Neil Gorsuch has a lot to live up to – in conservative praise, liberal fears, a legacy for Colorado and his family name.

The native son was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court Friday after two bruising months of partisan politics over President Donald Trump’s first nominee to the high court. Republicans held the seat open for more than a year.

Here is a man seemingly born to be a Coloradan on the national stage, something the state hasn’t had since Ken Salazar hung up his cowboy hat in the San Luis Valley in 2013 after four years as President Obama’s interior secretary.

Laid-back and outdoorsy, Gorsuch is more John Denver than opera-loving Antonin Scalia, the justice he will replace.

His family goes four generations into Colorado’s 141-year history, and during confirmation hearings last month, he spoke with a twinkle about fly fishing and skiing back home in the Rockies.

Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, a Republican from Yuma, called Friday a proud day for Colorado.

“Neil Gorsuch has a deep understanding of Western issues and future generations of Coloradans will benefit from his service to our country,” Gardner said. “Both Democrats and Republicans in Colorado who know Gorsuch best supported his confirmation to the court.”

Colorado roots run deep

For 10 years Gorsuch was a appeals court judge in a federal courthouse in Denver named for Byron White, a Colorado legend who was nominated to the high court by President Kennedy and served until 1992. White, who carried the nickname Whizzer, was a football legend, as well, leading the University of Colorado and later the NFL in rushing.

Though he might never be called Whizzer, Gorsuch knows first-hand that Washington politics is a full contact sport, and he didn’t need the last two months in the national spotlight to see it.

His mother, Anne Gorsuch Burford, was an assistant Denver district attorney in the 1970s before serving in the Colorado House. In 1981 she was picked by President Reagan as the first woman in charge of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Two years later, she was forced to resign over allegations of mismanagement over the government’s toxic-waste management program, “her reputation in tatters, young Neil was furious,” reported The New York Times.

His stepfather, Bob Burford, a former Colorado House speaker from the West Slope, was Reagan’s head of the Bureau of Land Management. He, too, was a lightning rod for liberal rage on public lands issues.

During nine years at the helm of the BLM, Burford was credited with the cease in hostilities over the “sagebrush rebellion,” a Western-based attempt to transfer federal lands to state and private hands. Gorsuch could see such a case, as Utah Republicans, and some Colorado leaders, seek to restart the rebellion over federal control.

Unlike and EPA or BLM leader, however, there’s not much that Gorsuch could do for specifically for Colorado that the court’s rulings wouldn’t do for any other state. It’s state pride more than pork barrel politics with an independent judiciary.

“It brings pride to Colorado and continues to put Colorado on the map, but Supreme Court justices don’t bring home bacon,” said Denver-based independent political analyst Eric Sondermann. “I don’t think there’s any direct impact on Colorado or Colorado politics.”

Jeff Hays, head of the state Republican Party, saw the right kind of politics at work, however.

“We’re all proud to be Colorado Republicans today,” said the state leader who is the former chair of the El Paso County GOP. “There’s reason to hope Justice Gorsuch will prove himself a worthy heir to Justice Scalia.

“The Senate Republicans deserve our thanks for refusing to allow President Obama to fill the vacancy in an election year. We send Republicans to Washington to fight for their constituents, and that’s what they did.”

Gorsuch perplexes Colorado’s left

Sam Gilchrist, executive director of the Colorado AFL-CIO, maintained that the seat was Obama’s to fill.

“Anyone other than Merrick Garland in that seat makes me furious,” he said. “With Gorsuch, I’m most concerned about another voice on the Supreme Court with a history of supporting the rights of corporations over the rights of people in terms of working-people issues. It makes the likelihood of repealing cases such as Citizens United less likely, and will have devastating affects for average citizens and workers for years to come.”

On environmental issues, Gorsuch sought to limit environmental groups participation in complicated cases, but he has not consistently ruled against conservation interests, the way conservative judges in his position might be expected to.

“I think that his record, although the number of cases is quite limited, shows that at times it has led to decisions that one might consider environmentally favorable, and about an equal number of times it has led to decisions some might think are environmentally unfavorable,” Donald Kochan, associate dean and professor at Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law, told Fortune magazine last month.

On March 20, Gorsuch spoke to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the diversity of cases he’s heard and rulings he’s made.

“I have decided cases for Native Americans seeking to protect tribal lands, for class actions like one that ensured compensation for victims of nuclear waste pollution by corporations in Colorado,” he said. “I have ruled for disabled students, prisoners, and workers alleging civil rights violations. Sometimes, I have ruled against such persons too.”

The new justice’s flannel shirt-and-fishing-pole image does little to appease Colorado conservationists concerned about the Trump agenda and some of Gorsuch’s not-green rulings.

“We are deeply skeptical about Judge Gorsuch’s environmental record, but hope that his Colorado roots allow him to reject the ideological attacks on our environment that we’ve seen thus far from the Trump administration,” said Pete Maysmith, head honcho at Conservation Colorado, the state’s largest environmental organization.

U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, the Republican from Colorado Springs who aligns on most things with President Trump, said Gorsuch’s legal credentials and respect for the Constitution will serve the state well.

“Justice Gorsuch is an outstanding representative of the great state of Colorado, and I am convinced that he will be an exceptional servant to the American people on the bench of the Supreme Court,” Lamborn said.