Successful political leadership is about making apt choices.

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis has accumulated a track record over the last four year of making solid decisions while guiding the state through seemingly endless crises.

His challenger, Republican Heidi Ganahl, in less than a year of campaigning for governor, has offered the public a litany of alarming judgments, creating her own endless crises.

Long before becoming a Colorado congressman and then governor, Polis boasted a record in the region for pushing his cherished cause forward: providing quality education for everyone, and especially people often left behind.

Many in the region first became acquainted with Polis not just as an energized member of the state’s board of education, but as the creator of the New America School at Lowry, in Aurora.

The unique charter school was created as a haven for minorities, immigrants and refugees struggling with jobs, real-life challenges and wanting a chance at education and a diploma.

While the equity gap in education was widening when the school opened in 2004, Polis, even then, was working to narrow it.

That same mission became a dominant theme in Polis’ campaign for governor four years ago.

Polis was steadfast in insisting that, as governor, he would evoke best practices to better serve minority and underprivileged communities, insisting that education is our communities’ most powerful equalizer.

And he did. Colorado now boasts free, full-day kindergarten to all families who want it. And last year, Polis helped push through free and expanded free pre-school offerings, especially for those families struggling to provide it. 

Research and data have long shown that quality education is paramount to closing equity, health and earnings gaps among state residents, and quality early childhood education, even more so.

It’s accurate to say that without Polis driving those projects, they wouldn’t have happened when they did. In a state vastly underfunding public education, this was no small feat.

Decisions based on data, fairness and individual freedoms have long been hallmarks of Polis as a legislator in Congress, and especially as Colorado governor.

As a tsunami of confusion, fear and fragmentation enveloped Colorado while the pandemic swept into the state, Polis was a steady and successful hand at guiding the state through a blizzard of threats and unknowns.

His success then, and in most areas of policy even now, came from using vetted and transparent data as his compass.

Many federal and state agencies virtually had to invent critical health and economic policies on the fly as the world moved along through the pandemic. Publicly navigating mountains of changing data allowed Polis to build public trust and confidence in his leadership and decisions.

The result is a state that weathered the worst of the pandemic far better than almost all others, and it’s one that now boasts one of the strongest economies in the nation.

While we have sometimes energetically disagreed with Polis’ policy decisions, especially those that often favor individual or local autonomy over options prioritizing the good of the pack, his defenses are based on pragmatism and data, not politics.

Ganahl, currently an elected University of Colorado Regent, has proven herself to be anathema to that style of leadership.

Repeatedly, she has armed her campaign with populist and ill-conceived sound bites, claims and propositions.

She blames Polis for climbing inflation, which rages not just across the nation, but across the world. She blames Polis for rising crime, which also plagues nearly every state and especially large city in the country.

Ganahl has proposed a bevy of plans to cut or cancel taxes while simultaneously rocketing spending for roads. She has been pressed repeatedly by the media to produce even a rudimentary proposal and offered only vagaries and word salad.

The famously conservative Dean Singleton, former publisher of the Denver Post, in a broadcast interview of Ganahl last week called her scheme “bullshit.”

Ganahl has made clear she would work with anti-abortion-rights proponents and lawmakers to undo Colorado’s legislated protections for women. Meanwhile, Polis has unequivocally defended women’s reproductive rights in Congress and as Colorado governor.

Even at the outset of her campaign, after winning the GOP nomination in June, she hobbled her effort by selecting Danny Moore as her running mate, an outed and unapologetic election denier. Just months before, Moore was unanimously removed by both Democrat and Republican members of the state’s congressional redistricting committee for his outlandish social media remarks about the “stolen” 2020 presidential election.

Both he and Ganahl have dismissed repeated queries about his remarks or regrets, saying only that he now agrees that President Joe Biden is the commander in chief.

And just last week, Ganahl used a whirlwind tour of TV and radio media interviews to promote a repeatedly debunked conspiracy theory that public schools statewide are rife with children who identify as cats, or “furries,” wreaking havoc in public schools.

Her only proof for promoting the bizarre and dangerous dog-whistle attack on LGTBQ students is unfounded claims by apparently similarly unbelievable allies.

Almost daily, Ganahl has shown a remarkable and alarming lack of sound judgment and ability to make reasonable decisions based on facts and reality.

It would be difficult to see a clearer choice for Colorado voters than to elect Polis for another term to continue leading the state toward a better future for everyone.

We share Polis’ vision for a safer, more affordable and more equitable life for everyone here – attainable by pushing pragmatic, solid solutions based on real data and real life.

Voters should undoubtedly retain Polis as governor for another term.

Aurora Sentinel Editorial Board