DENVER — Colorado is voting now and for the next week on who they want to lead their state as governor for the next four years. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.
The two top-polling candidates are Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, who has been governor since 2018, and Republican Heidi Ganahl, who is a University of Colorado Regent.
MORE: Election 2022: Voter guide to Colorado's top statewide and congressional races
Denver7’s Nicole Brady sat down with both candidates to discuss the upcoming election, their policy positions and campaigns. The full interviews can be viewed and/or read below. At the bottom of this story (or in the player above), you can find our full 360 Election Special.
Gov. Jared Polis (Democrat)
Nicole Brady
How will you tackle the challenges that a likely recession will bring on?
Governor Jared Polis
Who knows what the future will bring? What I can tell you is that Colorado is in the strongest budget situation we've ever been in. We've doubled our state reserves, our rainy day fund since I took office. So we've been tucking away money for a rainy day. Inevitably, the economy goes in cycles, whether that's in one year or five years, you know, talk to five economists, they'll give you a different opinions, right? But we're ready. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation. To a certain degree, the challenges that everyday Coloradans face really come out of our economic success, meaning costs have gone up like housing, and people are frustrated with the traffic. You know, those are signs the economy's strong, but we need to do something about the costs that have gone up. So if I have the opportunity to serve for a second term, you're going to see us lean into more housing, close to where jobs are, reducing costs so families can get into homeownership and also have affordable rental opportunities.
Nicole Brady
I want to talk about housing specifically. Prices would need to drop 32% to be as affordable as they were in 2015. You acknowledged rent costs are up as well. How do you help the families who are at the bottom end who are facing rental increases, who can hardly afford a small place to live up to the middle class, people who would have been able to afford a house seven years ago, and now they can't ?
Jared Polis
We don't have the numbers in front of us. But we basically went from about $400,000 to about $600,000 for an average house in the metro area, roughly speaking. And obviously, there are areas in our state where it's more expensive than that. That is coupled with higher interest rates on mortgages. What we need to do is we need to get some of the onerous requirements that suppress the quality and the quantity of housing out of the way to have more housing close to where jobs are. We need housing in the $300-thousands, $400-thousands. And then we also need affordable access to rental for people that are an important part of our workforce. And we need to make sure that (housing) is close to where you live because it also means less traffic on our roads and better air quality.
Nicole Brady
Where do we build these $300,000 and $400,000 houses? And how do we build them?
Jared Polis
On transit corridors, areas where we have bus or light rail service to the job centers. And then the other area is kind of within a mile of a job center. So you don't want to go further and further out. You don't want to say you want something affordable, you'd agree you've got to go out, you know, 10 miles east of Keenesburg. And you can find something for 300. Fine, but you have an hour commute. You're on the road, it costs you all that money for gas, and it leads to more traffic for everybody. So, you know, again, that's happening, we need to change that paradigm. So those more affordable housing options are closer to Job Centers, and there's multiple jobs centers across the Denver metro area. It's not just downtown Denver, people think, oh, it's downtown Denver. I mean, there's jobs in Thornton. There's commercial jobs in Broomfield. There's commercial jobs, you know, in Denver Tech Center. I mean, it's kind of all these areas where we want to give people the opportunity to live close to their jobs.
Nicole Brady
A lot of people did move to the suburbs in the pandemic. That's been shown in the rise of rent in the suburbs as well.
Jared Polis
Working from home is a great thing. It's a great option for many people. We're going to be reducing our state office space by about a million square feet over the next three years. It's really exciting for me, as somebody from the private sector to say, hey, we're not looking to have that overhead. We’ll have about 20 to 30% of our workforce that will be largely telecommuting. We're able to save taxpayer money and deploy that for our schools for other purposes, rather than just have overhead for the sake of overhead.
Nicole Brady
Do you have any power to influence other businesses to let employees work from home? If that's a solution?
Jared Polis
Very little, but I think that many businesses are doing that. For instance, through our Office of Economic Development and International Trade, we market Colorado. Every week we're getting new companies, I can't even go to all the announcements and dedications. But we do prioritize companies that have some part of their workforce that allow for location independence. Many companies have 10, 20, 30 percent telecommuting, so we value that in our state it for the worker perspective, it has flexibility. That's a wonderful thing. It also can help improve our economy and our rural communities because you have a source of income that you can bring in and still live in a place that's maybe an hour and a half from Denver.
Nicole Brady
I want to talk about crime, because that's a huge issue weighing on on voters right now. The statistic that your opponent likes to point out, that's absolutely true, is we rank first in the nation in motor vehicle thefts. Violent crime is up 40% from 2013, according to CBI statistics. How are you going to tackle this increase in crime?
Jared Polis
It’s important to address some misleading information. We don't want to paint a pretty picture. It's a real problem. We have a plan to address it, but we're 26th overall in crime. There are some categories we're lower, there are some categories were higher. And this is a problem nationally with the increase in crime. We have a three-pronged approach to deal with crime. One, we have a goal to make Colorado one of the 10 safest states. Investing in law enforcement is part of our public safety package. We are sending out grants for recruiting and retaining police officers. Two, is tougher penalties on many crimes. We moved forward with tougher sentences on fentanyl for instance, we're one of the first states in the country to create a new class of felony for pill presses, even if there's just a trace amount of fentanyl, we're prosecuting those as felony prosecutions. And third, in many ways this is the most important, preventing crime before it occurs in the first place. After it occurs, you want to apprehend the suspect, and you want to convict them. But the best way to keep people safe is preventing crime from occurring in the first place. What does that mean? Better mental and behavioral support services for people in need. It means a co-response model, dealing with people that are a threat. It means making sure we can reduce recidivism. So people who are convicted that when they get out they set up for success, rather than reentering the criminal justice system causing additional crime.
Nicole Brady
You reduced penalties for fentanyl, for example, before you strengthened them. Are you willing to acknowledge that you have done things in the past that possibly led to an increase in crime?
Jared Polis
We always want to improve on any piece of policy that we've done. I think most people get that when you're dealing with a drug dealer or somebody who's selling poison to our kids or to adults, you want them locked away. But when you're dealing with an addict, you want to provide them help. Now, it doesn't mean that the criminal justice system doesn't have a role. Sometimes, you know, a night in jail or a week in jail can help scare somebody straight, other times, it doesn't. There's a role for that. But I don't think anybody is saying, lock up somebody who just has the addiction side, right? You’ve got to get them out of addiction. Even if they are incarcerated, you need to deal with that substance abuse issue, or the minute they get out, they're going to they're going to reoffend. So you really need a comprehensive approach. Really all I hear from my opponents is sentencing, sentencing, sentencing
Nicole Brady
You’ve proposed hiring bonuses for law enforcement, but do law enforcement agents in our state have what they need, do they want to do that job?
Jared Polis
They can always use more. I've been to too many funerals for law enforcement officers over the last few years. And we need to do more as a society to support those who keep us safe. Imean, pay is part of it. And that's a real part of it. And that's why some of these grants we're giving are used for retention bonuses or signing bonuses. But at the end of the day, it is about more than pay. It's also about really supporting our heroes that protect us in our communities.
Nicole Brady
Democrats in recent years have been blamed for for reducing the you know, calling for things like defunding the police not to say that you called for that in any way. But is there a feeling that our law enforcement is is part of the problem that they're their bias that they're going after the wrong people at times? Or do you feel like they get the support in the community and are treated as the heroes?
Jared Polis
Look, there's a lot of people that work in law enforcement, just like there's a lot of teachers your kids might have in school. There's a lot of firefighters, there's a lot of people in every occupation, some are going to perform better than others, right? We hope that well run law enforcement organizations, municipal police departments, sheriff's departments, they work they train, they promote top performers. And they make sure that for people that need corrective action, they they are able to do that. So I mean, you know, we have us local, fundamentally local in our state, I mean, the state roll we're helping, our grants are used for retention for bonuses for support, we have our own, we increased funding for the Colorado Bureau of Investigations that can assist on many of the more complicated intergeneric inter jurisdictional investigations, gangs or multi County and especially when serious crime has happened in some of the small counties, they turned us were in Crete, we have it. We're invested in a new crime lab. So we're doing a lot as a state. But people also need to, of course, support their local law enforcement at the municipal level and at the county level.
Nicole Brady
Is Colorado’s status as a sanctuary state impacting our local agencies’ ability to work effectively with the federal government and with immigration officials to curb the flow of illegal drugs here?
Jared Polis
We work very closely with ICE and with the FBI on intercepting drugs that enter our state. We're not a border state with a foreign country, so the truth is there are no checkpoints on the New Mexico border or on the Utah border. The federal government absolutely needs to do a better job on the US-Mexico border where particularly a lot of the fentanyl is coming across. I've toured two border crossing sites when I was in Congress. There's new technology, high tech screening, we need to get that done. The federal government needs to do that. In the meantime, we have strong relationships with our federal law enforcement partners. Whether someone who's smuggling fentanyl is here illegally or legally, it doesn't matter, if they're here illegally, they'll be deported if they're here legally, they will be tended detained and convicted in our own prison system.
Nicole Brady
I want to talk about our air quality. We had a nice season of fewer wildfires, but in the past we've had high days of air pollution in Denver. I know that the EPA is calling for reformulated gas. You don't see that as a solution necessarily. Why is that? And what would you do instead?
Jared Polis
We have been proactive, for instance, free bus passes all of August. And some data just came out that showed an increase ridership. We're also making sure that we're friendly towards people that want to bike to transit, all these things kind of built in to help reduce traffic.
Nicole Brady
Ultimately, though, we are likely to see reformulated gas coming?
Jared Polis
I hope not. That's something that we don't think is helpful. This is an outdated aspect of the Clean Air Act written decades ago. We got an encouraging letter back from the EPA saying they want to work with us on this. We would like to avoid (reformulated gas) because the data shows it might make a teeny improvement, but it's not worth higher costs for Coloradans. Our whole agenda is centered on saving people money. So that means preventing people from paying more at the pump. We reduced property taxes over the next two years, the largest property tax cut in Colorado history. If I'm reelected, our goal is to find a permanent way to keep property taxes low so people can afford to stay in their homes, even if they do go up in value.
Nicole Brady
You mentioned the RTD free rides and statistics that have come out on higher use, we are still waiting to see if it had any measurable impact on air quality. If it did, would you support more funding to make public transit a more viable option for people?
Jared Polis
I'm a big supporter of transit in general. So we did this for two years. And again, I'm a data driven guy. Reducing traffic is great on its own, it means less congestion for all of us, and improved air quality. So that's something that we look towards. And we're going to be doing this next year for sure. But again, it's encouraging the data so far, we're really going to parse through it, learn from it, and see how we can make getting from one place to another even more convenient and empower people with more choices whether it's e-bikes, whether it's bikes or whether it's bus.
Nicole Brady
Abortion became a huge issue in this election after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. You signed a law this year shoring up protections here. Would you support a measure that would allow the state to ever fund abortion?
Jared Polis
So this has been an issue that is up to states now. That's why you're hearing everybody talk about it. So a little context for your viewers. This was protected by the Supreme Court right to choose Roe versus Wade my entire life. This was before I was born. My mom, who's 78, she remembers the pre-Roe v. Wade time, she tells me stories. She went to college in New Jersey, her college friends, some of them had to travel to other states, all everything they went through many people my generation kind of just grew up assuming we had this freedom, right? Never had to think about it much. I mean, politicians would talk about it, but it wasn't very real because it was you know, Roe v. Wade, nationally, Roe v. Wade now been repealed. It's up to states, literally states that border Colorado, women, nurses and doctors are facing criminal prosecution and jail time for the choices they make over their own body. One thing I want to make sure Colorado voters know is as long as I'm Governor of Colorado, that will not happen here.
We all share the goal of reducing the number of abortions. And I think the best strategy to do that is reducing unwanted pregnancies, which means empowering women to be able to control their own reproductive health decisions, access to birth control, the importance of consent, all of these things are a big part of how we can successfully reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions in our state. And that's really what our plan will do. And so at the end of the day, this should be between a woman and her doctor. The government bureaucrat should simply not be at that table. I support more freedom for all Coloradans. If you're adding in something that is money, you look at the fiscal aspects too, but fundamentally, again, I think that this is a choice between a woman and her doctor.
Heidi Ganahl (Republican)
Nicole Brady
What can you do at the state level to tackle this, if we are facing a global recession?
Heidi Ganahl
I am worried about the economy. A really important statistic came out last week, the CU business school does an index for small business owners and it was very pessimistic. We also had almost 30% more small businesses closed in the first half of this year than previous years. So that doesn't bode well. So what do we do about it? Well, as Governor, what I'd like to do is roll back a lot of the red tape that small business owners are feeling crushed by right now, and reduce taxes and fees. The government has grown tremendously in the last three and a half years. And the current leadership has put in 85 new taxes and fees that are really onerous on small business owners and job creators in our state. So I'd also like to go to zero income tax, which is very ambitious, but we do it over eight years. Tennessee just did that and has one of the most thriving economies in the country.
Nicole Brady
If you cut the state income tax, and therefore cut some of the money the state receives for its own coffers. How do you balance the budget? Can you point to anything you would cut from the state budget?
Heidi Ganahl
We're going to reduce the size of government a little bit back to where it was before the current governor took office. We're also going to do a hiring freeze. He's added 4000, new full time employees, so we need to slow that down. And then we'd also like to take to the voters of Colorado, a proposal to change the way we get Tabor refunds so they're permanent income tax reductions, and we change fees back to taxes so they're in the general fund. There are nine other states that have gone gone to zero income tax that are some of the best economies in the country. We'll see the coffers refilled through new business and industry as well.
Nicole Brady
Even if we have high paying jobs, how do you even things out for the people at the lower end? How do you make sure they can still afford the basics?
Heidi Ganahl
So we've got to address inflation, put more money back into the pockets of the people of Colorado through going to zero income tax and reducing regulations and fees on small business owners and making sure that we create an environment where housing can be affordable again. A fourth of the costs of new housing is regulatory. So we've got to roll back those regulations a bit and look at new innovative solutions like community housing, module homes, tiny homes, assembly housing, which is basically attachments to current housing. But we've got to have a leader who will go all in and make sure that people can afford to live in this state.
Nicole Brady
How do you make sure that we can address the middle, people who could afford a $300,000 or $400,000 house a few years ago?
Heidi Ganahl
Well, we've got to make sure that builders can build here and make it work. And right now regulations are onerous. It’s very difficult, as we've seen with the Marshall Fire victims that are trying to rebuild. There are a lot of new restrictions on building up there, and it's made it very, very expensive. And that's happening all over Colorado. So we need to relax some of those regulations. We need to make sure we have enough water to keep growing and develop, and fight for what's ours here in Colorado and protect our water rights. And we've got to make sure that local municipalities are looking at innovative new solutions that will help reduce the cost of building new houses. And right now we also have a supply chain issue. So a lot of what's happening is national or international when it comes to getting supplies here to build new housing.
Nicole Brady
I do want to ask, this is just a question I hope to ask of many of our leaders, the work-from-home revolution, I could see this having so many impacts on our economy in different ways. But a lot of people do like that aspect of the pandemic, that they were allowed to work from home. Do you think companies should be flexible with their workers?
Heidi Ganahl
Well as a CEO and entrepreneur, yes, absolutely. We were doing flexible benefits back at Camp Bow Wow years ago. And we would give people options like, Would you like to work flex time? Would you like to earn comp time, no more paying more base pay. So I think the more flexible employees are employers can be for employees, the better off our economy will be. And that was like childcare, what businesses got together and created a pool or a way to incentivize employees that way. I think free markets, letting business owners solve a lot of these problems is a healthy way to approach them.
Nicole Brady
Unfortunately, I have to think that the biggest school issue you've become known for most recently in a lot of media is the claim that some schools are allowing students to dress as animals. By and large, many schools have refuted that this is a problem that they're dealing with. And even if it is happening on a small level on a case by case scenario here, given all the other concerns our schools face, do you actually think that's a problem in our schools?
Heidi Ganahl
Well, I was mentioning it in reference to distractions in schools, because 60% of our kids in Colorado can't read or do math at grade level. So we've got to get back to basics, and making sure that our teachers are paid well, they have smaller class sizes, and that kids actually have the opportunity to learn to read and write and do math. 8:45 I am a big proponent of giving power back to parents to make sure that they can choose different options that they need so the funding following the family or true school choice here through education savings accounts, and also transparency in curriculum. 8:59 Parents are feeling very left out of the conversation right now and really frustrated. And we saw that in the school board elections. We changed direction in 10 school boards last year. So I want to be a voice for parents and students. And I'm going to voice whatever concerns they have, and be an advocate for them and getting rid of distractions so that our kids can learn how to read again.
Nicole Brady
So to be clear, did you do think kids dressing as animals is happening? In some cases,
Heidi Ganahl
It's a distraction that I'm hearing from around Colorado, but honestly, I'm focused on getting kids back to reading and writing and doing math and making sure that schools are focused on that. And if parents say they aren't, the parents get to pick a different option through school choice.
Nicole Brady
How do you get that message across that we need to focus on that, and how do you tell the parents who are bringing up these distractions - look isn’t there something we can agree on?
Heidi Ganahl
That's my focus. That's why I am so laser focused on making sure that every child in Colorado can read by the end of third grade. Because that statistic bodes very poorly for kids in their future if they don't, they are four times more likely to drop out of high school. And so we've got to make sure that that's our largest priority. And 60% of kids in Colorado can't do that right now. And even more tragic, is 95% of African American and Hispanic kids in Denver can't read at grade level. So that is not okay. That has got to be our highest priority.
Nicole Brady
You live in Douglas County where voters are being asked to to pass a mill levy that would pay teachers more? Should teachers be paid more?
Heidi Ganahl
Absolutely. Right now, the average classroom in Colorado gets 250,000 in funding only 50,000 that goes to the teachers. The number of administrators we are hiring is outrageous. We've got to get that money back in the classroom and make sure that our teachers are paid well, and that they have smaller class sizes.
Nicole Brady
Does Colorado need to just simply put more funding toward all schools so that they don't have to compete by passing these mill levy overrides?
Heidi Ganahl
Well, I think it goes back to how the money is being spent right now we have about $8 billion in our budget for K through 12. And if only it only 50,000 out of 250,000 in the classroom is going into the future, that that's a big red flag. That means that we've got to shift the money from the administrators and the administrative bloat back to the classroom and to the teachers. That's happening in higher education, too. It's part of the reason tuition, it's so expensive.
Nicole Brady
Our state is has already passed a move to Universal Preschool starting with this 10 free hours per week for 4-year-olds next year, do you support more free preschool education and early education?
Heidi Ganahl
Well, nothing's free. So it's taxpayer funded. And I would like to see, as we talked earlier, about companies joining together and employers providing this as an employee benefit. I've been on the board of an organization called Epic, which is working on that and making sure that the restrictions and the red tape to do that is less onerous, so that companies can really go all in on providing that employee benefit. I think that's a great way to go. But I think we've got to have an all of the above approach right now. One of the key things we're facing is a lack of workers and folks who can afford to work in that industry or be a childcare provider, because it's really tough in the economy we're facing right now.
Nicole Brady So do you think Colorado is currently in a position to be able? It doesn't look like we are going to have successful universal four-year pre K next year?
Heidi Ganahl
Well, I believe they just backed off on that promise because of the worker shortage. And they backed off on the additional hours. Yes, correct. Yes.
And so here's the thing, I'm in Grand Junction, and they're talking about how they're 6,000 seats short for childcare. And that affects their ability to grow their economy. And because they can't get workers there, if they can't find childcare, and or a mom needs to stay home with their child instead of being in the workforce. So it affects everything. So we've got to have a multi prong approach. I think business and industry is a big part of that conversation, as our parents, like, how do you want to do this and your reference to working from home, I think that's changed the dynamic too. So I I tried to do it all during COVID, like keeping my three kids like it on the Zoom and doing my work. And it was crazy. It was so hard. And I have so much compassion for teachers in the difficulties they face right now.
Nicole Brady
Absolutely. So, and just to put a bow on this, as governor, some of these policies are not things you'll you know, locally. And what businesses can do and what they decide to do for their employees isn't something you actually can necessarily execute with one swipe of a pen. But you're a business owner, do you think you have the influence over businesses here to help them support our families more?
Heidi Ganahl
Well, I’m very, very proud to be a big part of this business community in Colorado. See, I've been a CEO for 20 years. I founded Camp Bow Wow, the only place company and sheet backer another company was on lots of boards and commissions. So I've been having these discussions for a long time and I've been a regent at the University of Colorado for six years. So this has been one of my key focuses, is how do we provide easier access to become a mental health worker? How do we become easy make it easier to become a teacher or to be a childcare provider because it all interconnects our education system and our workforce development, and right now it's not working. So I'm excited and happy to be a voice and to be a problem solver and what my sleeves and get this done.
Nicole Brady
One of the other issues people are concerned about right now is crime. It's gone up everywhere. What are the very first things you would do as governor to curb crime?
Heidi Ganahl
Well, it's very, very bad. In Colorado we are one of the worst states in the country, 4th worst actually. And fentanyl is a huge part of it. We have the second highest increase in fentanyl deaths in the country. And I'm hearing more and more about that problem everywhere. So what can I do as governor? Well, I can make sure that we give law enforcement the tools and resources that they need to be able to solve these problems right now. They're telling me their hands are tied, because of some decisions that were made bills that were passed to decriminalized fentanyl to also make us a sanctuary state. So ICE agents and law enforcement can't coordinate to stop fentanyl going across our southern border of Colorado. And this catch and release kind of theory of law enforcement is not working at all. We have the highest auto theft rate in the nation right here in Colorado. So we've got to roll back some of this legislation. We've got to support law enforcement. I will make sure my very first dollar, my very first priority is public safety. There will be no cutting of budgets for law enforcement. Public safety and education are my passions and my first priority as Governor.
Nicole Brady
The legislature did pass higher penalties for fentanyl even though in the past they had passed lower penalties. So let's talk about where it is now. We're down to one gram being a felony now. Is that going to help?
Heidi Ganahl
Well, one gram can kill hundreds of people. And what I'm hearing from law enforcement is their fix made it harder to prosecute drug dealers because you have to prove intent. So it's a mess. So we need to make any amount of fentanyl a felony, we need to keep drug dealers in jail, which right now law enforcement is saying absolutely is not happening. And we need to keep it out of the hands of our children because it's flowing into schools. And we call it fentanyl poisoning, not overdose, because the kids don't know that the Adderall or the Xanax they're experimenting with is laced with fentanyl. We've lost so many children to this. And so it's really starting to flow into the suburbs and be an issue for all of Colorado. This isn't just, you know, the old style drug deals you think of on the streets and you know, downtown Denver back in an alley. This is happening to our kids in the suburbs all over Colorado, Durango, Grand Junction. This is one of the top issues I hear about.
Nicole Brady
You mentioned the flow across our southern border and stopping that, how would you change things here so that police could work more effectively with federal agents?
Heidi Ganahl
We have to cancel our status as a sanctuary state. That's a big block to letting ICE agents and law enforcement work together. And so that needs to go away, we need to make sure that any amount of fentanyl is a felony. And we've also got some other hard drugs that are, you know, need to be a felony as well, heroin, methamphetamine. There's a lot more than just fentanyl. And then we need to make sure that we replace the folks on the parole board, replace the heads of department of justice, public safety, corrections, and go back to a law and order philosophy as leaders and make sure that we protect the most vulnerable in our state, which is not happening right now. That’s evidenced by the auto theft bill that they changed. So it's a misdemeanor now to steal a car under $2,000 in value. Well, who do you think that affects the most? It's the single mom trying to get her kids to school and daycare that all of a sudden doesn't have a car and a way to get around. And she can't cover the bills while she waits for the insurance claim to go through.
Nicole Brady
What are your thoughts on the localities that municipalities that have taken it into their own hands and pass their own local gun or safety ordinances
Heidi Ganahl
It makes it very complicated to enforce the laws when every single county or city or municipality has different laws. The laws that we have on the books that were passed a few years ago are some of the strictest in the nation and we're not enforcing them. So let's start by enforcing the laws and making sure that we're starting there and then making sure that as those with very severe mental illness can't get access to guns, I think that's a common sense thing that we're all trying to make sure that doesn't happen. But I also am worried about our schools. I've been on the governor or on Governor Hickenlooper school safety and human crisis committee, and I've worked extensively in school safety, and this idea that we should take school resource officers out of our schools, I don't agree with at all. They’re incredibly involved in the students’ lives in the community, they're seen as friends to the students, and we need them there to keep our kids safe. I absolutely disagree with this philosophy that we should take them out of our schools.
Nicole Brady
There's a school safety summit happening, a two-day summit actually, right now, today and yesterday. But a lot of a lot of smaller communities can't afford to keep the school resource officer under they just don't have the the partnership or the capacity to do that. Is that a problem?
Heidi Ganahl
Well, that's something we need to figure out. Because we absolutely have to make school safety, our number one priority. If kids aren't safe, they can't learn. And I've put together a couple proposals on how to do that. One is an accountability dashboard. And I've made the pledge that I will do a press conference every month for parents and talk about how we're meeting those metrics, how we're moving the needle to keep our kids safer at school. It's not just about the physical facility, it's about training. It's about culture. It's about making sure that we address the bullying and other things that are going on in the schools, making sure that our kids feel comfortable and safe and write down about something happening.
Nicole Brady
Many school districts have launched free mental health services. People seem to be paying more attention to mental health. What would you do differently? Or do you support what's already being done?
Heidi Ganahl
There's so much more we can do. We need so much more focus on this issue, we have one of the highest suicide rates for kids in this country, and one of the highest drug addiction rates for kids in this country. And if our kids are not okay, nothing is okay. I'm talking to parents and students across Colorado to try and figure out what's missing. I think a lot of the efforts are good intentioned, but they need to be science based. And we need to make sure that they work. We have this incredible center up at CU Boulder, the Center for Youth Violence that does a lot of research based work on this effort. And they have a lot of good ideas about how to solve these problems and how to make sure that the dollars we do have are used in the best way. And I think that's a place I like to focus is making sure that the dollars we're investing are doing the work moving the needle and making sure that our kids are safe and well.
Nicole Brady
Do you do you know of any specifics?
Heidi Ganahl
I've actually worked with them to put together a proposal called school safety 360. For schools, what we did is created a two-day assessment that looks at all of their specific metrics. And then we could basically assess the schools and make sure they're meeting the best practices. And if they're not, then we go in and provide them training, you call it gap training, so that they can get up to speed where they need to be. It's not punitive, it's positive. And it's helping schools, especially in rural Colorado, or communities that don't have a lot of resources make sure that they're doing everything they can to keep our kids safe.
Nicole Brady
I do want to talk about abortion briefly here. You represent Colorado where I think voters have shown time and time again that they support some rights for women to end a pregnancy. I know you're pro life. Are you representing your own values as governor? Are you representing the values of the majority of your constituents?
Heidi Ganahl
I have so much compassion for women who are facing this difficult decision. I've had a bumpy road building my family, several miscarriages and kids later in life, but I think we've got to bring common sense back to Colorado. And so we've got to make abortion rare and safe. I don't think it's common sense that we're allowing abortions until a birthday of a baby. I just don't think that's where the heart of the people Colorado is. So I have made a pledge that I will not make any changes, I will not sign any bills, I will take it back to a vote of the people of Colorado. I think that's the right path to bring us together and not divide us. But the bill that was passed was done without the will of the people of Colorado
Nicole Brady
Again, the voters have shown more support than not in the past. And maybe you feel that they're not being asked the right question. So are you suggesting we need a measure to go to the ballot that says do we criminalize abortion after X number of weeks?
Heidi Ganahl
I would love to have conversation with the people of Colorado and make sure we put forward something that we can find a common ground on. I don't think it's what it is now, which is abortion until birth. I don't think that's the way people in Colorado want it to be. So I'd love to have a conversation, do focus groups, travel, listen to the people of Colorado and then put forward a ballot initiative to see where we stand.
Nicole Brady
We will have women coming here from other states that have already banned abortions for the most part. Do you intend to go after any of the women or doctors providing abortions to them?
Heidi Ganahl
No. That's not a good path forward. I think we've got to find places to meet and compromise and have compassion, not divide.
Nicole Brady
Do you have faith in Colorado's mail-in voter system? After November 8 will you be able to say, no matter the outcome that this was a fair, accurate election?
Heidi Ganahl
Yes, absolutely. I feel confident in the election, I do think we can always do better. And we should listen to the people of Colorado about their concerns. I don't think what the current Secretary of State did was appropriate taking control away from local county clerks and putting it in the Secretary of State's office or sending out 30,000 mailers to folks who shouldn't be voting in Colorado. So I understand there are a lot of trust issues. And my job as a leader is to restore confidence in people's votes and make sure that I provide transparency, and that everyone feels good about the election and their vote.
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