The NPR Politics Podcast - Why Colorado's Democratic Governor Broke From His Party On Mask Mandates

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

Democrat Jared Polis ended Colorado's statewide mask mandate in the summer of 2021 and didn't reinstate it during later coronavirus surges. In an interview with the NPR Politics Podcast, Polis suggested that prioritizing vaccine and testing availability over masking helped the state achieve a high rate of immunization and relatively low death rate.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi there, this is Kaz calling from Boston, Massachusetts, where I would like to express my solidarity with Aisha Roscoe by declaring that I, too, am terrified of birds. This podcast was recorded at 1.11 p.m. on Wednesday, March 9th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will still be frantically running away from the turkeys that are slowly taking over the city. Enjoy the show. Turkeys taking over the city? What? Where's that happening? Oh, yeah. Wild turkeys are no joke. I once did a story about turkeys that had taken over a cemetery and they were, they were serious birds. Well, we know my feelings about turkeys, so. Indeed we do. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the podcast, a conversation with Colorado's governor, Democrat Jared Polis. He's running for reelection, and the Cook Political Report rates this race as in solid Democratic territory. Domenico, he is pretty popular in his state, and it's partially attributed to how he has handled COVID COVID because we've seen a real split, this blue-red divide across the country about wearing masks, not wearing masks. It's become something of a virtue on either side of things. And we've seen Polis be one of the first Democratic governors to sort of cross over and say

that it was time to sort of end indoor mask mandates. And, you know, it didn't go as far as a lot of conservative governors, certainly, but definitely an interesting player on the Democratic side. Right. So he lifted the state's indoor mask mandate in July that, you know, applied to schools, grocery stores, everywhere indoors and left it to local jurisdictions to decide what they wanted to do. So you ended up with places like Boulder, where he lives, which is a pretty liberal city, or Denver, keeping mask mandates in place. But in more conservative parts of the state, and there are plenty of them, the mask mandates simply went away. And he stuck with this, even as the Delta wave came in, and then Omicron. And that put him out of step with a lot of Democratic governors around the country. He was way ahead of basically the rest of Democratic states. He was way ahead of the CDC guidance, which only just recently relaxed on masking. And so when I interviewed him, we sat down via Zoom on Monday.

I asked him whether it felt risky when he made that decision. No, I mean, I never doubted that it was the right thing. I mean, we have some neighboring states that required masks, and they had as much COVID, if not more, than we did, and deaths and hospitalizations. Obviously, there were some people that wanted everybody to, you know, continue to wear masks and so forth. But, you know, the burden on an elected leader to tell people kind of what to wear or do is very high. I mean,

you need to convince me as governor that this will do something. We're not just going to, you know, just wear masks for the heck of it. So unless we're convinced that this requirement is necessary to save our hospital capacity, which it obviously was before the vaccine existed, then why would we do it? So I never really considered it. It almost seemed like you were trying to guide the people of Colorado to be vaxxed and done. Yeah. I mean, and I'm proud of one of our higher than average vaccination rates. I think we're 10th or 11th, but for a bigger state, we're one of the higher ones. And it's a direct correlation, right? We're the, I think 10th or 11th highest percentage vaccinated. We're also ninth or 10th lowest death rates. I mean, and the two are linked, right? The reason we have one of the lowest death rates is because we have one of

the highest vaccine rates. But the truth is you have a much higher level of protection. And to have that credibility as a messenger of that in Colorado, it was important that we didn't get into these things like mask mandates and other things because we want to be trusted purveyors of real scientific information. And that's why one of the reasons I think we were so effective in getting people vaccinated. Your roadmap mentions that 91% of state residents have immunity either through vaccination or through infection. Have you given up on reaching the last of the unvaccinated?

Is there an extent to which some people just aren't reachable? Well, while of course it's slowed, we hope that we can add higher protection to that remaining 9% of Coloradans who are highly vulnerable. In the meantime, as a society at the epidemiological level, having 91% with strong protection against the virus seems to be, at least for now, sufficient against the virus taking off. That's why there's such low numbers right now. Now, obviously, the uncertain future is that that immunity wanes, either the natural immunity or the vaccine immunity, perhaps requiring additional vaccines a year or two years or three years from now. Nobody knows yet because it hasn't waned yet.

And then the other one variable is, will there be a new variant that can penetrate through any of these defenses? And we certainly hope not, but we need to be ready. And when he referenced his roadmap, the state of Colorado has come out with a roadmap for the next phase of the pandemic. And it includes things like continuing to get people vaccinated, working to get young children vaccinated when those are available, distributing high-quality masks to people. And, you know, for people who are immunocompromised, they will need to wear high-quality

masks, potentially. Definitely. And, you know, I mean, we shouldn't forget about that as a population. We mean, we're nearing a million deaths still in the United States, and there are still, you know, thousands of people dying, you know, a month from this disease. So it's not exactly 100% over for everybody. But we have seen a lot more optimism from Americans wanting to move on. And I think you're seeing that reflected in these changes in these masking rules. And, you know, a place like Colorado, a lot of people think of it as a place that, you know, has been leaning left. It has gone by double digits for the last few Democratic

presidential candidates, but it still has a very strong rural culture. You know, there's a corridor from Denver through Boulder and up toward Fort Collins that certainly is a little bit more urban, more cosmopolitan, packed in populations. But there's a huge rural population. And, you know, we've seen in other places where if you ignore the needs of that population, you've seen a big backlash on all kinds of cultural issues. And that's something that Polis was trying to avoid. All right. Well, we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, more from our conversation with Governor Jared Polis in Colorado. And we're back. And Domenico, you and I have both covered some of the political fallout from

pandemic measures, something that has affected Democrats. Just look no further than the Virginia governor's race, for instance. It is certainly something that Democrats are concerned about heading into the midterms. Well, yeah, I mean, a lot of the places that they're having to contend with these swing districts are in suburban places, places where you have parents who are concerned about their kids being back in school, whether they're masked or not. You know, this is an issue that does affect lots of parents, lots of kids. And it is something that, you know, is going to become an issue in the 2022 midterms. It's something Democrats are bracing for. And frankly, a lot of Democrats

have felt like they didn't have a real strong message because they felt like the federal messaging was kind of off. And given that Polis made some unique choices for a Democrat, I asked him about whether there were lessons that Democrats could learn from his experience. You know, lessons don't really come down along party lines, whether you're a Democrat, independent, Republican. I think, you know, Democrats focus, of course, rightly so, on the health side of this crisis. Many Republicans also focus on health. We talked about the economic side of this. But one side that I wish was talked about more, because frankly, I think it's the hits closest to home for people, it's just the psychological impact of these measures, right? Like, you know, can you see your friends? Can your kid have a birthday party? Can

you visit grandma? I mean, to many people, you know, economics is important. Risk is important, but like living your lives in a fulfilling way is probably even above those two for most people. And through a lot of this, neither party really spoke to that. We did from the beginning. I mean, we kind of really tried to focus on that lived experience that people have, first and foremost, saying, yes, visiting grandma or not, here's your risk parameters. Here's how you make the decision. But obviously, the answer was never to say, no, you can't be with your loved ones in any way. So as we look for the future, I think it's important to take into account, in know, in addition to people's physical health, in addition to people's economic well-being, people's happiness. Do you think that Democrats under-emphasized or made a mistake by not

pushing toward more normalcy more quickly? Well, there was no playbook for this. And I don't think there's anything that like Democrats or Republicans did. I think there's just a lot of individual decisions that mayors made, that governors made. Some are Democrats, some are Republican. I mean, what you really saw is 50 different responses across all 50 states. And then even within states, you saw governors and local health officials making the best decisions that they could given the dynamic in their area, the social dynamic. And there's no right answer or wrong answer. And frankly, people just have different trade-offs on these things. And it's not right or wrong. It's just the way people feel with regard to trade-offs. Now, if there were folks that didn't use facts, that's inexcusable. But I think most

of the decisions that people made on this were really looking at the cold, hard facts. We didn't get here by accident. I mean, it was really in Colorado. One of the reasons we have the ninth lowest death rate is we had a proactive, innovative response. We had the first drive-through testing. We had a free mask for everybody in our schools last year, free testing delivered to your

door. And I'm really glad to see the federal government now is doing that. We did that several months before when people couldn't get tests in other areas. Pointing out you did it several months before. Yeah. Well, we're knowing. I'm glad to see the federal government do it. I mean, I hope they learn from what we were doing in Colorado. And I'm really excited that anybody in the country can get that now, get testing now. I did have another political question for you, which is, you know, you're a governor, so you're close to the ground. And gas prices are rising shockingly fast. How do you see this playing out? Well, I really strongly support a bill by Senator Mark Kelly and

Senator Maggie Hassan that would eliminate the 18 cent per gallon federal gas tax for a year. I think that provides immediate direct relief. We have a similar effort in Colorado to avoid a two cent per gallon fee on gas. Obviously, anything the federal government does is bigger. But I think what we need to do is we need to show relief at the pump. Obviously, also continuing the electric vehicle transition, reducing demand. These are the kinds of things that we're working on here. And I hope that whatever package Congress works on, it really puts front and center, hey, how do we save people money in this challenging time when their costs are going up faster than their incomes? And that's really what people feel, not just in Colorado, but across the country. So Domenico, what I find interesting here is that as the coronavirus fades, hopefully into the background,

as policy focuses on being prepared, but not having it sort of overwhelm our lives anymore. Now, there are other issues that Democrats have to worry about heading into the midterms that Americans are broadly concerned about. And that includes the price of gasoline and other inflation. These are now top of mind issues. Yeah, I was going to say in a word, it's prices, that things are going up, they cost more, that includes gas, that includes your groceries. Inflation is at a 40 year high. Housing in Colorado in particular, well, housing all over the place, but it's a big deal in that state. Yeah, there's all kinds of, you know, places where we're seeing that. And we've seen it in our surveys, where we've asked people what they think President Biden's top priority needs to be.

And overwhelmingly, you know, now inflation has moved to the top. Now, you know, I want to say about Polis, though, you know, this is an election year for him, he's up for reelection. And, you know, I think a lot of Democratic governors have their finger in the wind seeing that President Biden's approval rating had been suffering. Toward the end of last year, there was a poll in Colorado that showed that Biden's approval rating was only about 47 percent. Polis, on the other hand, was polling at about 57 percent. So a good 10 points higher.

And what's really unique about that is that only 49% of people said that they had a favorable opinion of Polis. So that means that you had a lot of people, namely Republicans, who might not like him very much, but approved of probably his COVID policies. All right. Well, we will leave this conversation here for now. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.