intro, I told him next year I want pyrotechnics, like CPAC. That's the only thing we'll steal from them, you know? Just something with a little bit of heat to get us going in the morning. How you doing, Governor? Good to see you again. I was told there'd be pyrotechnics. I'm a little disappointed, frankly.

Well, this is your first one. Next year we're going to make this happen. This is my home state governor. Not anymore. I'm in Louisiana now. I'd like to trade him for Jeff Landry, but I don't think that's going to happen, unfortunately. Unless you're interested. Are you interested in moving to Louisiana? You know, we're interested in welcoming you back to Colorado. Okay, you're going to get me in trouble with my mother. All right.

I gave you some homework before we got here, because I believe you're the only elected Democrat here. Is that right? Was there any other elected Democrats? We had some candidates, maybe. Sadly, there's not as many elected Democrats these days. Democrats anymore? Yeah, okay. It's hard to choose from.

So I think you're the only one here. And so the homework I gave you was to look at Heath's 15 principles, or maybe there are 16, we don't know, and see kind of where you think our alignment is. Where are we starting? Well, first, I mean... And you did your homework. You got it here. Well, I had one.

That's part of the problem. There's too many of them, and you guys got to edit it a little bit. Cut them down a little. By the way, how great it would be if the folks here were the governing coalition of our country and how proud we would be as a nation to create prosperity and peace in the world. That would be nice. Someday. Someday you'll be back.

We could argue about a couple things, you know. There's 15 or 16 of them so uh that was uh we need epa reform my goodness so epa did you say we might be on the same page but we need nipa reform too i mean these are things where we hope the trump administration gets it right um uh we uh we'll get to that we will um so there's there's too many um and they're all good they're all wonderful i i look through them i mean and we can go through them but integrity character and virtue matter that might be sort of a sad wish as opposed to kind of a value um because to the voters they don't now this is

important this is a value every person is dignity quality and worth yes truth is important i think you can combine that with no one's entitled to their own facts so i mean look i mean somehow martin luther did 95 theses. But generally speaking in marketing and in politics, you've got to get it to three or four to kind of resonate. And I think there's ways to kind of, without sacrificing the value piece, kind of get this down to the three or four that you can put on a little card and you can put on a sign and that can mean something to people. But I'm excited by them all, you know, free and functioning markets deliver prosperity. I mean, absolutely. And I think that's been forgotten. I just heard a tale in the last discussion, the danger of the tariffs

and taxes on shutting down transactions between two people who are inherently better off because they make a transaction would be devastating not only to the global economy but right here at home in our backyard yeah let's um and we also have a lot of policy overlap you know us former us exiled republicans and you you know free markets free people let's talk a little bit about what you've been doing in colorado before we might have to argue a little bit about politics but we our agreement is more about policy. And you've done, I mean, regulatory reforms. You did the chainsaw before it was cool, I think, and cutting some red tape, or before it was not cool, I guess, would be a better way to put it. We got rid of 208 old

executive orders. Now here is, so I had been working on this, by the way, you know, the proper way is you work on things and you plan them. You don't just go by the seat of your pants. So it took us about six months to figure out, you know, we were going to repeal these 208 orders. And then unfortunately, because of the timing, it was during, after the election, people, you know, then thought somehow we got the idea from Doge. But I say, no, no, they got the idea from us. We started earlier. But yeah, as an executive, I can get rid, I got rid of executive orders dated back to 1920 that were still in effect in our state, vast majority over the last 10, 20 years. So that was exciting. And I've challenged our legislature to do the same, to go through our rules. Because again, unlike certain other

executives, I don't think I have the power to single-handedly nullify laws. So I challenged our legislature to go back and look at all of the laws that require different rules, because sometimes an executive is required by law to do rules and go back and eliminate some of that as well. Yeah, and he as he's mentioned We're like building houses. That's exciting. You know, yeah out of the way You know the market and the price of housing is a function of supply and demand The fact that demand is high in Colorado is wonderful. People want to live there. You want to live there.

It's great. You all move out there. But we have artificial government-imposed constraints on supply. That is the single reason why a home would cost a lot more than its replacement value, which they do. An average home price in Denver is about $600,000, which is high. I mean, it's not California high, but it's high. And so we have basically allowed more housing to be built, whether it's townhomes, whether it's multifamily housing, the kinds of

inherently more affordable housing, which ironically is often the most difficult kind of housing to get past your local planning board. The single family homes they let you build, but the more affordable kinds of homes are actually harder to approve. So we've made a lot of progress in that. We continue that work. You cut taxes? We did.

I'm just trying to warm up all the conservatives in here. When I became governor, our income tax rate was 4.63%. We cut it at the ballot box to 4.5%. We cut it at the ballot box to 4.4%. And then we cut it through the legislature to 4.25%. cut it the ballot box to 4.4 and then we cut it uh through the legislature to 4.25 so that's our our income tax okay and and you're not needlessly mean to transgender people or rejecting people from coming to your state no this is where we say i like this it's what every person has dignity quality and worth that that needs to stay there. I mean, we value everybody

based on the content of their character, their contributions, and who they are. And, you know, there's good and bad people of all kinds. You were, that's, there's no doubt about that. There's some bad gays out there, not on this stage, but they exist um i could think of a couple um you're speaking on that you were in the room yesterday um with uh was it yesterday two days ago now where the governor of maine your colleague was kind of getting into it with uh the president janet mills what'd you what'd you think what'd you make of that exchange well i don't you know none of us had the context go going in because this was was until it was elevated by the president and the governor. It was an obscure thing going on with Maine.

So we didn't really know what was going on at the time. But apparently it has to do with following the guidance around women's sports. I mean, women's sports are obviously something like in any sports we want to prevent cheating. I mean, everybody wants to prevent cheating in sports. And, of course, steroids, hormones, they can all be used for cheating, and that has no place in sports. And, of course, at the same time, we want people to be able to participate. It's a really – so, you know, my – we have discussions at our dinner table.

I have a 10-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son, and we were talking about this. Where's the line? How do you make sure that you don't have boys sort of cheating to play in girls' sports? My daughter said, I don't understand. We beat the boys. And she did.

There's a girls' basketball team, and they beat the boys' basketball team. My daughter beat her boy cousin in Colorado in basketball, and that beat the boys basketball team. Yeah, no, my daughter beat her boy cousin in Colorado in basketball and that caused a meltdown over Christmas. So we're not going to talk about it. Hopefully Louie's not listening. The other thing is just, I think, the capriciousness, like, regardless of what you think about,

like, where the line is on when it comes to youth sports and gender, the capriciousness of how Trump is acting, right, about all this stuff, I mean, you just discuss it in a rational way. Of course, boys shouldn't be in girls' sports. I mean, it's obvious. And it has nothing to do with cutting Medicaid funding from people in Lewiston. Right, and it has nothing to do with people who were born of indeterminate or intermediate genders

and where they play. I mean, you want fairness in sports, but you didn't want participation in sports but it's like it's it's kind of and i think that's a those are broad american values you want fairness and you want to provide ways people can participate but yeah very little of that has anything to do with like the cost of living and the real issues that matter i mean i think after talking to janet mills after she said there's like one kid this even affects in their whole state. Did you get any other, I'm curious if you got any clarity. Obviously at a human level we gotta feel bad for that kid that they're in the center of all this

stuff. I mean, my goodness. So you were behind the scenes. You had to have dinner with Donald Trump last night. I was at the gay bar. So you guys can decide who had a more enjoyable evening. Did you get any clarity from the White House on the kind of random government workers that are being fired in your state? Whether you're going to have any funding for Medicaid?

There's no clarity from this. So in my limited time, what I talked about, and I know you came off a conversation of tariffs like you, I believe, in free trade and open markets and trade is inherently good. You can see why he's my favorite Democrat there. We got one clap here, one clapper, me and Jared are the only ones left. But my concern was, and obviously we all, you know, we're hopeful that that's the president somehow has this master negotiating strategy. We're going to wind up with left tariffs rather than more, but you know, I'm not holding my breath, but I did say, look, I mean, if you want, if there's less tariffs, I'll be the first to praise that. But I said, whatever is happening here, please try to wrap this up in the next few months because investment

is frozen. Nobody can plan. The uncertainty is the enemy of prosperity in the business. So whatever level we're going to wind up at, we've got to figure this out for your own benefit, Mr. President, in the next few months. Because if this goes on for four years, the uncertainty alone will cause a recession. We're not rooting for a recession, right? No. No, no.

As I said, I hope that somehow if we come out of this with, I'm not holding my breath, but less tariffs, less restrictions on trade, that would be wonderful. I was just speaking for myself. I know you're good, Jared. I'm the devil on your shoulder. What about the other uncertainty with regards to the cuts? I know you had some controversy in your state about, I guess what, Forest Rangers got fired. And who the hell knows?

There are government workers that are in every state. Do you get any conversations about that? As far as we can tell, there's no rhyme or reason to the cuts. Now, obviously, we want things that are wasteful to be cut. But an example of this sort of wrecking ball approach was they actually laid off a lot of the folks involved with fire prevention, park management in Colorado, which are incredibly important. So not the firefighters themselves, but the road maintenance, the road maintenance, how you get to fires to fight them, forest management. So these are folks that are, in our view,

and I think the view of any rational government on the left or right, small government, big government, I mean, this is like a core function thing, right? So we hope that they reverse that. No idea if they will. Yeah, I saw a tweet as I was coming in, a rare good one from Jessica Riedel, who's a friend of the principles first. And she wrote this,

if Mitch Daniels was running Doge, I think we could replace his name with yours here. If Jared Polis was running Doge, they'd have already begun implementing GAO recs to fix the billions in payment errors, consolidating duplicative programs, auditing thousands of programs for efficiencies legally, competently, and with minimal disruption. That's real money. That's not what they're doing. That's right.

For every government program, you should ask really two questions. First is, should we even be doing this? And there's absolutely things that are being done that are counterproductive that we should not do at every level of government. The second is, okay, we should do this. How can we do it more efficiently? Let's create a more efficient way of doing it. It's not just sort of like, who's that? Destroy it all. Like, okay.

You know, should we be doing it? And if we should be doing it, how do we do it more efficiently? Yes, Mitch Daniels absolutely would have been wonderful. Would have been much better. But we're but we are where we are and so i saw you on one of the sunday shows um over the weekend and you seem to like give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they will land in a place where they are going to actually care about efficiency and i guess maybe that was one area where we part ways, a rare area where we part

ways because I don't think that they have any intention to do anything. You know, again, let's give them the space to see if they hoist themselves on their own petard here, right? Like with trade, as I said, if somehow this leads to like lower tariffs and more free trade, that's wonderful. Yeah. That's wonderful. Do you think that's going to happen? I'm an eternal optimist. You are an optimist. What about, I mean, what about when it comes

to the doge? And there's got to be, do you have any, you still have even a hint of hope that this could end positively? Well, I don't have much visibility into what's

going on, right? I mean, does anybody? You're the governor of the state. Have you gotten a call? Well, it's not, it's federal, not, you know. Yeah, but there are people in your state that are losing their jobs.

They're going to tear stuff down. And again, if there are things that we don't need to do, let's stop doing them. And then the question on if there's things that we agree we should do, how do we do it more efficiently? Doge doesn't seem to be answering that at this point. It seems to just be, you know,

stopping the current way, fine. But then what replaces it is... actually turns out to be very important. I see that you're hopeful and optimistic. No, and there's another one. They're going to get rid of the penny. I'm all for that. They get rid of the penny. That's great.

I'm with you on the penny. Taxpayers, a couple hundred million dollars a year, environmental costs, the mining of zinc and copper. Poor people at the penny plant, though. It's tough. Well, you know, we'll still make pennies for collectors. Some of those people at the penny plant, though. It's tough. Oh, you know, we'll still make pennies for collectors. Some of those are in Denver, by the way. You know, we have the Denver Mint, but we still will make nickels and dimes and quarters.

I had to go there as a kid. It was a really boring field trip. We can't use the force of government to preserve horse and buggy manufacturers once the car is invented. That's a good point. I'm with you on that. So here's the thing, though. You're optimistic. You've heard some things

that might sound nice that you could imagine you agree with. Have they actually done anything that materially would improve the welfare of a person in Colorado so far? It's only been a month. They being? Trump and Elon. Has there been anything that they've done that you're like

okay, Coloradans are going to benefit from this thing? What have they done so far? I mean, it's mostly. Like a thousand executive orders. They fired a lot of people. They renamed some things. Yeah, a lot of them were held up in court.

I mean, I can't think of one right now. Me neither. That's discouraging, though. I'm hopeful, Tim, on zoning and reform and permitting reform, if they get rid of the penny. But no, it's all if. If they do this, if they do this, if they do this. But no, I mean, nothing makes Colorado more prosperous than they've done yet, or America more prosperous,

in my opinion. In fact, to the contrary, the threat of the tariffs obviously is a major drag on our economy. Yeah. Well, that's not good. If the only thing positive you can think of is the penny. Those are not all threats at this point. Aren't some of them, with China, they're actually enforced, right?

The Canada and Mexico ones, thank God, are still a threat. I hope that threat goes away. But some of those are actually already been implemented, so they're already causing harm. That's a good reminder that the China one's been enforced. All right, they've renamed the Gulf, though. So we have a new Gulf, the Gulf of Trump. So I was wondering if we could split ball.

Do you want to rename anything? Like you only got two years left in Colorado. We, you've updated a few things. I'm from Littleton. That's kind of like a beta name, Littleton. I was thinking maybe we could rename that after like maybe me or Nicola Jokic. I like that. Yeah, somebody like that. Millerton, Jokic-ton. Is there any other naming? Jokich-ton would be fun I think Colorado's would go for that I think that would be awesome do you have any other renaming ideas

well you know I tweeted on this but when the you know the whole trying to name the Gulf of Mexico I said we could do a compromise

we have a place you know well in Colorado Casa Bonita I said we should call it the Gulf of Casa Bonita because it's a little bit American a little bit Mexican

it's good for business. You could sell me on that. We could maybe sell the naming rights. You could auction them off. That's what those should be doing. Auctioning off the naming rights. Close the national deficit. Okay.

Well, I'm interested in that. You hit on something. Not that, but let's auction off some other naming rights. Maybe we should do that in Colorado, too. Auction off the naming rights for one of our towns or something. I'm up for it. Maybe in Lauren Boebert's district um if we're gonna have to pick a place to auction off i would probably start there um that you mentioned the debt and the deficit this is another thing i think that is like important and you i think you would be a good

messenger on this because some other democrats don't care about this. But they don't have any plans, actually, to cut the debt or deficit. No, and we all, what the president said during the campaign, the deficit would go up substantially. And all this talk of Doge, and again, I hope they succeed, but this is like this much. I mean, whether it's USAID and these other things, it's not any material way closing the deficit.

So I support, in Colorado, we balance our budget every year. I think we need a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And not because it's good policy, but because it's better than the alternative of not having one, as we've learned. So I think we should have it. I asked several people what I should ask you and everybody demanded that I ask you about RFK. So here we are. You had some nice things to say about RFK. He's just an okay. He's okay for me. He's bad to quite bad,

I would say. Well, that's pretty good for the new administration, isn't it? I guess. The bad to quite bad is like top of the... What are you seeing? What was it about RFK that gave you a little interest, that piqued your interest? Well, I think he's interested in... Well, he is interested in health and prevention and reducing chronic disease. And that excites me. Colorado is a healthy state.

We have one of the lowest obesity rates, healthy diet. We get one of the longest lifespans. So I'm excited to work with him. Saw him yesterday and talked to him. And I think there's a lot of the longest lifespans. So I'm excited to work with him. Saw him yesterday and talked to him. And I think there's a lot of ways we can work together. And to be clear, and it's a shame I have to say this every time, but of course I don't believe in the nutty anti-science stuff. I'm pro-vaccine. I'm for all that. And he said that he won't get in the way of that. So hopefully that'll be the case. We come back to our fundamental disagreements.

Eternal optimist. You're eternal optimist. Yeah. I don his word. We come back to our fundamental disagreements. Eternal optimist. Your eternal optimism. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not feeling that good about that. What about the other thing about making America healthy again that gets me a little crossways, I think, with RFK, which is I don't know how cutting all research to any infectious diseases in the future is a very good idea. I think that's kind of a bad idea as far as on the health ledger.

We need more research, absolutely. But do you feel like he's serious about that, though? I mean, we're already seeing real ramifications to programs getting cut, right? Look, I mean, you look at the life-saving research that's been done in our generation, the previous generation, we all have healthier, longer lives and, and, uh, we need, we need more research. Okay. I want to, I'm just doing my best to just poke your optimism here. I'm trying to do it. I like, you're like an optimism balloon and I'm just going to keep pinning until I find a spot where we can let the air out. What

are you the most worried about? We voted for this guy. I mean, we're just saying like, we hope we are, well, you know, best wishes for the country here. He's got to get something right out of the 20 or 30 things he's Are we sure? I hope so. He's broken clocks. What worries you?

We've mentioned the tariffs. What else worries you the most? If he calls you tomorrow and he's like, we had a great dinner. You seem like the only Democrat that is normal. And he gives you a buzz

and he's like, Jared, what do you think I should not do? What would you stop him from doing besides the tariffs? You mentioned the tariffs. I'm obviously very concerned about abandoning our European allies and the fight for freedom and democracy. Again, don't know where that's headed, but very concerning remarks about the conflict. We cannot embolden Putin on the world stage, and I'm worried about that. Yeah. Let's talk about the Dems for a minute, and just going forward. try to recapture the mantle of appealing to working people, to people that don't really like the status quo, to the types of people that RFK appealed to? Let's just be honest.

What are some ways that you think the party can not have to be the establishment? How can the party embrace being reformed? First of all, I think these principles that you have are a very good underpinning. Again, there's too many of them, but they're promising. And really talking about prosperity, abundance, economy, I mean, you know, we are deeply concerned that this president's economic agenda could lead to less prosperity rather than more if he does what he's saying he's going to do. And I think we need to offer the alternative. And the Democrats have not always been pure on these issues. They've been pro-trade.

President Obama and President Clinton led us into many more trade agreements, brought down tariffs, brought down non-tariff barriers to trade. We've large significant pro-growth tax policies. But, you know, these are things that we should lean into because it makes a difference for people. The Democrats did quite poorly in most blue states, like not swing states this past year. Lost a lot of ground in the Northeast and the West. Two places where the Democrats lost a little ground but not too much was Utah and Colorado. I'm curious, is it just luck and the fact that there are a lot of Mormons there, you think?

Or was there something that... Mormons, hell yeah. Or is there something that you did that you think might be worth looking at if you're a governor of an East Coast state? I mean, just trying to meet the needs of Colorado. So we've been focused on, we talked about reducing taxes, removing barriers to housing. We also eliminated sales tax on a number of products.

We implemented free universal preschool, which is a very big priority for us, preparing all kids for success. You know, it prepares kids for success. The long-term longitudinal studies show that, and I love your data point that data is important. It also saves families, you know, $6,000 a year in the here and now, four-year-olds, preschools, very expensive.

So really just trying to meet the needs of folks where they're at and grow our economy and prosperity. So do you not see that happening in the coastal states? Like, what are you doing that they're not doing in California and New York? I mean, the Democrats lost 10 points in New York. It was not just on the margins, right? It was not just conservative. I'm not an expert

in coastal politics, so I can't say all the factors. You're the NGA. I could talk more about what we did do, right? So, I mean, we also, in addition to cutting income tax, we cut property taxes, too, and we capped any future property tax increases of 5%. So, you know, really just trying to address people's costs and concerns.

We've had a thriving economy in Colorado, and that's kind of, in fact, what led to the run-up in housing prices, right, along with the artificial constraints on supply that we're trying to systemically disassemble and allow more housing to be built. Yeah. Do you look back at COVID and feel like that, you know, there's like a lengthy backlash to kind of how that was managed at all? How do you reflect back on COVID? Because we first met, actually, because I watched your press conference during COVID, and it was around mask mandates. And you said some reporters were giving you mandates. And you said you had some reporters were giving you trouble and you were like, I sat and read the studies and I read the studies

and I decided that we didn't need to, we should want to wear a mask, wear a mask. I mean, please, I would encourage you. Right. We, it's like, right. We encourage, but we didn't have, we've said the mandates didn't make sense. Um, uh, and we did, we just looked at all the data and the studies and people are perfectly able to be agents in determining their appropriate risk levels for themselves. And I was glad that, you know, my parents who are now 80, you know, did stay home a lot. And when they went out, wore masks and that was, that was very important. Do you worry about that with regards to RFK? If we have a bird flu outbreak and kind of how we are prepared to manage another pandemic.

I actually don't remember. I don't remember. Jared Bolas is reading the studies in charge. I don't honestly remember what he was saying during COVID. I don't remember if he was responsible or what he advocated during that. But, no, again, I look more, as I said, on reducing chronic disease, improving health, diet and nutrition. These are the shoe job side for the American people, if that's what he focuses on. And there'd be downside if he were to focus on making vaccines harder to get or reducing our vaccination rate.

All right. Final one. Next year, we don't want you to be alone as the Democratic elected here at Principals First. So could you nominate a few other Democrats you would like us to, Heath, to recruit? Yeah, I'd be happy to grab a few. Let's, we'll strategize about that. We're going to strategize. You know, nobody comes straight to mind. I'm just worried that they're going to fall asleep before they make it through all 16 of your principals.

Okay. What about, what, Wes Moore, maybe? He's just trying to cross the thing. Wes is terrific. Anybody else? Abigail Spanberger, maybe? That would be great to get her, absolutely. So we'll strategize.

I think we absolutely, this is not partisan. We should have a lot of great folks, and whether they're D's or U's or R's, they ought to be part of this, because this is just on the heels of another little conference called CPAC, you may have heard of it. And I said, you want to be bigger than CPAC, so you've got to grow next year. That's the goal. You've got to be bigger you know, CPAC. You may have heard of it. And I said, you want to be bigger than CPAC. So you got to grow next year.

That's the goal. You got to be bigger, bigger than CPAC. Look at that. That's my man. It's Governor Jared Polis, everybody. If only we had 50 like him, we'd be in better shape. We'll see y'all.