When Gov. Jared Polis leads, as Colorado’s highest-ranking member of the Democratic Party, he gets good results. His promise to veto rent control serves as the latest example. We can only hope it emboldens him to lead more often.

The results of the governor’s actions are what matter – not the optics or the appeasement of a party. True leaders tell their parties what to do. Followers follow political parties.

The governor appears to care about poor people and leads accordingly. At least in terms of those who survive pregnancy, labor and delivery, and unregulated “postnatal” care under a Polis law to help “people of color” and “low-income” families terminate pregnancies.

Aside from signing North America’s most anti-poor abortion bill, Polis has consistently worked for the benefit of low-income people who leave the maternity ward alive. Polis started a charter school for homeless children. He wants low-income, homeless, and immigrant children to enjoy high-level educations traditionally limited to children of high-income households. Those life-affirming actions command respect.

To Polis, this is a conviction. He consistently stands up to his party’s opposition to charter schools and other elements of educational freedom. The party opposes school choice because the teachers’ unions prefer the old one-size-fits-all attendance-center model and the unions fund Democratic campaigns. Polis doesn’t care. He has enough money and backbone to stand firm for something he considers more important than acceptance in the Democratic cocktail circuit.

Polis showed a similar conviction when he recently promised to veto a bill that included rent control for mobile home residents. It worked like a charm. Legislative leaders struck the rent-control provisions of House Bill 1287 – which would have capped annual rent increases for mobile homes.

Politics is power. The veto pen is a primary source of a governor’s authority. Don’t waste time and effort on a bill that can’t get past the governor’s desk. Give him something he will sign. That’s why anything that survives the governor’s desk becomes his responsibility – whether it improves lives, burdens the masses, saves lives or kills.

The rent control veto threat was probably easy. As a businessman – and a somewhat wayward protégé of Reaganomics architect Art Laffer – Polis has a more sophisticated grasp of economics than his fellow Democrats. He plays Monopoly, they play Candy Land.

Polis knows rent control is whacko economics. It looks like financial relief for those who struggle with rent. In the long run it always backfires on those least able to afford shelter. That genuinely bothers the governor.

Rent control is no different than any price control. When authorities restrain the value of a good, service, or commodity we get less of it. Former Republican President Richard Nixon inadvertently proved this by capping oil prices and causing fuel shortages in the 1970s.

Rent control has forever had the same effect. If we restrain the value of low-end housing, fewer will provide it. Restrain the value of mobile homes or the lots they sit on, and the owners eventually sell the parks to developers of strip malls and McMansions.

Alternatively, rent caps entrench renters fortunate enough to have rent-controlled properties. That lowers turnover and burdens those looking for openings.

When it really matters to Polis – when he knows he is right and results outweigh all other considerations – he uses or threatens the mighty power of the pen. When he hesitates, putting party and politics ahead of principle, we get bad law in Candy Land.

Because of veto passivity, we have the country’s most extreme and gruesome “reproductive rights” bill – one that establishes dangerous and intentional legal ambiguity. He could have and should have demanded a less extreme, more precise bill.

Veto resistance gave us multiple “criminal justice reforms” that have our violent crime and overdose rates soaring. It lowered energy production with foolish regulatory schematics. It made Colorado the unlikely car-theft capital of the country. The list goes on.

The Democratic Party controls 100% of Colorado state government – every state agency, every statewide office, both chambers of the legislature, both U.S. Senate seats, the CU Board of Regents, and the Colorado State Board of Education. This has led to political overreaches unlike anything Colorado has seen in 150 years. Colorado’s quality of life is in decline, not on the rise.

Extreme politics is bad politics, whether imposed by the right or left. As governor, Polis has an obligation to ensure Coloradans get reasonable and practical governance that considers the interests of all. We get it when he forces moderation on his party with the threat of a veto. We get it when he saves us from rent control. When he leads, he succeeds. To the peril of his legacy and his constituents, Polis does not do this often enough.

Colorado Springs Gazette editorial board