A wise man once remarked that the real test of a governor is his willingness to turn down and reject the pleadings of political friends and allies.

That gentleman knew something of what he spoke. He occupied the corner-office executive chambers on the main floor of the State Capitol for three terms. For six years, he was my boss. For the 40 years that followed, he was my friend and mentor. Last name was Lamm.

Saying “no” to one’s friends is periodically required of any politician serving in executive office. It goes with the territory, even as some leaders have proven themselves far more willing than others.

Gov. Roy Romer often referred to his job as one of “calling the balls and strikes.” A Romer aide from years back recalled a friend and donor coming to the office to request a favorable decision on some regulatory matter in the state bureaucracy. The individual asked Romer to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Romer pushed the paper back across the table and told his friend to put it back in his pocket. Per the aide, Romer forcefully admonished his friend, “Look, handling state business this way is not the world I live in.”

Romer’s successor, Gov. Bill Owens, the only Republican to occupy the office in over half a century, remarked that, “Once elected, my job was to serve the entire entity, the entire state, regardless of whether they voted for me.” The most memorable deviation from his political base occurred in his final year in office when, despite his cultivated credentials as a fiscal conservative, he teamed with civic leaders of both parties to sponsor Referendum C, a five-year TABOR timeout.

With the question of whether the legal drinking age should be 18 or 21 a hot topic at the time, Owens stood firm in his support for the higher limit despite a longtime friendship and political alliance with the Coors family.

Gov. Bill Ritter’s single term was significantly shaped by simmering tensions with organized labor and with some prominent Democrats in the legislature who often carried the labor agenda. Early in Ritter’s tenure, he vetoed a union organizing bill that he thought was detrimental to the state’s economic agenda.

True to his personality and political brand, John Hickenlooper, during his years as governor, often sought to resolve differences through collaboration. Still, even with fellow Democrats controlling at least one legislative body in each year of Hickenlooper’s governorship, his veto pen got plenty of exercise. In his final year in that office, he set a personal record with nine vetoes.

Which brings us to the current era and Gov. Jared Polis. A bit of an iconoclast and having financed his own election, Polis arrived in office with fewer attachments than your standard politico. He also governed during an era of unrivaled Democratic control of the Capitol.

Given that dominance, Polis has often been called upon to play referee between the competing wings of his own coalition. Notwithstanding his Boulder roots, he frequently sided with more established interests in reining in his party’s progressive wing. Examples abound, including his vetoes of changes to the Labor Peace Act and the wage theft bill.

Polis has stood in the way of a number of progressive-driven measures to regulate the tech sector and to decriminalize or lower penalties for various criminal offenses. Never a wallflower, Polis has been an elbows-out governor for whom “no” comes rather easily.

But all of that is prologue. Colorado is in the midst of picking its next chief executive. The Republican primary is an occasionally entertaining sideshow. The next governor will be whoever emerges victorious from the Democratic contest between Phil Weiser and Michael Bennet.

The policy differences between Weiser and Bennet are perhaps fewer than the campaign hype would suggest. For those without a strong rooting interest, a good measure might be to weigh their instinct and proclivity for drawing a line in the sand and declining the demands of political backers.

Will each of them go to accede to labor demands around a rewrite of the Labor Peace Act? How do they define the balance between labor interests and Colorado’s economic climate?

As Colorado slides in various tests of business climate, how far would each Bennet and Weiser go to restrain the push of progressives in their ranks for ever more regulation? If a bill lands on their desk to require that data centers operate exclusively with renewable energy, do they sign or veto it?

Where does each put their foot down and draw the line in the pursuit of TABOR reform? How do they respond if legislative Democrats advance a go-it-alone, single-payer health plan? Short of that, how do they balance the push for expansions in health insurance coverage (for weight loss, as one example) with the need to hold the line on premiums?

As Democrats in the legislature continue to pass sentencing reductions and expansion of diversion programs, do Weiser or Bennet go along or ink up the veto pen?

From Romer to Polis, Democratic governors have been a backstop against their own party members who regularly seek to constrain or eliminate charter schools. Would Bennet continue this tradition? What is Weiser’s commitment?

Saying “yes” is rather effortless for politicians. Issuing a firm “no,” especially to those in your own camp, is far more difficult and requires gubernatorial backbone.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for Colorado Politics and The Gazette. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann