Gov. John Hickenlooper sounds a lot different than he did on Election Day when it comes to Donald Trump.

He told Colorado Springs’ KRDO NewsChannel 13 Tuesday that it’s time for the state to listen up to President Trump.

“He is the president, we owe him our respect and we make sure that we listen carefully.” Hickenlooper told the the station’s political reporter, Eric Fink

The governor has said for weeks he’s ready to put the partisanship of the election in the past and work with both parties to make Colorado a model for results from cooperation.

The governor has come a long way back to the middle to meet with Trump and Republicans. I still have my audio from a campaign stop in Denver on Election Day.

“I don’t do a lot of negative ads,” Hickenlooper, a close Hillary Clinton ally, said at a small Denver rally in a strip mall parking lot. “But on the other side you have a problem in every sense. You have someone who has bragged about what can only be defined as sexual assault, who’s gone out and belittled Gold Star families, immigrants from all over the world, women in every way imaginable-I mean, man, if you were trying to find all the characteristics you wanted to make sure did not ever exist in a presidential candidate, it would probably be Donald Trump.”

So if Colorado’s moderate governor can come this far back, can Republicans come that far to meet him? The president-elect vowed to spend heavily on infrastructure, namely roads and bridges, and that’s an issue where Colorado Republicans and Democrats have a common interest, but different views on raising the money. It behooves the governor to work with Trump.

“Wouldn’t it be a nice thing if Colorado became the first state, maybe the only state, to go out and say, ‘Alright, in this state, we’ll go work on those things we can agree on and we’re going to get stuff done; we’re going to rebuild our infrastructure and improve our training and education and make sure our economy remains the strongest, most rapidly expanding in the country’?” Hickenlooper mused to reporters in his office two days after the election.