Best and Worst of Colorado Politics 2025: WeThePeople vs. SuperMajority

I write an annual review of Colorado politics and usually highlight the best and worst of public policy, Last year’s version can be read at “Best and Worst of Colorado Politics 2024.” Since most of the impact this year in Colorado was the fallout of left-wing legislation from 2024, I decided to review 2025 with the perspective of WeThePeople vs. SuperMajority. Since 2026 is a year when Colorado will elect a new Governor, my goal is to provide an overview of how Coloradans (WeThePeople) are getting unsustainable, progressive agendas forced upon us in a state government run by a Democrat House, Democrat Senate, and Democrat Governor (SuperMajority). If you are an unaffiliated voter in Colorado, I strongly encourage you to consider how electing a fiscally-responsible, conservative governor is the solution to reverse decay by design. A conservative governor can restore balance in the state government by giving a voice to WeThePeople, who have been oppressed for eight years under Governor Polis. Because unaffiliated voters represent 50% of voters in Colorado, I suggest that there is no longer a relevant Democrat (18% of voters) and Republican (30% of voters) paradigm. In 2026, set your long-held party affiliations aside. The future of Colorado will be decided by WeThePeople vs. SuperMajority.

For any readers who might think that there has not been a recent, drastic shift in affordability in Colorado under the SuperMajority, consider the migration evidence which shows that people reject progressive policies by moving out and avoiding Colorado. In January 2025, CBS News reported about Colorado migration, “There are now more people moving out than there are moving in to the state. That’s according to the U-Haul Growth Index. The report shows that Colorado was ninth in the country for U-Haul migration in 2023 but fell all the way to the bottom 10 in 2024.” This is the largest decline of any state (a fall of 31 places in the rankings) due to rising housing costs, decreasing affordability, and slower economic growth per Common Sense Institute and Colorado Public Radio. This trend is a major reversal from the last decade when Colorado was the top state for migration, and the governing SuperMajority cannot absolve themselves for causing this exodus trend. The following are the policies which have devised the decay of Colorado: affordability approach, housing, transportation, taxes, public safety, energy, and education.

SuperMajority: Affordability Is Living Without a House or Car

As reported by Common Sense Institute, Governor Polis said in his State of the State address in January 2025, “Our housing and transit goals go hand in hand with our climate goals and our affordability goals. More, better, less expensive transit options, with housing closer to job centers and transit hubs, save money and mean less pollution and less congestion.” That is a disingenuous way to say force cities to create high density housing near unreliable light rail stations in urban areas, while villainizing cars, gasoline, and single-family homes in the suburbs. Polis thinks that most people want to live in a condo by light rail while the state government spends millions on a failing healthcare system and a declining education system.

WeThePeople: Affordability Is Reducing Costs by Budget Cuts

In “Earth to politicians: It’s still the economy, stupid,” The Denver Gazette detailed the affordability problem created by the state government. The average Coloradan must spend $10,451 more per year to consume the same quantity of goods and services they did in 2019. The average housing costs in Colorado increased 214% from 2021 to 2023. The homelessness, crime, and immigration era under the SuperMajority resulted in a mass migration out of the state, causing sales tax revenue stagnation, slowing job growth, and rising unemployment. Colorado politicians are also driving up energy costs. “Spurred on by state policy mandates to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, electricity prices are projected to grow at more than three times the rate of inflation and nearly 13 times the growth rate from 2010 to 2020, according to a recent CSI report.”

In addition to the revenue losses of a declining state population, the SuperMajority lacks fiscal responsibility as reported by Complete Colorado:

A Denver Post article by Meg Wingerter reported that Colorado paid more than $7 million to insurance companies on behalf of nearly 9,000 dead Coloradans from 2018 to 2020. 

Next, a recent Legislative Council Staff Memorandum found that in 2023, UCHealth and Denver Health provided over $27 million in uncompensated care for 48,000 visits by newly arrived undocumented migrants. 

Additionally, a report by the Common Sense Institute estimates that Denver metro emergency departments likely provided $49 million in uncompensated care to migrants from December 2022 to November 2024.  

SuperMajority: Housing Is Best in High Density Developments Next to RTD

“Transit-oriented development” (TOD) has been an authoritarian priority to Gov. Polis and the Colorado legislature, against the local control of cities who respect the balance of character and infrastructure of their communities. TOD is the Governor’s vision for more duplexes, town homes, and accessory dwelling units (ADUs). The SuperMajority uses pleasant sounding terms such as “walkable,” “affordable housing,” and “transit-friendly” to justify their vision along with climate-change language with metaphors of cities being gardens that need weeds (cars and parking lots) removed. The SuperMajority has a disdain for the suburban lifestyle with single-dwelling homes with backyards and empowered by personal vehicles.

Denver’s elected city officials share this disdain for what most people consider elements of the American Dream and this is evident by legislation restricting new parking lots and new gas stations. Complete Colorado reported “Denver gas station ban another swipe at car mobility:”

The ordinance would enjoin new gas stations from the overwhelming majority of Denver, including near areas where new, higher-density housing is being built. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the proposed legislation is part of the city council’s campaign to make driving in Denver as miserable as possible.

This proposal is simply another attack on automobiles and personal mobility by current city council, in its belief that they are drawing 6-figure salaries to tell Denver residents what they should want, rather than working to satisfy what they actually do want.

It is also insincere for the SuperMajority to claim they have a goal of “affordable housing” after allowing a 32-54% increase in property taxes in 2024. This is the largest property tax increase since 1975.

WeThePeople: Housing Is a Consumer Choice Under Local Control

HB24-1313 forces high density housing near certain transit lines in some cities. High density housing changes the demographics of a city, the voter constituency, and the demand for resources. At best, the high-density housing agenda is a veiled form of redistricting. At worst, it is a power grab of the state to decide land use for cities.

CPR reported “Some local governments say they won’t follow new Colorado laws requiring denser housing, less parking:”

One Westminster city councilor took that figure as an indication that Soviet-style apartment blocs could be in the offing.

“I want to know … who the state thinks is going to live in these 50,000 units,” said councilmember Kristine Ireland.

“Everyone’s going to flee this state in droves because people want single family homes,” she added. “That’s why people are leaving this state. They don’t want to live in apartments from birth to death. I saw this stuff in Russia and it was built under Lenin.”

HB24-1304 prohibited local governments from enforcing minimum parking laws for developers of apartment projects that are near bus and train lines. Arvada city council members expressed that the restrictions on parking in the 2024 state law penalizes driving. WeThePeople support local control, and the decision making of local elected representatives to govern their jurisdictions.

The Denver Post reported “Colorado leaders pushing dense housing development. But residents still want their peace:” “Denver residents like the Wellners are migrating to the suburbs. They give multiple reasons for their moves: affordability, elbow room, quietness, safety, and parks – things that transit-oriented development (TOD) often lacks.”

SuperMajority: Public Transportation Is Best for the Peasant-People

The SuperMajority has decided that Coloradans will spend millions of dollars investing in RTD and high-density housing near public transportation.

Per CSI, RTD’s budget has been climbing as its ridership has fallen. Between 2019 and 2022, ridership fell 46% while its operating budget increased 3%. RTD proposed a $1 billion annual budget for 2024. As of January 31, 2024, fares recovered only 4.4% of RTD’s operating costs. WeThePeople are subsidizing a system that the SuperMajority wants to expand at our financial expense and physical safety.

Per CSI, many people reject public transportation because crime at Colorado air/bus/train terminals has spiked. Between 2019 and 2023, violent crime rose by 53%, including a 300% rise in murder, an 86% rise in aggravated assault, a 32% rise in non-consensual sex assault, and a 32% rise in robbery. The number of drug violations at air/bus/train terminals rose by 248% between 2019 and 2023.

Safety is a problem too. According to the Denver Post, “RTD’s total 97 bus and train crashes in 2024 included a record of seven train derailments.”

WeThePeople: Private Vehicles Are Preferred Transportation

Total reliance on public transportation is a part of a dystopian future pushed by “climate change” promoters. Westword reported the experience of a person who is reliant on Colorado public transportation which is struggling operationally with slow zones due to train safety needed on degraded rail lines:

Sandra Mader works three jobs and doesn’t have a car, so she’s reliant on RTD to get her from place to place. Mader walks to one of her jobs; for another, she takes the bus to Arvada. Both of those treks are usually painless, she says. But for her third job at a mail center, Mader must take the E Line, a light rail line that runs from downtown Denver to the Denver Tech Center. “I have to get up at 4:15 a.m., walk twenty minutes to catch a bus to get to the light rail, and wait another 25 minutes to get that,” Mader says. “Assuming the light rail isn’t canceled or thirty minutes late, I then sit on it for one to two hours – and even then, I still end up being late.”

Once Mader makes it on the train, stops and delays continue. She never knows if she and her fellow riders will be stuck for fifteen minutes, thirty minutes or an hour.

Sometimes Mader has to get off at an earlier station to request an Uber ride… It’s also an expensive backup plan for her…

“I consider myself a fairly reasonable person. I get that things happen,” Mader says. “But this has been going on for nine months, and there’s no solution. …It’s very frustrating, because they say things are going to get fixed, and then they just seem to get worse.”

The Denver Post reported about a man who took the light rail from Lakewood to Denver in 47 minutes, but when the trains slowed to 10mph last summer, his commute became two hours. Thousands of people have abandoned the light rail system. WeThePeople do not support a taxpayer-subsidized, unreliable transportation system which results in late arrival to work and risks loss of employment, in addition to the safety issues. Nevertheless, SB 25-161 Transit Reform doubled down on investing taxpayer money into increasing use of RTD, which is estimated at the insane cost of $72 million per mile for rail.

SuperMajority: Create 3000% Increase in “Fees” and Abolish TABOR Constraints

Colorado started 2025 with a $1.2 billion shortfall. Democrats opine that the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR, a 1992 Constitutional Amendment), with a government spending cap based on population and inflation, is now the problem, not their overspending. Independence Institute explained: “The current budget shortfall is the logical conclusion when running out of federal funds, cooling inflation, and the loss of revenue due to tax loopholes smacks up against over-spending.”

Complete Colorado provided a concise explanation on how TABOR is preventing unlimited spending by the SuperMajority. 70% of voters approve of TABOR because it is working as intended to stop excessive spending by government. HJR25-1023 was an attempt by Democrats to fund a lawsuit to rule that TABOR is unconstitutional. This bill confirms the SuperMajority’s disdain for their constituents, but this bill did not become law, and TABOR remains as the taxpayers’ last defense.

The SuperMajority has grown government in tandem with overspending. CBS News reported that “Colorado has added more than 7,000 full time employees and 17 new state offices in the last six years alone.” Colorado has been growing government, instead of jobs, in a state with a declining population.

WeThePeople: Repeal the Fees and Lower Taxes

Republicans offered numerous bills in the past session to reduce taxes and fees on citizens, and all of these bills were voted down by Democrats.

Colorado Senate Republicans reported two major tax relief bills that failed. “Had they passed, Senate Bills 138 and 136 would have given Colorado taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in tax relief by cutting Colorado’s income tax rate and exempting social security and retirement benefits from taxation.”

Republicans offered four bills to save Colorado families $4,500 a year by repealing fees legislated by the SuperMajority, but Democrats opposed all of these. Since 2020, 12 new enterprise fees have been passed by the SuperMajority. “Fees” in Colorado are taxes by an alternative name to evade voter approval requirements in TABOR. Those fees include the retail delivery fee (27 cents), the shopping bag fee (10 cents), a utility bill fee, a garbage disposal fee, gasoline fee, passenger ride fee, short-term vehicle rental fee, and fees by several air quality and emissions laws.

According to KDVR, in Colorado, a person who makes $140,000 only keeps $100,000 after taxes.

SuperMajority: Lighten Criminal Sentences and Protect Immigrants in a Sanctuary State

Per CSI, Colorado has drastically increased in crime since 2021. Colorado has the 8^th highest violent crime rate in the U.S. Colorado has the 4^th highest property crime rate in the nation. Colorado ranks 4^th highest auto theft in the nation.

Per Center Square:

CrimeGrade.org looks at crime rates throughout the nation and has given Denver a rare “F” rating, which means that “the rate of crime is much higher than the average U.S. city.”  It also reported that it places Denver in the “1st percentile for safety, meaning 99% of cities are safer and 1% of cities are more dangerous.” Cities it considers safer than Denver include Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles.

In January 2025, CBS News reported four people were stabbed on the former tourist hotspot on the 16^th Street Mall in Denver by a man who had been arrested 15 times, charged with felonies, and released on probation. In November 2025, The Denver Gazette reported a man carjacked a vehicle in Aurora from an RTD station and crashed and killed a father and three children in Franktown. Violent and repeat offenders are a problem in Colorado.

The SuperMajority has passed many laws to lighten sentences of criminals and to decriminalize crimes. As reported in The Denver Gazette:

A groundbreaking 2023 study by Colorado’s Common Sense Institute found that from 2010 to 2022, the crime rate in our state increased by 32% — while the number of inmates in prison declined by 28.4% The study pinpointed no less than 14 bills introduced in the Legislature since 2010 that sought to lower the state’s prison population.

Colorado already had two controversial laws under the SuperMajority that protect non-citizens from detainment and deportation, as reported by CPR: SB21-131, “Protect Personal Identifying Information Kept By State,” prohibits disclosure of personal information from federal immigration enforcement except as required by subpoena, warrant or order; and HB23-1100, “Restrict Government Involvement in Immigration Detention,” prohibits the opening of new private immigration detention centers and restricts the ability of county jails to rent bed space to ICE. The SuperMajority added SB25-276 to further protect unlawful immigrants, while crimes upon citizens have increased. The US DEA stated Colorado is “ground zero for some of the most violent criminals in America” and “the command and control for TdA in the entire United States.”

WeThePeople: Public Safety Is a Priority

An editorial in The Colorado Springs Gazette, “Colorado’s crime fight must bypass the legislature,” explains how to work around a legislature that is soft on crime through ballot initiatives. Advance Colorado authored two voter approved proposals in 2024: a requirement for convicted felons to serve 85% of their sentences (Prop 128), and a $350 investment in equipping law enforcement officers (Prop 130).

In January 2025, NBC News reported an Aurora apartment building was closed after a Venezuelan gang took over and kidnapped people. Furthermore, the Trump Administration was finally able to get ICE involvement in Denver which resulted in arrests of Venezuelan gang members, drug dealers, and weapons dealers. 90 people were arrested in February 2025 in the first wave of ICE raids in Colorado. Other arrest operations in Colorado included 114 individuals in April 2025 and 30 individuals in August 2025 for drugs, murder-for hire, and firearms offenses.

SuperMajority: Convert to Climatology and Live Only by Solar, Wind, and Geothermal

The Denver Post asked the question, “Can Colorado’s electric grid keep up as coal plants close and data centers open?” Gov. Polis aims for 100% of the power on Colorado’s electric grid to come from renewable energy sources by 2040. Colorado’s coal plants have been shut down, with all of them expected to close by the end of 2030. Colorado also has a goal of 1 million electric vehicles on the roads by 2030. Rules by the city of Denver and the state are aimed at making buildings all electric, and by eliminating natural gas.

WeThePeople: Oil and Gas Are Efficient, Reliable, and Cost-Effective

The current plan is putting the Colorado grid under stress. Data centers are increasing energy demand, while coal plant closures are decreasing energy supply. Weather dependent renewable energy sources are not reliable and have transmission bottlenecks. Given the challenges of Colorado’s unattainable renewable energy goals, HB25-1040 declared that nuclear energy is now a “clean” energy resource.

WeThePeople can only hope that some of the new leaders in the Trump Administration will bring a rational approach to energy, namely Chris Wright, Energy Secretary.

SuperMajority: Education Is About Social Engineering Agendas

For years, the SuperMajority has been focused on non-instructional categories: DEI in colleges, all-gender restrooms, student’s chosen names in schools, and allowing biological boys to interfere with girls’ sports.

Per CSI, Colorado school enrollment has dropped for four consecutive years, with a steep drop of 30,000 students in 2021 during the pandemic hysteria to close schools. However, public education funding keeps rising, even as enrollment drops. Education funding continues to disproportionately prioritize administrative positions (growing at 12-30%) and non-instructional categories while student achievement remains largely flat. Since 2021, 9th, 10th, & 11th grade students who are proficient in math and reading and writing declined for each grade level.

WeThePeople: Education Is About Math, Reading, and Science

WeThePeople will continue to trend away from traditional public schools for homeschools and charter schools, with better outcomes and with less funding.

Colleges who are hostile to religious beliefs will lose in lawsuits like CU-Anschutz settled with 18 students and paid $10 Million for violating their rights to opt out of the unlawful EUA COVID vaccine mandate.

Conclusion:

In this article, I have offered a data-based report card of the effect of Democrat SuperMajority on Colorado. The most egregious bills passed in 2025 violated Constitutional rights. SB25-003 created a permit-to-purchase system to hinder the right to bear arms, violating the 2^nd Amendment.

HB25-1312 made it a crime to misgender a student, violating free speech in the 1^st Amendment and  parental rights in the 14^th Amendment. SB-276 is an immigrant rights protection bill that some citizens have called the “Venezuelan Gang Protection Act.” SB25-183 funded abortions with taxpayer money, with supporters stating that the state will save money long term from preventing births.

Most people are significantly worse off after the past two terms under Polis regarding affordability, housing, transportation, taxes, public safety, energy, and education. The only path to preventing doom for Denver and “climatology” conversion for Colorado is by electing a fiscally conservative Governor in 2026 who can veto the steady march towards the fiscal “green” cliff. For the rest of the nation, be warned that Polis plans to run for President as a “libertarian” or “moderate,” with his climate-changed communities as a blueprint for the nation.