We get it. The gubernatorial race should be about race. It could bode well for Republican Walker Stapleton if voters focus on economic policy.

The New York Times notoriously played the race card first with a crooked story about Stapleton’s great-grandfather, a five-term Denver mayor in the early 1900s, belonging to the Ku Klux Klan. The Times conveniently ignores the former Democratic mayor’s denunciation and betrayal of the Klan, and his subsequent ejection by the group.

The Denver Post followed by falsely reporting the long-deceased great-grandfather’s membership in the Klan “while serving five terms as mayor.” The Post likewise ignores Stapleton’s raid on the Klan, ridding the police department of Klansmen, and the fact his membership did not survive one of five terms.

Denver 9 News anchor Kyle Clark played a different race card this month by inviting NBC’s Chuck Todd to psychoanalyze Stapleton. After all, a TV man in Washington must know all about a Colorado candidate’s motives.

Clark: “Chuck Todd, moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, told us today that Colorado’s Republican candidate for governor, Walker Stapleton, might just be holding onto his alliance with Tom Tancredo – despite Tancredo’s defense of white nationalists – in order to send a message.”

Former five-term Colorado Congressman Tancredo served on the board of VDARE, an anti-immigration organization associated with white nationalism. He also supports Stapleton’s gubernatorial bid, as do nearly all Colorado Republicans who have held elective office. Stapleton has no affiliation with the VDARE.

Cut to Todd: “Maybe Walker Stapleton isn’t comfortable saying what needs to be said and he wants, um, sort of, um, an association that will help send that message to the Trump base.”

“That message”? Oh… racism.

Clark continued the narrative Sunday with a tweet about Stapleton, Tancredo, conservatives and the “lunatic fringe.”

In eight years of holding statewide office as Colorado treasurer, Stapleton has not uttered a hateful or racist word that we know of. He has fought to save pensions for teachers and opposed taxes that would disproportionately burden minorities and the middle class.

Those voting to help minorities won’t find a racist in Stapleton or Democratic challenger Jared Polis. That leaves policy.

Polis wants new taxes; Stapleton does not. High taxes mean greater struggles for low- and middle-income households, where most minorities reside.

Unlike Stapleton, Polis will scare the oil and gas industry out of Colorado. Sundance Energy left the state after Polis sued them in 2013 for placing a temporary rig across the road from the guest house of a secondary residence.

Polis backed a proposed 2014 ballot measure to prevent oil and gas drilling within 2,000 feet of homes. He dropped it at the urging of Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper, who understands the economic devastation of harming oil and gas.

The war on traditional energy harms minority households that remain at a disproportionate financial disadvantage. Low-income households cannot afford overly aggressive transitions to renewables, which show up as higher electric bills. They cannot afford losing good oil and gas jobs. This explains why Pueblo – a heavily minority Democratic stronghold – voted for President Donald Trump. He stumped in Pueblo, promising to end the war on coal.

The American Petroleum Institute reports Colorado’s oil and gas industry, directly and indirectly, provides 232,000 Colorado jobs. The sector contributes $23.1 billion in wages and $31.4 billion to the state’s economy. The institute expects minorities to make up nearly 40 percent of the oil and gas workforce nationally by 2035, with African Americans and Hispanics filling more than a quarter of the traditional energy management, business, and financial positions.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports jobs in natural gas and oil pay $50,000 more than the average American wage.

Voters who genuinely care about minorities should not fret over idiotic fixations on one candidate’s ancestor and Republican colleague. They should examine each candidate’s economic platforms and choose the man with the greatest promise for households that struggle to get by.