California’s disastrous progressive governance should be a model for how not to run a state. Instead, Colorado views California as a model to follow, turning itself into Rocky Mountain California.

Colorado has become one of the most prominent red-to-blue states in the country in recent history. From 1968 to 2004, Colorado backed the Republican candidate for president all but once, backing Bill Clinton in 1992 after independent Ross Perot siphoned votes away from President George H.W. Bush. Since 2008, Colorado has been reliably blue in the Electoral College. A Democrat has been governor of Colorado since 2007, and Republicans have not won a statewide election in Colorado since 2016, when a GOP candidate won a seat on the University of Colorado Board of Regents.

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Colorado’s descent into California-ism is more than just electoral politics, though. Denver’s handling of homelessness mirrors the disasters that played out in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where the city has funneled millions of dollars into a “housing first” homelessness policy that enables homeless people to fall further into drug addiction and camp on sidewalks while the city fails to build housing. Denver’s homeless encampments are revolving doors, with the homeless moving from one illegal encampment to another when the city decides to clear one.

Homelessness has become dramatically worse in Colorado in recent years. From January 2023 to January 2024, Colorado had a 134% increase in homeless people belonging to families with children, the third-largest increase of any state behind Illinois, with its illegal immigration shelter crisis, and Hawaii, with its exorbitant housing costs. Colorado’s homeless population has increased by 90% since 2020, the fourth-largest increase in the country. Colorado has the nation’s ninth-highest homelessness rate. Denver had 9,977 homeless people last year, a record high.

Colorado has similarly embraced California’s enthusiasm for illegal immigration, to the point that putting legal residents in danger to keep illegal immigrants in the state is considered a reasonable trade-off. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said he would have police officers and “50,000 Denverites” stand opposed to President Donald Trump’s deportation plans, and he compared it to Chinese citizens standing against the Chinese Communist Party during the Tiananmen Square protests. Johnston said he was willing to go to jail to keep illegal immigrants in Colorado’s capital city.

Meanwhile, multiple Denver suburbs have sued or are working toward suing the city of Denver for encouraging illegal immigrants to flood the city and its surrounding areas. As of last August, Denver had received more immigrants per capita than any city in the country. Much like San Francisco’s problem with illegal immigrant criminals dealing drugs that are destroying communities in the city while funding homes in Honduras, Denver ultimately invited criminals into the city in the form of Tren de Aragua gang members, who took control of multiple apartment buildings in neighboring Aurora.

Smaller similarities between California and Colorado can be found in various ways. California is known for its own brand of inflation, which jacks up the prices for everything from gas to fast food. Over the past few months, inflation in the Denver metro area has been growing faster than the national average. Both California and Colorado rank among the worst in the nation in road quality. Colorado, like California, allows boys in girls sports and spaces in the name of transgenderism despite female athletes asking the state to protect them on and off the field.

That latter issue takes us to the past few months, in which Colorado legislators have done their best to mirror their counterparts in California. In 2023, California Democrats passed a bill that would push courts to rule against parents in custody disputes if they do not support their children’s transgender identities. Doing so would explicitly instruct courts to support a child’s transgenderism, an element of determining the “health, safety, and welfare of the child.” If you oppose pumping your child full of cross-sex hormones and preparing him or her for permanent sex change surgeries, you would lose child custody court battles.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) vetoed that bill. Two years later, Colorado Democrats went even further in their version of the bill. The bill would similarly make support of transitioning children a key part of custody battles, with “deadnaming,” “misgendering,” or releasing details about the medical procedures of the child being considered “coercive control” by the parent over the child.

But the bill would also make “misgendering” or “deadnaming” an offense for any public accommodation, which would then lead the state to target offending businesses with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Gyms, hotels, stores, and emergency shelters would all be forced to indulge transgenderism or face decadeslong legal disputes initiated by the Colorado government. Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) still has not indicated whether he would sign or veto the bill.

Polis has signed a new gun control bill that would create a de facto gun registry for anyone who purchases a semiautomatic rifle. This is after he already made them jump through even more hoops to acquire those guns in the first place. California has a de facto registry put together by the state that tracks people with concealed carry permits. The state leaked the identifying information of everyone on that list in 2022, including their home addresses, while attempting to create a public “firearms dashboard portal” to promote “transparency.”

Colorado and California also share their budget woes and misplaced budget priorities. California has infamously battled with a budget deficit over the past several years, with cuts and spending delays periodically kicking the can down the road another year for a new slate of Democrats to handle. In April 2024, Newsom’s administration estimated the state faced a budget deficit of $38 billion, while the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office put the number at $73 billion.

Despite this, California found $25 million to put aside as Los Angeles burned so that Attorney General Rob Bonta could spend his days thinking up new lawsuits to file against the Trump administration. California put another $25 million aside to fight against deportations.

Colorado has copied the ploy. This past February, Colorado’s estimated budget shortfall was determined to be about $1.2 billion, with the state’s reserve fund set to run out of money by 2029 without budget changes. Despite this, Colorado Democrats are pushing a bill to set aside $4 million for possible legal disputes with Trump. The money would be appropriated from the state’s infrastructure fund, where state Democrats hope it will be more effective than it has been for Colorado’s poorly ranked roads.

IN COLORADO, PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS ACTUALLY ARE COMING FOR YOUR CHILDREN

The only area that Democratic Colorado does not seem to be copying Democratic California is population decline. California’s population dropped for three straight years from 2020 to 2022, with the COVID-19 pandemic breaking the back of small businesses and middle- and lower-class families. The ever-increasing cost of living, decaying quality of life, and tolerance of crime led to an exodus from which the state hasn’t recovered. Estimates show the state will lose four House seats after the 2030 census, with the 2020 census being the first in history to cause California to lose a seat.

Colorado is projected to have no change after gaining one seat in 2020. The states around it are all projected to make gains, including Utah and Arizona. If Colorado continues down the path of California governance, it may soon find itself in the same boat, driving residents to neighboring states that don’t have misplaced priorities and a destructive progressive agenda that has proven to be a failure elsewhere.