Does anyone seriously believe Gov. Jared Polis and his massive Democratic legislative majorities would have created the fiscal monstrosity known as Proposition HH if they didn’t think Colorado is a permanently solid-blue state?

Absolute power corrupts absolutely and rather than a thoughtful debate during the 2023 legislative session on how to deal with huge increases in property taxes on homeowners, Polis and his compliant Democrats rammed through a farcical “fix” during the waning days of the session. Prop HH does nothing to seriously restrain property taxes but does destroy TABOR tax refunds while growing state government.

9News anchor Kyle Clark, who is certainly no apologist for Republicans, openly asked whether Polis and legislative Democrats think Colorado voters are dumb when Prop HH cynically steals money from taxpayers’ TABOR refund pocket and puts it in their other pocket and call it a property tax cut. The answer is clear. Yes, Democrats do think Colorado voters are dumb.

Polis and his Democratic stooges believe there are no political repercussions for this Prop HH farce because Colorado has moved so far to the left in the past three elections. Democrats now control the state Senate by a margin of 23-to-12 and the House of Representatives by 46-to-19. Polis was reelected in 2022 by 20 points, 59% to 39%.

The 2022 election came on the heels of defeated former President Donald Trump losing Colorado to Joe Biden by 14 points in 2020 and Democrats winning every statewide election in 2018. Trump lost by four points to Hillary Clinton in Colorado in 2016.

These Democratic victories were driven by a dramatically changed Colorado electorate after 800,000 people moved to the state during the decade of 2011 to 2021. These newcomers drove up the number of unaffiliated votes to 48% of the electorate while Democrats are 27% and Republicans trail at 24%. And they voted against Republicans at all levels due to their antipathy for Trump.

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But Polis and the Democrats are playing with fire if they think the good times will inevitably continue to roll when voters consider Prop HH. It is one thing for Republican candidates to be tainted with the stench of Trump but quite another when a ballot question is considered on its merits.

Despite being miserably outnumbered, the Republican legislative leadership fought valiantly to kill Prop HH. Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, House Minority Leader Mike Lynch, Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, House Assistant Minority Leader Rose Pugliese and many other Republican legislators offered principled opposition to the Polis-Democratic scheme to steal TABOR refunds.

Even some Democrats are put off by how densely complicated and “inequitable” Prop HH is. Trish Zornio is one of the Democratic women who were shoved out of the 2020 U.S. Senate race when John Hickenlooper decided he was entitled to the Democratic nomination after his laughable presidential campaign failed.  Zornio asks, “What in the heck Gov. Jared Polis and the Democrats were thinking in offering up such a complex and inequitable tax solution to voters without any reasonable alternatives on the horizon.”

As disgusting as Polis and Democratic legislators are in this debate, some Republicans are culpable for creating a political environment where something like Prop HH can emerge.

The Colorado Republican Party has made itself impotent and irrelevant by pushing Trump’s stolen-election conspiracy theories and his defense of the rioters who attacked the United States Capitol. The current party “leadership” spends most of its time trying to ostrasize alleged “RINOS” (Republicans in name only) from the party while seeking to deny more than 900,000 Republicans and 1.7 million unaffiliated voters the right to vote in a Republican primary. 

They even invited the ultimate MAGA stolen-election conspiracist, Kari Lake, to speak at a Colorado Republican dinner. Lake still contends she is the real governor of Arizona after losing in 2022.

Filling the void left by the state party’s incompetence and irrelevance are organizations which stay focused on fiscally conservative public policies that actually attract voters rather than repelling them.

The Independence Institute and Advance Colorado Action have the intellectual, financial and political heft to challenge Prop HH. They are methodically dismantling the dishonest claims by Polis and his Democratic legislators and putting them on the defensive.

The only thing going for the Prop HH proponents is their arrogant capacity to misrepresent the facts and their ability to raise almost unlimited money from leftist donors and organizations.

Colorado voters will see through this Polis/Democratic Prop HH fraud and force Polis to call a special legislative session to responsibly deal with property taxes. Otherwise, Coloradans will continue to pay high property taxes while their TABOR refunds disappear.

Dick Wadhams is a Republican political consultant and a former Colorado Republican state chairman.