If you saw Senator Michael Bennet’s X account around the time he announced his run for Colorado governor, you could easily be forgiven for getting the impression that he was running against Donald Trump for the office.
Post after post after post have Bennet denigrating Trump, who has been president for all of three months. Bennet outlines a series of ongoing problems Coloradans face: “Housing, healthcare, and childcare cost too much. Schools and small businesses are struggling. Parents worry whether they will be able to raise their kids here.”
Bennet interestingly leaves out the part about his fellow Democrats being solidly in control of Colorado state government, as well as the previous four-years of the Biden administration and instead blasts Trump, saying his “…chaos will never help us solve these issues,” that “firing federal workers will never bring down the price of eggs. Trade wars won’t help us build housing. Cutting taxes for the wealthy won’t make healthcare affordable.”
And then for good measure Bennet reminds us that “Our best solutions won’t come from Washington’s broken politics”
I’m no fan of Senator Bennet, but I think I’m inclined to agree with a fair bit of what he’s saying. Colorado does indeed face problems with housing, as well as the price of healthcare and childcare. Small businesses are struggling. And for God’s sake, the eggs? Don’t get me started!
But note that a goodly number of the problems Bennet lists, such as education, have little to no overlap with the federal government. For example, I’ve seen various numbers, but mostly what the feds do is give Colorado about 10% of the total we spend on public education. That’s it. Trump’s not hiring teachers, negotiating contracts, setting salaries, etc.
I won’t presume to predict how Trump’s big, and even chaotic moves will eventually play out in Colorado. What I can say is that the impact from changes to federal policies, employment, and the just-as-chaotic court challenges Trump’s opponents are using to try and bollox him up will be years in the unraveling.
So why is Senator Bennet running against Trump for governor? Donald Trump couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in Blue Colorado. Bennet knows, however, that Colorado’s Trump derangement is strong, and he’s counting on it to hide the fact that the issues here at home are the responsibility of Democrats, who have held complete and total control of Colorado since at least 2019.
Take just eggs, for example (Bennet certainly did). While culling flocks due to avian flu spiked the price of eggs, the Democrats’ cage-free eggs mandate certainly didn’t help. Limiting ourselves to cage free eggs means that we have artificially restricted where we can buy them. There have been perfectly good eggs sitting available in those states who don’t share our forward-thinking approach to poultry, but they might as well have been on the moon. They couldn’t be sold here due to our laws. Being able to buy them might not have dropped the price down to what it was before, but it would have dropped some. Hardly any of Trump’s doing.
Bennet is certainly right about small businesses struggling, but there’s good reason for that. The Colorado Chamber of Commerce recently ranked Colorado as the sixth most heavily regulated state in the nation, with nearly half of its roughly 200,000 regulations being “excessive or duplicative.“
Further, the billions in new fees Coloradans now pay to the state for nearly everything anymore weren’t passed by Trump. It was the Democrat majority in the legislature. Every dollar you send to state government is one less you can put to saving for a house, paying a mortgage, or the doctor bill. If you had that money back, even with no other change to housing or healthcare policy, you’d have more breathing room. And the list goes on.
Indeed, in many ways, candidate Bennet’s narrative on the ‘struggling’ condition of Colorado is an indictment of his own party’s rule.
Small wonder then Bennet wants to take on Trump. It’s an easy applause-line for his base, and he doesn’t have to tell us all the truth: Colorado’s problems are caused by, or at least exacerbated by his own party and friends.
Cory Gaines is a regular contributor to Complete Colorado. He lives in Sterling on Colorado’s Eastern Plains and also writes at the Colorado Accountability Project substack
