As we hi the one week mark since the U.S.

and Israel started attacking targets in Iran, there is concern about what's next.

There is sadness ove the deaths of American soldiers and innocent lives lost in the conflict.

And there is uneasiness for those Americans who are having a hard time evacuating the region in order to find safety.

At the same time, though, it's been a busy and a very eventful week here at home in Colorado.

So let's get started wit this week's Colorado incident.

Hi everyone, I'm Kyle Dyer.

Let me get right to introducing you to this week's insider panel.

We start with Patty Calhoun founder and editor of Westword.

Krista Kafer, columnist with The Denver Post.

And Thomas Tafoya, community leader and environmental advocate and a past candidate for mayor of Denver.

And Jesse Paul, political reporter at the Colorado Sun.

Let's start our conversation with how Colorado Governor Jared Polis has publicly hinted that he may grant clemency to former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who is currently servin nine years in prison for crimes tied to her claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

The governor went on social media to compare her sentence to that of former state senator Sonja marquez Lewis, saying that they both have similar convictions but that Peters has a nine year sentence and Lewis got probation.

Patty, the county clerks have asked the governor not to grant Peters clemency.

And the Trum administration is demanding it.

It looks like it's going to happen.

Well, and every Democrat at the legislature I believe, asked the same thing.

I would say if he's going to and he's really motivated by what's fair.

It won't be until after the election.

But maybe he's just holding this out as a carrot for Donald Trump to stay away from Colorado or be nicer to Colorad because he's thinking about it.

He's extended his perio to consider clemency and changes in sentencing till April.

You know, you usually announce that often at the end of the year, like a little Christmas bonus present to people.

Last year there were none.

But the most important thin here is these are not similar.

They are not equivalent crimes.

Both of them, yes, were convicted of tryin to influence a public official, but their acts were very, very different.

You have Tina Peters, who was the clerk and in charge of elections in Mesa County, who let someone in to into the into the files set a lot of this election denier thing in motion.

Her crime was definitely far worse than, admittedly, a very bad act on Lewis's behalf.

When she's mistreating aides an having and then doing forgery.

But that's still different from letting someone into our election system.

So I do think it's possibl he'll trim a little off Peters, but I don't see it happening before after the election.

Okay, Kristen, I think there needs to be an intervention.

I think that Governor Polis Polis has Stockholm syndrome.

I really do.

We've been so abused by the th president in this state, right.

He's vetoed a bill, rescinded grants, taking away different institutions that we have.

He's done these things of course, you know, the endless vitriol towards Colorado, towards Governor Polis.

It's he's abused us.

And yet, rather than continue to stand up to that abuse, Polis is like, well, maybe I'll just capitulate to one of the demands.

No, don't do it.

It ended up costing that county well over $1 million.

Then I only had to replace the equipment.

There was a whole stream of things.

So a great cost to taxpayers a cost to those county clerks.

That's why they're against it.

They got death threats.

And that woman continue to spew lies about her elections, even in absentia.

She doesn't have access directly to her Twitter account.

And yet it's tweeting daily, misinformation about our elections to let her out before the election.

Not only woul that be an injustice, generally it is an injustice in particular because it's going to be it's going to be an interesting election.

I, I predic there's going to be a pretty big blue wave that comes in and that happens.

You're going to see a lot more of that election.

Election lie coming from coming from Trump, coming from his enablers.

They're going to attempt to subvert our democracy, to preserve the lie that their team won.

And I agree, Governor Bush shouldn't be doing this.

If I was one of his clos advisers, I'd be telling him no.

I know there are many letters that are circulating right now asking for nonprofits and community leaders to step forward, to put the pressure on him to not do this.

I would agree that the Mesa County clerk and I want to call out the Denver clerk, Paul Lopez, who went out on, camer calling on Polis to not do this.

I mean, this is the fundamental basis of our democracy, which I believe in.

That's why I work in this space in the first place.

I watched January 6th happen live, right?

Like a lot of people who are up at night, this kind of election denia and everything that it's led to is been a disgrace for our country.

I recently went to the United Nations.

It's hard to be a proud American right now when you see what the what we're doing in the world.

What's the vibe like?

What are people saying at the state Capitol?

So we asked all 66 Democrats in the legislature if they think that the governor should reduce Tina Peter sentence.

Not a single one said yes.

There are a few who didn't respond and few who said no comment, but nobody said and like, yes, he should do this.

I heard privately from some Democrats that if he does this, there's going to be some kind of legislative pushback, whether it's not workin with the governor on bills or, you know, trying to pass a resolution condemning that decision.

I think you're going to see a pretty swift and fierce, response from the legislature in terms of timing.

You know, the logical timing for it is after the Colorado Court of Appeals weighs in, because right now they're reconsidering her or her sentence.

And that could happen kind of any day now.

But yeah, it's it's going to shake things up.

There is a timeline for this, though, right?

The governor leaves office in early 2027.

You've got the election coming up soon.

Both of those things are kind of important deadlines in this process.

But if it's going to happen, it's going to happen within the next year.

I think it's going to happen.

The governor is like certainly making it as clear as possible with that all out saying it, that this i this is what he's going to do.

Okay.

Don't you think oh, sorry, that he's waiting so that the legislature is out and can't take action.

I don't think he cares.

And I don't think I don't think he cares what Trump thinks.

I don't think he cares what the legislature thinks.

I think this is actually just a Jared Polis, feeling.

He's he's a very principled person.

And when he makes a decision like this, no matter what people say, whether it's close with closest advisers, 66, Democrats in the legislature.

Michael Bennet, attorney, the attorney general, he's going to do what he's going to do.

This week, registered Republicans and Democrats started a gathering acros Colorado for precinct caucuses, the first real step in the process for local candidates to get on the ballot in June for the primary.

There is another path to make that happen.

Candidates can qualif by collecting enough signatures.

Now we're already seen both strategie play out in the governor's race.

U.S.

Senator Michael Bennet has submitted signatures to run in the Democratic Party while Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser is working his way through the caucus and assembly route.

Also this week, the race to replace Weiser as attorney general drew attention when it was reported that Democratic candidate, current Secretary of State Jenna Griswold, has made false claims about her experience, specifically her role in a 2024 Supreme Court case.

Krista, you are part of that case.

What is your reaction to Jenna Griswold saying that she was there presenting the case?

Well, I was there presenting the case.

Yeah.

Both of us have presented before the Supreme Court.

According to her logic, simply being there and being part of the case and having your name in in the docket means that you have argued before the Supreme Court.

So even though I'm not a lawyer I'm putting that on my resume.

It's awesome.

What she's done is, is, an unforced error and rather foolish because now her opponents are going to point out that, no, she did not.

In fact, conduct any oral arguments.

She was there.

A bunch of us were there.

None of us are considered to have actually presented before the Supreme Court.

Fascinating decision, fascinating issue.

But, I would, she she needs to go a different direction with her, with her, resume.

I also wanted to comment on the the caucuses.

We got to get rid of these things.

That is it's an archaic.

It's a vestige of the past.

I used to be a supreme, I used to be a Supreme Court judge.

Now, I used to be a, a precinct leader.

I hand-delivered 400 notes to people's houses saying, you know, short this time.

And in the end, three people showed up.

I brought two of them.

So I people don't attend them.

The, the fringes people often attend them.

The hardest core.

You know, your people for whom Berni Sanders is not liberal enough.

And Marjorie Taylor Greene is not crazy enough.

Those are the people that show up at these things.

It's time to get rid of them.

They're a vestige of the past.

They do not reflect the general voters of either party.

But some precinct have had big turnouts this week.

So maybe they provided donuts.

Maybe bring food.

All right.

And, you were talking earlier this week about some polling with.

And we were on the phone and noticing Julia Gonzalez's poll running against, Senator Hickenlooper.

Yeah.

So a poll was pushed out, by her campaign showing that when messaged, her name, ID, and making a choic of choosing her to be our next senator made her about even with Hickenlooper.

So what does that say?

It says that she has a good story, and she's been doing the work for a long time.

I've known Julie Gonzalez for a very long time, and I can say she has stood firm on her values and fought for our community.

I think no matter what happens in this race I think she's going to come out the other side in a better place, which I can't sa is always true, having a person who's run for office.

It also tells me that, you know, what does that mean?

You need resources to be able to go, to tell your story to be able to do your messaging.

Sometimes that's PACs and large donors, and other times that's volunteers who are writing letters, makin phone calls and knocking doors.

Something she's proven to be able to rally people to do in the past, I will say, and no matter what, I think she's been successful in moving Hickenlooper in his positions.

Putting him on the spot to account for his support of people like Secretary.

Right.

Who's in Venezuela saying this is our oil?

And so I think I'm seeing that show up in his social media.

I also will say that I actually think the Griswald thing is kind of a hit piece.

A regular person saying argued in front of the cour when she helped send it to court and worked on worked collectively with it.

I've sued polluters.

I'm going to court next week for a hearing with the state, though I'm not the lawyer.

My organization in the coalition that's working on all of the back end is kind of doing it together.

So that, to me feels like a little mincing words.

And I that story really didn't land for me.

And I guess, just lastly what I want to say is, you know, I think Phil Wise are going the caucus route.

I think he is strong with the insiders inside of the party.

He's shown up, he's been around the state, and I think that'll be clear when the results come out.

He seems to be making a push, but then we saw another poll come out that shows that he's behind the same, same story, where I think it's about messaging.

And how much time do we have between now and June?

I'll close by saying, I also agree.

The caucuses need to go.

It's a lot of resources, for a very few people.

And some of these are like 14 people is considered really good, not three.

Okay.

Well, what was the one you were like this week?

A lot to unpack.

I want to touch on all these things, but I'll start with the caucuses.

I went with Phil Wise here to the Denver Democratic caucuses on Tuesday night.

It was packed and I hadn't seen it.

That that packed before.

And I think they had about doubled the turnout, which was like 2000 people versus the thousand.

So, relatively speaking, it' a small slice of the electorate.

So, you know, both these folks are right.

This idea that, it's representative of the broad electorate is is not true.

I've always described, you know, the caucus in Assembly, folks is like, if you boil the Democratic and Republican parties down for 24 hours, whoever was left would be the peopl that show up at these caucuses.

And so they tend to be kind of the most partizan.

One thing that's interesting to note is there's almost a complete reverse correlation.

If you win the the caucus and assembly proces and don't go through signatures and you're in your contested primary, you always lose.

I mean, you've seen it happen on the Republican side.

You've seen it happen on the Democratic side.

Jared Polis wasn't at the top of the ticket in 2018.

He lost the Assembly process and became governor.

So don't read too much into kin of how this process plays out.

Finally, I do want to address the poll in the in the Democratic primary for U.S.

Senate with Hickenlooper and Julian Solis.

I really don't understand the spin.

I'm trying to sa that's a positive thing for for, Senator Gonzalez, I have the numbers here before the messaging came out, it was Hickenlooper at 45%, Gonzalez at 13%.

She doesn't have very much money.

I just that to me spells disaster for her campaign.

And you have to remember that that messaging in order to get her into a place where she's competitive with him, it assumes that every single Democratic primary vote will get the messaging from her and the anti Hickenlooper messaging.

She doesn't have the money.

She probably doesn't have the time to do that.

I don't think she has the volunteers for it.

I think this kind of forecasts a really bad election night for her.

Okay.

And Patti what to play off the caucu and the petitioning with people.

When people don't have money they need to get their message out somehow.

And the petition in some ways helps because if you've got enough volunteers to get out and really petition for you, you're actually touching people who are not the boiled down version of the Democratic and Republican Party, but just people on the street who might not have some thought of it.

So it's not a bad way to use your time and your volunteers to get out there and get the se if you can actually get enough petition signatures.

I have to agree.

The caucus is just it' charming, but it's antiquated.

And in this day and age with how you communicate, you don't need to gather in somebody's living roo or I don't know where a thousand people were because, yeah, yeah, schools.

You just don't need to do it.

Back to Griswold.

She spoke, but she misspoke on purpose.

I mean, it is these are written documents that she's or her resume and campaign, things.

You're not just speaking off the cuff or, say, Misspeaking on this show.

She did say that she had argued before the Supreme Court, and it's not the case, and it's not how that case was filed.

And it was indeed Phil Weiser who was arguing the case.

So she needs to be a little more careful.

It's not the first time she's misspoken.

And let's not forget, she had her own election password issue, too.

So we need our public officials to be a little more careful.

Okay.

Could Denver land the 202 Democratic National Convention?

It's in the top five now.

Party officials say that a city's commitment to democratic values really matters.

But hosting also requires close coordination with the federal government on security and logistics.

And with Denver pushing back on the administration twice in the last week over immigration enforcement, does this somehow make it difficult for Denver to get the hosting job, or does it help?

I will start with Ian.

I think the Denver has a reall good chance of getting the DNC not only hosting it.

Before.

I had a chance to go to the Chicago one, the most walkin I've ever done at a conference.

It was ridiculous and super hot.

I think that we have a tight downtown core.

I think tha we have the facilities to do it.

I've been in meetings with mayor Mike Johnston where he' been having these conversations.

You know, maybe, maybe people don't know this, but the first DNC is what launched Denver Recycle, our first bike sharing, you know, effort.

And so it actually propelled forward a lot of the sustainability efforts.

And in the administration here in Denver, I look at that as a point in time wher a lot of people came together.

I think there's a lot of excitement.

We have strong DNC members.

I ran to be a DNC member a couple years ago, came up a couple votes short, but the people were there for going on a regular basis.

Are doing a great job representing Colorado.

I think we have a good job.

You do.

Denver is very different from the last time we hosted, that is for sure.

All right.

What do you think?

I don't understand why we would ever get this because Democrats don't need help in Colorado.

To me, you know, if you want to build the base in a state like Philadelphia or, sorry, Pennsylvania you know, do it in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh or something like that in a place where Democrats need help.

But, you know, more power to to the Democrats if they want to do it here.

I think it'd be super fun to cover.

I wasn't around in 2008, but I've always I've heard stories and and they be super fun as a local reporter to cover it, cover a DNC or RNC.

So if it happens, good news for me, I guess, because i definitely did change the tide.

Yeah, we had been voting fo Bush in Colorado and then after.

Right.

I mean, the DNC was held in Colorado in 2008 when the Democratic Party wasn't doing super well here.

Right?

And it was, you know you could argue that it was part of the tide changing, in the state.

I just don't see I don't know what benefits Democrats get nationally from holding it here.

But, like I said, be fun for me, so go for it.

And it was a great time in 2008.

So Atlanta for example, Philadelphia, those are states that cities and states that really could use the boost Democrats are not going to lose in Colorado.

But it was a great time to think about 2008 and what it was like.

And Barack I think the best argument for us getting it would be the spiri of bringing back Barack Obama.

And when you suddenly felt like you were a party of change and inclusivity and the future, which I don't think anyone in the Democratic Part is exemplifying right now, but, I mean, they had to move Barack Obama's acceptance speech because there was so much interest.

So it went to Empower Field.

It, it was just amazing the energy that it brought the town.

So there's no question it would be great to do it.

I'm not as optimistic as Ian is.

That will get it, but it was a blast.

I was there that day.

It was awesome.

Yeah, I was a teacher and, one of my parents was like, hey, I got two extra passes and I went.

It was so cool.

Yeah, I mean, the lines were long.

I don't remember that, but I remember that I went to the beach.

I wasn't actually in town when that happened.

But I hope they.

I hope we have it here in Denver.

I mean, the fact is, is it, people are going to use our restaurants, they're going to stay in our hotels.

It's going to be a great financial boost for the city.

I might even do, you know, Airbnb and rent out rent a room at my house.

There's so many idea, you know, a lot of entrepreneurship.

It's just great.

It's great for the city.

It doesn't matter whether it's Republicans or Democrats having that number of people come, civic minded people who want to, participat and and be part of our city for, for a time.

I just think, let's do it.

Party on.

When it comes to affordability, Colorado lawmakers have empowered local governments to acquire businesses, pay more through higher minimum wage.

Right?

Yet this week, legislators declined to require certain businesses to charge less.

They rejected a proposal that would have cracked down on the high prices customers have to pay.

When we don't have much choice, like places like the airport or at games.

Jesse, let's start there with this captive audience pricing and the bill that would have put a halt to it.

Were you surprised that happened a little bit?

I mean, I call thi the high cost of Hotdogs, Bill.

I tried to frame it, tr to frame it through that lens.

This was a big part of progressive Democrats cost of living package at the Capitol this year.

I think you could probably argue that it was the centerpiece of that package.

And, you know, I think it faced some uphill battles or a lot of questions from th business community about like, how do you regulate this?

How does it look?

I'm not aware of a similar law anywhere else in the country.

And so I think it would have been kind of Colorado going first.

It was a pretty bold move.

So I think it always had a difficult, path to, to becoming law in the state.

But one thin that's interesting about it is this was really lik the first big progressive bill, the capital this year, to fail.

And I thin there's going to be a few more, but it wasn't really framed necessarily in that vein when it lost at the, at the Capitol.

But it was one of thes first things that kind of shows these divisions amongst Democrats.

A few Democrat joined with all the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee to reject it.

This is a theme that you're going to see, you've seen in recent years.

It's going to continue to happen at the Capitol this year.

Okay.

And Patty Wesson reported on a recently released look into what restaurants are facing in Colorado and in Denver.

And the high cost of wage is what's really been hurting, among other things, the restaurants.

Well so the high cost of ingredients, which everyone and all supplies, which everyone around the country is seeing.

Oddly, in Denver, high cost of rent, even in areas that are very have a lot of vacancies, but rents are still going up.

But then the really hotly debated labor cost, especially tip minimum wage, which was an issue at the legislature last year, but they kind of kicke the can down the road by saying municipalities could deal with it.

Edgewater decided to put a lid on the tip to minimum wage.

It's going to come up in Denve and it gets it's a very heated argument between labor and the business people who are out there.

What I was really interested in is when we wrote a story, I wrote a story about it's about a 68 70 page report by Visit Denver.

And it's a really a thousand interviews.

I think they did so much work on this.

The two who are in charge of it, the response from our readers was just it costs too much.

We don't care why it cost too much.

We just can't afford to go out and eat.

It was really a tellin about how the economy is going, really.

When you think about it, it's regarded as a luxury to be able to go out to eat or I guess to be able to go out and get an expensive hot dog.

But people are they're just strapped.

I said, well, I'm glad the bill was shot down just because price controls are always a bad idea.

These restaurants and, and other businesses that are looking at the airport or at the ballpark to pay a really high rents just to be there, and if you put in price controls, then you're going to end up with shortages.

It ends up putting, you know, kind of a domino effect of a pernicious economic, consequences.

So it's never a good idea in a sense.

Minimum wages, particularly high minimum wages, even though they are put in place driven by compassion, they are another type of price control.

And they end up having some of these repercussions, including driving up prices.

Businesses go out of business and it's a problem.

I think if the legislature really wants to make a difference, what they ought to do is look at reports that come up, come out of places like the Chamber of Commerce and others that show that our regulatory regime is part of the problem, part of the reason that we're seeing these high prices.

And I mean, heck, it's hard to go out to dinner.

It's hard to make dinner at home sometimes.

Groceries are expensive.

Everything is expensive.

The inflation years under Biden, all of the money that was borrowed and thrown into the economy, that's still a problem.

But also the regulatory regime that keeps these prices artificially high.

Okay.

And well, I think it's interesting that both the worker that work for these restaurants and the restaurants are complaining about rent.

I mean, it's out of control.

And these base wages that people are talking about could be the difference between somebody making rent or maybe having extra money to g spend at a different restaurant.

And so talking about the domino effect of what this is, I will say that the labor community I think is, is down for this fight.

They didn't fight this hard, to see it get eroded.

Interestingly, I know the reporting on the the stadiums and the airpor and stuff from from Nine news.

I thought was really good.

But ag candidates I like me did man on the street interviews when he first launched his committee in front of the ball arena and they've all arenas announced like family pricing.

And so I was like, hey, like, you know, if you're calling attention to this draws these large businesses into a way of addressing that but these monopolies do have you captivated.

And it's even true with this AI algorithms and how they're getting u on demand pricing for tickets.

That' just absolutely out of control.

So I think some of that needs to be reined in.

Whether or not this piece of legislation was the right piece, I honestly didn't have a chance to read it myself.

I will say, though, wage theft is also on the rise.

I mean, it's coming up all the time.

This is something Denver auditors brought up.

And so interestingly, I started reading the report after I saw this, and then I saw some restaurant tours come out online who are like, I own a business and I need my workers to be able to be able to afford rent and come into work every single day.

And so they actually spoke out against the rollback.

So I think it's going to be mixed until we see how it plays out.

Okay.

All right.

Now let's go across the tabl and talk about some of the highs and the low that we've witnessed this week.

We'r going to start on the low point so we can end on a good note.

I'm going to start with Patty.

So Jolene Clark, the head of Parks and Recreation, was on the hot seat this week when he met with a city council committee that had a lot of questions about what parks and Rec is doing, as do we like.

That Birdseed collective, which was running an up here in Globeville, had done a great job in the global center, lost the contract.

Whoever's gotten it hasn't been in there yet.

So that is another disservice to this neighborhood.

Also, volunteers for Outdoor Colorado, which has been so intrinsic to keeping not just beautiful things around the state, but really enlivening Washington Park.

They too, are losing their space there.

It's been extended, but it's another one.

Why exactly did Parks and Rec need to get rid of them?

All right, Kristen, some scary polling just came out of pew.

It said that 53% of Americans rated their countryman's morals and ethics as either bad or very bad, or I should say somewhat bad or very bad.

Compar that to Canadians, for example, that only rated 7% people that, well, only a few members of our society are bad people.

I think the poll is way off in terms of how people perceive their fellow Americans, but the divisivenes has certainly contributed to it.

And I think it's a bit of a warning sign.

All right.

I heard reporting that had interviews with the state climatologist from, I believe, Colorado State University, who said that this winter in the lack of precipitation we ha is the ranking in the top five with several years from the Dust Bowl.

And that is scary.

That's very scary.

State budget.

They're debating it, starting to draft it.

The bloodletting will begin in the next few days and it's going to be bad.

Okay.

Something good.

Patty, please.

Earnest House, who's done som great work for Native Americans.

He was the head of the Colorad Commission for Indian Affairs.

Is now going to be in charge of the embassy.

The indigenous, sorry, the city's indigenous embassy paid for by vibrant bond going into Green Valley Ranch.

Okay.

Among the fabulous restaurants on Federal in Denver is Tony Fir.

I, I thought it was fantastic.

And it's a cool restaurant an just, any of the places on on, whether it's for Mexican food or other kinds of food, visit federal.

It's a great place.

Okay.

All right.

Minus for the endin or at least progress on major, construction projects that are taking place.

They just raised the arches for the bus rapid transit on Colfax and the Bluebird district and others on Colfax have really been suffering.

We we should have learned that lesson where we're here in the studio and how it harms the black community in five points.

When they came through into this project without enough support for businesses.

There also was a project in Wheat Ridge in Arvada on Wadsworth that's been forever.

And I wrote it yesterday and it was done.

And I was like, oh, this is so awesome.

So that's good news to see the projects moving forward.

That is good.

All right, Jesse, the legislative session is about halfway over, which means I'm that much closer to leaving my windowless Capitol basement office, so.

Okay, well, that sounds good.

All right.

My high.

A couple of weeks ago, I. My high was celebrating all the athletes who competed and medaled at the Winter Olympics including all the, Coloradans.

And then, I received a note from a CIO viewer named Rick who pointed out, because I had mentioned ho I missed watching the Olympics, how the Paralympics starts this weekend.

We have 72 athletes on team USA going to compete at the Milan Cortina Paralympics, and there are nine who call Colorado home and are hoping to medal in either para alpine, para snowboarding, sled hockey and wheelchair curling and actually, our curling Paralympian is a 70 year old from Westminster.

So we are rooting for you, Pamela Wilson.

And the same goes for Jasmine, Brittany, Ralph Maleek, Zachary, Mike, Kyle and Thomas.

You can watch other Coloradan compete online, of course, but also NBC, CNBC and USA network through March.

The 15th, I believe it is at Wednesday.

Thank you, insiders, thank you so much for coming and leaving the state Capitol in your windowless office.

We appreciate it.

Thank you for watching or listening to our podcast.

I'm Kyle Dyer.

I will see you next week here on PBS 12.

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