Colorado Politics presents eight contributed essays offering guidance to Colorado’s next chief executive from some of the state’s best political minds. CLICK HERE for more.

I was honored to serve the people of Colorado in the Owens administration, first in his cabinet as executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and then as lieutenant governor. I am proud to be Colorado’s first Republican woman elected lieutenant governor. We achieved a lot while we were in office and I’m proud of how we guided the state for the benefit of all Coloradans.

When I was first elected lieutenant governor, Republicans controlled the Colorado House, Senate, and the Governor’s Office. Within a year, Democrats took control of both houses of the General Assembly. It remained this way for the rest of my tenure as lieutenant governor.

Colorado is a unique state in that we are closely divided among Republican, Democrat and unaffiliated voters. While it may be enough to mobilize a party’s base and a majority of unaffiliates to your side to win an election, it is something entirely different to govern the state in the face of strong differences.

It’s tempting to buy in to the partisanship that is ripping our country apart. After all, haven’t the voters given the winning candidate a mandate to advance the candidate’s agenda at all costs? Perhaps, but more importantly we must recognize that far more unites us as Coloradans than that which divides us, and this should guide the public policy decisions of any administration.

Each morning, in classrooms across the state, children, with their hands over their hearts, say the Pledge of Allegiance with those important words, “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Indivisible is a word that isn’t often used in our vocabulary these days. We can’t even watch football without highlighting our political differences. Hillary Clinton recently said, “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for.”

This is the wrong approach, it’s been proven wrong in the past, and it will be the wrong approach in the future.

Two of my favorite political heroes – William Wilberforce and Bill Armstrong – faced fierce opposition to their public policy positions. But they were experts in the art of persuasion in a civil and winsome way. They demonstrated that we don’t need to abandon our principles to find ways to work respectfully together.

In the midst of the Jack Phillips lawsuit, Supreme Court nomination protests, vicious shout-downs and personal attacks, we have lost our sense of civic friendship. Can we disagree on the most pressing issues and still treat each other with dignity and respect? Can we be friends amid our deepest differences? I believe we can and, moreover, it’s critical to the future of Colorado that we find a way to do so.

Civic friendship requires us to recognize the humanity of our opponents. The Bible gives no qualifiers: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Moreover, it tells us to “pray for those in positions of authority.” The Bible does not say treat only those in your party with respect and pray only for those you agree with.

Civic friendship also means that a disagreement over public policy is not grounds upon which to declare that a person has evil intent. The other side, no matter how misguided one may believe them to be, believes they are promoting what’s best for Colorado.

It appears that no party will have total political dominance in Colorado. Instead of dwelling on the differences, I recommend those in leadership work to honor what holds us together as “indivisible.”

How do we do that? The answer is found in the preamble of our Colorado Constitution: independence, justice, tranquility, common defense, general welfare, and the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

Let us return to these founding principles, strive to be indivisible, share in civic friendship, find ways to work together, seek to persuade, not harm. Effective leaders play an important role in ending bad behavior.

The next governor and all those in leadership should lend their voices to quickly and consistently condemn the rhetoric of hate and in doing so, be good examples for our children. If we, especially our leaders do so, Colorado’s future will be bright.