ATLANTA (AP) — From her earliest campaigns in California to her serving as President Joe Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris has honed an aggressive but calibrated approach to debates.

She tries to blend punch lines with details that build toward a broader narrative. She might shake her head to signal her disapproval while her opponent is speaking, counting on viewers to see her reaction on a split screen. And she has a go-to tactic to pivot debates back in her favor: saying she’s glad to answer a question as she gathers her thoughts to explain an evolving position or defend a past one.

Tuesday’s presidential debate will put the Democratic vice president’s skills to a test unlike any she’s faced. Harris faces former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, who will participate in his seventh general election debate since 2016 for an event that will be seen by tens of millions of viewers just as early voting in November’s election starts around the country.

People who have competed against Harris and prepared her rivals say she brings a series of advantages to the matchup, including her prosecutorial background juxtaposed with Trump being the first U.S. president convicted of felony crimes. Still, Harris allies warn that Trump can be a challenging and unpredictable opponent who veers between policy critiques, personal attacks, and falsehoods or conspiracy theories.

“She can meet the moment,” said Marc Short, who led Republican Vice President Mike Pence’s debate preparation against Harris in the fall of 2020. “She has shown that in different environments. I would not underestimate that in any way.”

Julian Castro, a Democrat who ran for president against Harris in the 2020 primary, said Harris blended “knowledge, poise and the ability to explain things well” to stand out during crowded primary debates.

“Some candidates get too caught up with trying to be catchy, trying to go viral,” Castro said. “She’s found a very good balance.”

Balancing narrative and detail

A former Harris aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about her approach, said the vice president views the events like a jury trial she would have led when she was district attorney in San Francisco or querying a judicial nominee on Capitol Hill as a U.S. senator. The idea, the former aide said, has always been to win the debate on merit while leaving more casual or piecemeal viewers with key takeaways.

“She understands that debates are about the individual interactions themselves but also about a larger strategy of offering a vision for what your leadership and style looks like,” said Tim Hogan, who led Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s 2020 primary debate preparation.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a political communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said Harris makes deductive arguments but folds them into a broader narrative — the same way she would talk to jurors.

“She states a thesis and then follows with fact, fact, fact,” Jamieson said.

Jamieson pointed to the 2020 vice presidential debate in which Harris hammered Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economy, and to her most memorable 2019 primary debate when she skewered Biden for how he had talked about race and institutional racism. She weaved her critique of Biden’s record with her own biography as a young, biracial student in the early era of school integration.

“That little girl was me,” Harris said in a widely circulated quip that punctuated her story about court-ordered busing that helped non-white students attend integrated schools.

“Most people who are good at the deductive argument aren’t good at wrapping that with an effective narrative,” Jamieson said. “She’s good at both.”

Landing memorable punches

Castro said Harris has a good feel for when to strike, a quality he traced to her trial experience. In 2019, as multiple Democratic candidates talked over one another, Harris sat back before getting moderators to recognize her.

“Hey, guys, you know what? America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how we’re going to put food on their table,” she said, taking control of the conversation and drawing applause.

When Harris faced Pence in 2020, it was a mostly civil, substantive debate. But she got in digs that framed Pence as a serial interrupter, as Trump had been in his first debate with Biden.

“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” she said at one point, with a stern look. At another: “If you don’t mind letting me finish, we can have a conversation.”

Finding traps in policy

Debates have sometimes put Harris on the defensive.

In the 2020 primary matches, Tulsi Gabbard, who this year has endorsed Trump, blitzed Harris over how aggressively she prosecuted nonviolent drug offenders as a district attorney.

That fall, Pence made Harris sometimes struggle to defend Biden’s positions. Now, her task will be to defend not just Biden’s record, but her own role in that record and what policies she would pursue as president.

Short, one of Pence’s top aides, noted that Republicans and the media have raised questions about more liberal positions Harris took in her 2020 primary campaign, especially on fracking, universal healthcare, reparations for slavery and how to treat migrants who cross the U.S. border illegally.

“We were surprised that she missed some opportunities (against Pence) when the conversation was centered around policy,” Short said.

Timing, silence and nonverbal communication

One of Harris’ earliest debate triumphs came in 2010 as she ran for California attorney general. Her opponent was asked about his plans to accept his public pension while still being paid a salary for a current public post.

“I earned it,” Republican Steve Cooley said of the so-called “double-dipping” practice.

Harris looked on silently, with a slightly amused look as Cooley explained himself. When moderators recognized her, she said just seven words – “Go for it, Steve. You earned it!” — in a serious tone but with a look that communicated her sarcasm. The exchange landed in her television ads within days.

“Kamala Harris is quite effective at nonverbal communication and knowing when not to speak,” Jamieson said.

The professor said Harris often will shake her head and, with other looks, telegraph her disapproval while her opponent is speaking. Then she smiles before retorting, or attacking, in a conversational tone.

“She defuses some of the argument that Trump makes that she is ‘a nasty woman,’ that she’s engaging in egregiously unfair behavior, because her nonverbal presentation is actually undercutting that line of attack,” Jamieson said.

Meeting a new challenge with Trump

For all of Harris’ debate experience, Tuesday is still a new and massive stage. Democrats who ordinarily tear into Trump instead appeared on Sunday’s news shows to make clear that Harris faced a big task ahead.

“It will take almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, yet another of Harris’ 2020 opponents, on CNN. “It’s no ordinary proposition, not because Donald Trump is a master of explaining policy ideas and how they’re going to make people better off. It’s because he’s a master of taking any form or format that is on television and turning it into a show that is all about him.”

Castro noted that Trump is “a nasty and crafty stage presence” who makes preparation difficult. And with ABC keeping the candidates’ microphones off when they are not speaking, Harris may not find it as easy to produce another viral moment that hinges on viewers having seen or heard Trump at his most outlandish.

“The best thing she can do,” Castro said, “is not get distracted by his antics.”

Voters in November will decide whether to ban the practice, along with the trapping of bobcats. That prospect has set off a deluge of competing claims about what will happen if big-cat hunting ceases.

People supporting the ban say that mountain lion populations are self-regulating and will stabilize at a level supported by their available habitat and food resources. Those opposed to Initiative 91, meanwhile, say a hunting ban would induce a rapid increase in the number of big cats, which in turn would pose a significant threat to deer and elk herds.

The truth is likely a mix of the two, according to studies and experts.

But beyond biology, the statewide ballot measure is asking Coloradans to consider deeper questions about the future of Colorado’s wildlife, both opponents and supporters said.

State wildlife managers now set hunting limits on the number of mountain lions that can be killed while still maintaining a lion population, said Samantha Miller, the manager of the Cats Aren’t Trophies campaign. The ballot initiative’s proponents want wildlife managers to focus instead on how to foster the best and healthiest population possible for the intrinsic value of having the animal roam the landscape.

“I think it’s a fundamentally different question that we’re asking,” Miller said.

Mountain lion hunters represent about 1% of the more than 200,000 big-game hunting licenses the state sells every year. But hunters opposed to the measure fear it’s the first step in a slippery slope toward banning all hunting.

“You start taking out pieces of the puzzle and soon you don’t have a puzzle,” said Dan Gates, executive director and co-founder of the Colorado Trappers and Predator Hunters Association. He’s a leader in a number of groups opposing the ban, including Colorado Wildlife Deserves Better, Colorado Wildlife Conservation Project and Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management.

Self-regulation or out-of-control growth?

The number of mountain lions in Colorado is difficult to determine because of their elusive and solitary nature. Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists estimate between 3,800 and 4,400 adult lions live in the state and say the population has grown since the species was classified as a big game species in 1965.

State biologists do not have an estimate for how many bobcats live in Colorado, but they believe the population is healthy and may be increasing in some areas.

Neither mountain lions nor bobcats are listed as federally threatened or endangered species. An estimated 20,000 to 40,000 mountain lions live in the U.S., as do more than 1.4 million bobcats.

“Both informal and recently collected empirical data suggest Colorado’s lion population is strong and lions are abundant in appropriate habitat,” states a Colorado Parks and Wildlife pamphlet on the species.

In the 2022-2023 hunting season — the most recent for which CPW data is publicly available — 2,599 people bought mountain lion hunting licenses and hunters killed 502 lions, making for a 19% success rate.

Those with opposing views of the ballot initiative posit different futures should mountain lion hunting be banned. But the truth is likely a mix of the two, said Jerry Apker, a retired CPW wildlife biologist who worked as the statewide carnivore biologist for 17 years before his 2017 retirement.

Populations would likely spike in the first years after hunting ends before increased mortality rates temper that growth, Apker said. Eventually, mountain lion populations tend to reach a stasis and fluctuate based on what food and habitat is available.

The felines have larger litters with higher survival rates when more resources are available, but in times of stress, they have smaller litters and more mortalities.

A cessation in hunting would also likely increase human interactions and conflicts with lions, he said. The most hunted lions are typically subadults and young adults — the same lions still working to establish home ranges. More young lions on the landscape means they will eventually be pushed to subprime habitats as well as more populated areas.

There’s no way of knowing how many mountain lions would live in Colorado should hunting stop — there’s never been a statewide research study done on the question, Apker said.

“I think the statements of doom and gloom that they’re going to take over are a convenient argument, but that’s not true,” he said.

Apker opposes the effort to ban mountain lion hunting, but he said other opponents’ argument that the ban would decimate elk and deer herds is far fetched. While predation might increase, the largest impacts to deer and elk populations would come from human alteration of the landscape. Less habitat, the degradation of existing habitat and brutal winters are significantly larger factors that determine population change.

California comparison

Colorado and other western states have enacted various levels of restrictions on mountain lion hunting.

The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission earlier this year ended the state’s spring mountain lion season, instead restricting legal hunting to a single season that runs from November through March. The commission also banned hunters from using electronic recordings of other lions or distressed prey to lure mountain lions to an area.

The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission in July voted in favor of stricter limits and shorter seasons for cougar hunting. It acted on a petition filed by a number of local and national conservation and animal rights groups.

California voters in 1990 chose to ban mountain lion hunting in the state permanently, though hunting of the felines had not been permitted since 1972 — when then-Gov. Ronald Reagan signed a moratorium. California is the only state with a full ban on hunting pumas, and it officially states that its aim is to instead conserve the species “for their ecological and intrinsic values,” according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

A study published in 2020 compared California’s lion population with those in 10 western states where hunting is legal, including Colorado. The authors found that California had similar cougar population densities and similar average deer densities as the other states.

California also had the third-lowest rate of cougar-human conflicts per capita, similar rates of cattle depredation and lower rates of sheep depredations.

“In sum, our analysis of the records obtained from state and federal wildlife agencies found no evidence that sport hunting of pumas has produced the management outcomes sought by wildlife managers aside from providing a sport hunting opportunity,” the authors wrote.

Charges of “ballot-box biology”

Proponents of the hunting ban say it is a way to address unethical hunting methods, like the use of dogs, and whether hunting is necessary to manage lion populations. Opponents say it is another example of “ballot-box biology” that lets the majority make decisions often left to wildlife managers.

Apker disagrees the initiative is “ballot-box biology” — he doesn’t think it’s about biology at all. Instead, the question is a broader referendum on hunting as a whole, he said.

“The bottom line is that there are people who think hunting is wrong,” said Apker, who has voiced his opposition to the ballot measure publicly.

Proponents of the ban say hunting for mountain lions is trophy hunting because hunters are allegedly seeking the thrill of the hunt as well as the skins and heads of lions — not the meat. The ballot measure, if passed, would ban trophy hunting, defined as hunting “practiced primarily for the display of an animal’s head, fur, or other body parts, rather than for utilization of the meat.”

Cougar hunters have said repeatedly that while they do often pose with their kill — just like elk and deer hunters — they also eat the meat and are not hunting solely for a trophy. Colorado law requires that mountain lion meat be prepared for consumption by hunters. Gates, from the hunters association, has made steaks, tacos and burritos from lion meat.

“Not only do people eat mountain lion, but they also cherish mountain lion,” he said.

But ballot initiative supporters express doubt — Miller, for one, says there’s no way to know whether meat is eaten. The campaign is not against hunting, she said, but opposes unethical hunting.

“There are plenty of other species to hunt that aren’t so problematic under hunting ethics,” said Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project and a lifelong hunter, during a news conference last month in support of the ban.

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The legislature passed House Bill 1001 last week during its second property tax-focused special session in the past year. Polis called lawmakers back to the Capitol in mid-August to ratify the deal his office and legislative leaders had struck with Advance Colorado, a conservative advocacy group, and Colorado Concern, a business organization backing Advance Colorado’s ballot measures.

The deal called for additional property tax cuts, on top of larger reductions passed in May, in exchange for Advance Colorado removing two ballot measures that would have cut taxes more steeply and capped property tax growth more stringently for local governments and districts.

“With this final piece, I think we have the predictability and stability we need to save homeowners money and do budgeting for schools and make sure we do not have the resurgence of the negative factor,” Polis said. He was referring to the budgeting mechanism that had chronically underfunded state schools for years, but which state officials ended in this fiscal year’s budget.

Polis had previously said he would not sign the bill into law until the two ballot measures — initiatives 50 and 108 — were formally pulled from the ballot. The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office confirmed Wednesday morning that both had been withdrawn.

The deal also included a promise from Advance Colorado not to pursue additional property tax-cutting measures for at least six years. No statutory requirement underpins that promise, but House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat and one of HB-1001’s sponsors, expressed hope during Wednesday’s ceremony that “this is the end of our conversations about property tax for at least the next six years.”

“It is unfortunate that we had to play defense — that we had to come forward and provide yet additional relief — because wealthy interests in this state continue to bring forward ballot measures that would ultimately undermine the stability of our communities,” imperil school funding and put budgets for local services like fire departments at risk, she said. Those risks elevated frustrations that had been prominent within her caucus last month.

Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican and another sponsor, called the legislation passed this year “the largest property tax cut in Colorado’s history,” though the impact of the special session bill is smaller than a companion bill passed by lawmakers in the spring.

“When you combine what’s going to happen with 2025, with 2026, it’s nearly $2.4 billion,” she said.

The bill signed Wednesday initially adds roughly $254 million in additional cuts to the $1.3 billion worth of reductions approved in May. The bulk of the latest cuts will benefit commercial property, according to an analysis by the Colorado Fiscal Institute, a progressive think tank.

Polis said those reductions should benefit commercial tenants — who, he said, typically foot the bill for increased property taxes.

For homeowners, the measure is expected to clip between $60 and $80 from a typical property tax bill in the 2025 tax year, plus roughly $179 the following year. That’s on top of an average $400 in savings from the measure passed in May.

For supporters in the legislature, the compromise meant accepting relatively modest additional tax relief in exchange for neutralizing two ballot measures that Democrats said would have “catastrophic” and “draconian” effects on state and local budgets.

“I believe today marks the culmination of at least six years’ worth of work,” said Sen. Chris Hansen, a Denver Democrat and another architect of the deal. He was referring to the work undertaken to repeal the Gallagher Amendment in 2020 — and then grapple with the loss of that law’s tax-stabilizing protection for homeowners.

Twenty-two legislators out of 100 voted against the deal during its journey through the Capitol last week. Most were Democrats frustrated that it was negotiated behind closed doors with deep-pocketed conservative and business groups.

Critics repeatedly likened the situation to negotiating with hostage-takers, and some Democrats spent last week referring to Advance Colorado’s president, Michael Fields, as “Gov. Fields.”

Several legislators told The Denver Post last week that they doubted the armistice would last. That feeling was in part rooted in a lack of trust between the initiatives’ backers and legislators, many of whom thought that the measure passed in May was already a compromise.

On Wednesday, the deal’s architects struck a more optimistic tune. Polis said he hoped the deal would provide property tax stability for a generation, and his office — in its release announcing the bill-signing — heralded that “the property tax wars are over.”

Kirkmeyer thanked Advance Colorado and the initiatives’ proponents and said that though there had been “trust issues,” the proponents had kept their word.

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Eric Joss, the Libertarian nominee in the 8th Congressional District, announced the armistice with Republican state Rep. Gabe Evans during a press conference Tuesday night. Evans, a freshman legislator from Fort Lupton, signed a “pledge of liberty” to secure Joss’ support.

The pledge includes promises to oppose “military adventurism” while supporting a peaceful end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and “fundamental reform” of the U.S. Department of Education, among other issues.

Evans said he signed the pledge after some changes were made, including removing language calling for the abolishment of U.S. intelligence services.

“Eric and I are united in our determination to rein in the size, scope, cost and corruption of government,” Evans said in a statement. “Beating big government starts with defeating” U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo, the Democrat who currently holds the seat.

Last summer, the state Libertarian Party agreed not to run candidates against Republicans in contested races if the state Republican Party backed “liberty-leaning candidates.” That deal came after the previous race for the 8th Congressional District turned on a tight margin: Caraveo won the seat in 2022, beating Republican state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer by 1,632 votes in the first election to represent the newly created district.

In that race, the Libertarian candidate, Richard Ward, garnered more than 9,200 votes.

On Tuesday night, Joss criticized Caraveo as a “rubber-stamp” on President Joe Biden’s agenda. During her nearly two years in Congress, Caraveo has pursued a moderate path and is one of the most moderate House members, according to the accountability and transparency website GovTrack.

In a statement Wednesday afternoon, Caraveo campaign manager Mary Alice Blackstock accused Evans and Joss of making a “backroom deal.” Blackstock said Caraveo’s record “speaks for itself. Come November, voters will decide between a Congresswoman who has delivered real results and a political opportunist siding with the extremes.”

Colorado Secretary of State spokesman Jack Todd said Joss had not formally pulled his name from the ballot as of Wednesday morning. The deadline to do so is Friday.

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Calvarese, a former speechwriter and labor activist, repeatedly attacked Boebert’s congressional record, including criticizing the Republican for voting against a larger bill that included provisions allowing the federal government to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices. She defended President Joe Biden’s marquee Inflation Reduction Act and called for an end to the “offshoring” of American manufacturing.

Boebert, who is seeking a third term — and her first outside of the Western Slope-based 3rd Congressional District — defended her record. She hit on familiar red-meat issues for the Republican Party, saying she wanted to cut taxes, “take our country back,” “bring back prosperity” and “secure our southern border.”

At one point, she derisively referred to American citizens born to undocumented immigrants as “anchor babies” and said they should not receive certain tax-credit assistance.

The debate, co-hosted by Colorado Politics/the Denver Gazette and the Douglas County Economic Development Corporation at The Club at Ravenna, focused on the economy and business issues.

It was the first debate since Boebert cruised to a June primary win over a crowded Republican field. Amid serious challenges from both Democrats and Republicans in her home district, she had switched from seeking reelection to vying in the 4th after then-U.S. Rep. Ken Buck announced he wouldn’t run for the seat again in the November election.

Though Boebert is new to the district, she is the odds-on favorite to win. The Eastern Plains-focused 4th District is Colorado’s most conservative district, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 2-to-1, giving her a greater advantage on paper than she had in her old district. The 4th takes in extensive farmland as well as south suburban Denver’s Douglas County.

On Tuesday, Calvarese sought to contrast her stated desire for partnership and compromise with Boebert’s approach, which Calvarese characterized as “defund, to cancel it, shut down the government if you don’t get your way.”

Despite being one of the most partisan members of a particularly partisan Congress, Boebert touted her own bipartisan efforts, including by pointing to her support for a bill backed by U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, a Colorado Democrat, that would allow federal land to be used for housing.

Here’s what else Boebert and Calvarese discussed Tuesday:

National debt

In response to a question about the growing national debt, Boebert said she wanted to go through spending individually, line by line. She said she wouldn’t support larger omnibus funding bills and instead wanted individual appropriations bills.

“I do not agree with Republican debt as much as I do not agree with Democrat debt,” she said.

Calvarese said she wanted to better tax corporations that hide “their money abroad” and repeatedly said that the “middle class needs a tax break.” She said the federal government should look for efficiencies, with help from artificial intelligence, to reduce unnecessary spending.

She also said she would support keeping the federal corporate tax rate at its current level, while Boebert said she wanted former President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts to be continued and the rates “lowered significantly.”

Those individual income tax cuts are set to expire at the end of next year. If they were extended for another decade, they would add $3.3 trillion to the federal deficit over that time period, according to a nonpartisan fiscal analysis.

Veterans

The most extended scuffle of the debate came next. Calvarese accused Boebert of not supporting veterans, pointing to Boebert’s support for a bill that would have cut the Department of Veterans Affairs budget and her opposition to a bill that would’ve expanded health benefits for veterans exposed to toxic substances.

“Don’t sit here and tell us … that you are somehow for veterans,” Calvarese said.

Boebert defended her support for veterans and her vote against the toxic substances bill. She said she wasn’t able to provide amendments and that she wasn’t willing to spend “a billion dollars forever because we couldn’t get a couple of pieces of language right in the legislation.”

As for the VA, she criticized the department’s responsiveness and then criticized some Democrats’ support for a universal health care system.

Economic lightning round

Boebert and Calvarese were peppered with several lightning round questions, including on whether they supported increasing the federal minimum wage, which currently stands at $7.25 an hour, about half of Colorado’s minimum. Boebert said she opposed increasing it. Calvarese said she supported increasing the minimum wage — including for tipped workers — to $15 an hour.

Both said they supported a policy backed by Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race to end taxes on tips. Both also said they opposed privatizing social security benefits and would support legislation that would bar entities from foreign countries — like China or Saudi Arabia — from buying American farmland.

More debates?

In a brief talk with reporters after the debate, Calvarese called on Boebert to meet her again for at least two more debates, which would be televised.

“This was the beginning of what I think is a job interview for all of our constituents,” Calvarese said.

In a separate media gaggle, Boebert would not commit to additional debates and said Calvarese “had her debate today.”

“I debate Democrats on a daily basis,” she said. “It is my job.”

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The deadline to finalize the state’s ballot is coming Friday, but all of the citizen initiatives — meaning ballot questions pursued by members of the public, rather than the legislature — were finalized late last week. State election officials certified that the final ones had received enough petition signatures after clearing earlier regulatory hurdles.

Nine ballot measures from the public have been approved. But two of those — the property tax-related initiatives 50 and 108 — are both set to be withdrawn by sponsors as part of negotiations with the governor’s office and the state legislature, which on Thursday passed another property tax relief bill at the end of a special session.

The remaining seven citizen initiatives will join several questions referred to the ballot by the legislature, including one to excise an unenforceable anti-same sex marriage provision from the state constitution; another to institute a new tax on guns and ammunition; and a measure that would allow judges to deny bail to people charged with first-degree murder.

Here’s a breakdown of the citizen’s initiatives that will be on the ballot (minus the soon-to-be-pulled property tax measures):

Election overhaul

Proposition 131 — previously Initiative 310 — would change how Colorado runs elections for U.S. senators and congressional representatives; for governor, treasurer, attorney general and secretary of state; and for state senators and representatives.

It would institute fully open primaries for those seats, meaning that candidates from all parties and those who are unaffiliated would appear on the same ballot. And in the general election, it would create a ranked-choice voting system for those races in a process that’s also referred to as instant-runoff voting.

If more than four people run in the open primary, then the top four vote recipients — regardless of party — would advance to the November general election.

In a general election race that has more than two candidates, voters would rank the candidates by preference. For example, if there are four candidates, a voter would be asked to rank them from one to four.

In the first round of vote tabulation, voters’ first-place choices would be counted, with the lowest-performing candidate then automatically eliminated from contention. The votes of that eliminated candidate’s supporters then switch to the voters’ next-ranked candidate in the next tabulation round. The lowest-performing candidate is again eliminated, with their voters’ next-ranked active candidate getting those votes.

When two candidates remain, the top vote-getter wins.

If passed, the changes would go into effect in 2026 under the initiative. However, a late amendment to a law passed by the legislature in May has thrown a speed bump in front of that implementation runway, and if the initiative passes, lawmakers may wrangle further over how to implement the new law.

The measure is backed by Kent Thiry, the millionaire former CEO of DaVita. Thiry previously backed ballot initiatives to open Colorado’s partisan primaries to unaffiliated voters and to change how Colorado draws its congressional and state legislative maps, with a switch to independent redistricting commissions.

Abortion

Amendment 79 would elevate the right to abortion to the Colorado Constitution by prohibiting the government from denying, impeding or discriminating against a person’s ability to exercise that right. The initiative would also clear the way for state-funded insurance, such as Medicaid, to cover abortion services, repealing another provision of the state constitution that prohibits the use of public funds to pay for abortion.

Colorado lawmakers passed a bill two years ago that enshrined abortion rights in state law, though it didn’t affect the constitutional ban on the use of state money.

Because this initiative would alter the state constitution, it requires support from 55% of voters to approve it. The initiative is backed by abortion rights advocacy groups, including Cobalt and the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights.

School choice

Amendment 80, backed by conservative advocacy group Advance Colorado, would enshrine school choice — which includes “neighborhood, charter, private and home schools” — in the state constitution. Those options already exist under state law, but charter school supporters of the initiative told Chalkbeat that they want to ensure that doesn’t change via legislative debates at the Capitol.

Similar to the abortion measure, this ballot question would need 55% voter approval to pass.

Trophy hunting

Proposition 127 would make it illegal to trophy hunt or commercially trap mountain lions, bobcats and lynxes in Colorado. That includes killing, wounding, entrapping or pursuing the animals, according to the initiative, as well as discharging a deadly weapon at them.

The measure includes a few exceptions, such as killing the animals for self-defense or trapping them for legitimate research purposes. The initiative is supported by the coalition group Cats Aren’t Trophies.

Parole eligibility

Proposition 128 would tighten state sentencing terms, requiring people convicted of certain violent crimes to serve more of their sentences before they become eligible for parole. If the measure passes, anyone convicted of second-degree murder, first-degree burglary, felony kidnapping or other listed crimes after July 1, 2025, would be required to serve 85% of their sentences before they could be released. That’s up from 75% in current law.

The initiative would also require that people who previously had been convicted of two violent crimes serve their full sentence if convicted for one of those listed felonies. The initiative is also backed by Advance Colorado.

Veterinary professional qualifications

Proposition 129 would create a new veterinarian position in Colorado: a “veterinary professional associate.” People seeking that position would have to hold a master’s degree in veterinary clinical care (or an equivalent level of qualification as determined by the state board of veterinary medicine).

This new type of provider would have to be registered with the state board. The initiative is backed by the Dumb Friends League, the Denver-based animal shelter, which says it’ll help boost the veterinary workforce. Critics, though, argue the initiative would allow for substandard medical care.

Police funding

Proposition 130 — another backed by Advance Colorado — would require that the state add $350 million to a new “peace officer training and support fund.” That money would have to be on top of existing funds already going to law enforcement agencies.

The ballot measure does not establish a new source for that money, like a tax or fee, meaning the state would have to pull the money from elsewhere in its budget.

The money would be set aside for increased salaries, for the hiring of area- or crime-specific officers, for training, and for other related services. The measure would also require that $1 million be paid from the fund to the family of each law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty.

Editor’s note: This story was updated Sept. 9, 2024, to include the official ballot titles for the initiatives.

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Lorelei Cloud was born in 1967, three years before Native Americans living on tribal lands in Colorado were guaranteed the right to vote. Even once she turned 18, and for many years thereafter, she did not vote. Her polling place was in Durango, miles from the Southern Ute Indian Tribe Reservation, where she lived, and she had no car with which to access registration services or to cast a ballot. Politicians seldom visited her area, and hardly seemed to represent her interests, anyway.

Cloud is now vice chair of the Southern Ute tribal council, and from the tribe’s headquarters early this summer, she reflected on how much has changed. Since 2019, when Democrats gained a legislative trifecta in the state, Colorado has established a polling place on the reservation and placed a drop box there for mail ballots. The state has also hired special liaisons to promote and facilitate turnout among Native voters. “I don’t want future generations to have to deal with any of what we’ve had to, to get to vote,” Cloud told me. “We should have access to the vote, to shape our own region, our own country.”

Colorado officials are now proposing to go further. In 2023, the state adopted legislation to try something that’s never been done in this country: automatically register tribal members to vote in U.S. elections.

The program, if implemented, would enable tribes to share their membership lists with Colorado elections officials, who’d then use that information to register every eligible person to vote, while giving them a chance to opt out. Since Colorado already mails ballots to every registered voter, this would necessarily mean getting ballots into the hands of more Native people. “We’ve made real steps forward, and we’re going to continue,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold told me recently. “We always try to push the envelope.”

Cloud, like Griswold, sees immense promise in this plan. When she testified in favor of the law last year, she said Colorado “serves as a model for other states to increase voting among tribal members.” And advocates living in those other states are watching. Several told me Colorado’s reform could be transformative if it spreads nationwide: Roughly one third of the more than six million Native Americans who are eligible to vote across the country are not registered, a share far greater than that of white Americans who are unregistered.

And yet, Cloud is also keenly concerned that the program could make her community more vulnerable. For U.S. election officials to automatically register tribal members to vote, the tribes would need to share certain vital information about their members, such as full name, address, and date of birth. Cloud is hesitant to hand this data over to a state that has, over a long history that she knows too well, been an agent of violence.

“When tribes have given out too much information, that information has been exploited,” Cloud said, nodding to U.S. government and industry having used tribal data and maps to locate natural resources and justify land theft, among other harms. “We have to maintain trust and we have to protect tribal members and their information.”

It’s a worry that other tribal leaders and advocates for Native voting rights echoed in conversations this spring and summer. “We’ve had our lists, our populations, kept by the government before–and that hasn’t ended well for us,” Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, a member of the ​​Tohono O’odham Nation and the top elections official in Pima County, Arizona, told me.

Anticipating that data-sharing would generate concerns, Colorado legislators wrote the law to make the program optional: Tribes can opt in, only if and when they feel comfortable with it. Griswold says she is in no rush to implement this program until tribes want it.

Cloud and other representatives of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, along with leaders of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, their western neighbors, have held ongoing discussions with Griswold’s staff to share their concerns, and work out whether acceptable compromises can be found. They’ve met about 10 times over the last year, exploring what safeguards could be put in place.

Those talks haven’t yet yielded any agreement, though the parties seem cautiously optimistic. The chair of the Ute Mountain Utes even says a breakthrough could come as soon as this year.

Cloud, too, hopes to reach an agreement, but she remains wary. The day we met at the Southern Ute headquarters happened to fall exactly 100 years to the week since Native Americans gained U.S. citizenship. That landmark, Cloud said, at once seems distant and shamefully fresh. “We are the first and original residents of this entire continent,” she told me, standing in a temporary exhibit the tribe set up to commemorate the 100-year anniversary. “The first ones here, and the last to have citizenship.”

We were speaking amid what was, as recently as 1868, a Ute territory of more than 56 million acres. It covered most of what is now the state of Colorado, plus large portions of what are now Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

Her tribe today controls less than one percent of that area, a sliver of reservation land near Durango, in southwest Colorado along the New Mexico border. Colorado was once home to more than 40 tribal nations, but just two recognized tribes–the Southern Utes, and the Ute Mountain Utes—are still based here. Cloud thinks constantly about how to protect the 1,500 people enrolled in her tribe, and what remains of their land.

“When the Europeans came in, and our homelands were greatly reduced, you get a disconnection between humans and nature,” she said. “You get traumatic experiences, and trust issues that Native people have with the United States government.”

This tribe’s journey is a familiar one in the broader story of Native American betrayal: members killed or otherwise oppressed at the hands of white settlers; a United States government that encroached gradually, agreeing to and then violating treaties in order to steal land and resources; and eventually tribes shunted by the government onto the reservations they inhabit today.

In various ways, and with varying levels of success, Colorado’s state government has lately been trying, or at least saying it’s trying, to repair this harm. The legislature here has, in the last few years, passed a series of laws and resolutions intended to improve education, water rights, public safety, and more, for Native people living in this state.

Colorado’s new voter registration reform also came out of that repair work. Proponents see it as a valuable step toward making American democracy more inclusive of the land’s original inhabitants. “Historical voter suppression in Colorado has been against Native people and Native people living on tribal lands,” Griswold said. “Understanding that there is this historical backdrop, I’ve really tried to pursue any means to reverse that historical voter suppression and get eligible people registered.”

The state of Colorado already registers citizens to vote automatically, but only at the DMV, when they’re getting a driver’s license or state ID. The program has been wildly successful at signing up new voters, but voting rights advocates worry that it’s leaving behind people who do not go to the DMV and apply for an ID–including many who live on reservations.

The new law expands this automatic approach to tribal enrollment lists. This reform would reach tribal members wherever they may reside, and most Native Americans do not live on reservations. Those who do stand to be most affected, experts said, because they are more likely to be unregistered.

Cloud said she’s all-in on continuing to make voting easier for the tribe, and stressed that she appreciates Griswold’s efforts to build relationships with tribal leaders. But in conversation, she also laid out the difficulties in reconciling her different goals.

“How do we protect our sovereignty? How do we protect our tribal members?” Cloud asked.

And how, she added, can tribal leaders embed those aims within the mechanics of voter registration?

As she pondered these questions, Cloud received an alert on her phone and paused our interview. A Southern Ute member had been reported missing–a 15-year-old girl, the alert stated, last seen a couple of days prior outside the reservation.

Cloud wondered if the girl might already be in New Mexico, or even farther from home. She listed her worries aloud: “Has anybody reached out to her family?”

“What has been done to try to contact her?”

“Have they contacted the neighboring counties, the neighboring states?”

“Do they have the right description of her?”

Whenever this happens, and it happens shockingly often–the girl is the third person to go missing from the reservation in a month, amid a national crisis of missing and murdered girls and women that disproportionately plagues indigenous communities—Cloud thinks of her friend Nicole, who vanished from the area two years ago. For days, Cloud told me, authorities assured Nicole’s loved ones that she’d turn up quickly. “Come to find out,” Cloud said, “she’d been murdered in the first day.”

Cloud resumed our interview. With her mind still on the missing girl, she brought the conversation back to registration policies.

“This actually ties in with the voting: It’s the safety of our members,” she said.

“Knowing our tribal information is out there, we become very vulnerable,” she continued. “People don’t place value on tribal lives. This is very real.”

* * *

Three other states besides Colorado–Michigan, Nevada, and New Mexico—have also adopted laws lately to automatically register Native American tribal members to vote; their reforms, too, have yet to be implemented. Like Colorado, these other states give tribes the option to enter into the program but don’t force it upon them. To date, no tribe in any of these states has agreed to do so.

But at least one tribe may be close to such an agreement: the Ute Mountain Utes, whose reservation is bigger than that of the Southern Utes in both land area and enrolled population, could move on this matter soon by entering into an agreement with Colorado’s government, says their chairman, Manuel Heart.

Sitting in his office on the reservation, Heart echoed some of Cloud’s concerns about how sharing tribal enrollment lists could infringe on tribal privacy and sovereignty. But, after much discussion with the state, he said, he feels ready to get started. He hopes to bring the issue to a vote of the tribe’s elected council soon.

Our interview took place in early June, still weeks away from the state’s June 25 primary. His mail ballot was sitting on his desk as we talked; he’d already filled it out and was keen to cast it as soon as possible.

Heart said his tribe, like the Southern Utes, has benefitted from other, recent reforms meant to facilitate Native voter participation: the Ute Mountain Utes now have a drop box on their reservation, plus an in-person polling center for anyone who’d rather vote that way.

The officials who run elections in this area are proud of these voter services, but acknowledge that turnout remains very low on Ute Mountain Ute land.

Danielle Wells, the elections supervisor in Montezuma County, showed me a map of the area and pointed to where her staff places drop boxes, in all the county’s major towns. In the runup to elections, five of the six boxes yield hundreds of ballots each time elections workers swing by to collect from them, she said. In the drop box on the reservation, though, “we see maybe 20, maybe a dozen,” Wells told me.

The June 25 primary would go on to draw especially low participation: Only 3 percent of registered voters living on Ute Mountain Ute land cast a ballot, according to the clerk’s office, a rate nine times lower than that of Montezuma County voters overall.

The gap isn’t usually that wide, but it’s always there. During the 2020 presidential election, for example, turnout on Ute Mountain Ute land was 50 percent, trailing Montezuma County’s overall turnout of 85 percent. In 2022, when Colorado was electing a governor and other major officeholders, turnout on Ute Mountain Ute land was 22 percent–three times lower than the county’s overall rate. A large turnout gap also persists on Southern Ute land, and studies show that this holds true for Native Americans across the country.

Heart badly wants to increase turnout, but doesn’t fault his tribe’s membership for so often declining to vote. Would you be excited, he asked, to participate in elections that shape a political system so historically hostile to your community, to elect representatives of a government that has stolen from and broken promises to tribes?

“How is a tribal member going to feel when they’ve always been pushed away?” Heart said. “It wasn’t our choice to be put on these reservations. The United States government put us here.”

To this day, in many other states, tribes are still constantly trying to beat back new restrictions–strict voter ID requirements that don’t accommodate tribal ID cards, gerrymandered maps that dilute their representation, inconvenient polling places, and other policies that make it particularly hard for Native Americans, and especially those living on reservations, to have a say in U.S. democracy.

Expansive reforms like automatic voter registration for tribal members remain a political non-starter in many states with large Native populations. “Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska would not do that,” Ahtza Dawn Chavez, who runs a non-profit in New Mexico that promotes Native voter participation, told me, naming four states currently under full Republican control. “You have to lay down a solid foundation, and [automatic voter registration] is something that is maybe stage two or three or four of that work. In a lot of states, you’re still at stage one.”

In Arizona, for example, voting rights advocates have spent years fighting restrictions, proposed by Republicans, that could make voting harder for Native people. Arizonans in 2022 narrowly rejected a ballot measure that would have made voter ID laws more stringent; Native voters would have suffered the brunt of those proposed rules.

Cázares-Kelly, the elections official in Pima County, bemoans the many hurdles that already suppress the Native vote in her state of Arizona. Notably, she told me, it can be challenging for Native folks who live on reservations to register to vote because homes there often don’t have addresses in the format typical of non-reservation lands–that is, number, street name, city, state, zip code.

“The home where I grew up, I cannot give you the address for it,” Cázares-Kelly said. “I can tell you where it is: south off of Highway 86 onto Indian Route 15, you turn right at the red fence, drive down the dirt road. There’s a fork in the road and you take a left. Our house is the first one by the big tree. That’s literally my address.”

Since getting elected in 2021, she has found that even well-meaning officials commonly have little understanding of why voter engagement campaigns and election policies that work for most of the population may not work for people who live on reservations.

In Colorado, both the Ute Mountain Utes and the Southern Utes report that voter turnout is often substantially higher for their internal elections, which are administered entirely by the tribes. Neither syncs their tribal elections with Colorado’s; the Ute Mountain Utes vote on a Friday in October and the Southern Utes vote on a Friday in November.

On the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, Chairman Heart said, few talk much, if at all, about U.S. and Colorado elections. The land is so far removed from Colorado’s population center–it’s a roughly seven-hour drive to Denver, and is in fact much closer to Albuquerque—that for decades both the Southern Utes and Ute Mountain Utes were placed in New Mexico media markets, meaning they’d receive broadcast political advertising meant for that state and not theirs.

Only in the last decade or so have political candidates started regularly visiting the area. “They hardly ever came,” Heart said. “And once they got elected, they never came.”

Ben Nighthorse Campbell, the first and still only person of Native American descent to represent Colorado in Congress, and one of only four Native people ever elected to the U.S. Senate, feels this acutely, because for four decades he has lived on a ranch on the Southern Ute reservation.

He is 91 now, and from an armchair in his home, he, too, said U.S. government officials have broadly and consistently failed Native people on policy concerning elections and voting.

“It’s pretty difficult to ask a people who you’ve dominated, whose wealth you’ve taken over the years, to suddenly help support you getting elected. That’s a long jump,” he told me. “Unless you can show somebody how voting is going to help them, they’ll have a lower interest in it.”

Nighthorse Campbell is bullish on automatic voter registration but understands why tribes may not trust elections officials with their membership data. “It’s not going to take a week or two. It takes years, and years, and years. And maybe it’ll never be universal,” he said.

* * *

The ongoing negotiations between the Ute tribes and the state of Colorado over automatic voter registration affect only a tiny fraction of the country’s nearly 600 federally recognized tribes. These two tribes combined have enrollments of under 4,000 people; a successful implementation of the pending reform in Colorado may only lead to a few hundred new registrations at first, and many fewer each subsequent year.

But Allison Neswood, a lawyer with the Native American Rights Fund and an expert on issues of Native voting rights, says there are many eyes on these negotiations around the country. The outcome of the state’s talks with the two tribes could set a landmark precedent stretching much beyond Colorado, she told me, if the parties can identify solutions that satisfy all their goals.

“Once one tribe, two tribes, three tribes start to get the ball moving on this, and show that there’s a way to do this in a way that’s respectful of and promoting of tribal sovereignty, and that’s protective of data sovereignty, I think more tribes will feel more comfortable diving in and looking for their own approach,” Neswood said.

Voter registration laws created a hurdle to voting when they emerged in the U.S. starting in the 1870s, forcing people to declare an intent to vote before they could cast a ballot. These laws, then and often still today, have depressed turnout among people with fewer resources and less familiarity with the political process. To alleviate this burden, Oregon in 2015 became the first U.S. state to adopt automatic voter registration; the policy has since spread to about half of all states. It’s typically implemented at DMVs, for a couple of simple reasons: One, the vast majority of the population visits these offices on a somewhat regular basis, and, two, the offices already collect all the information necessary to determine voter eligibility. But some states are trying to expand it to other government settings to reach even more people–especially lower-income residents less likely to visit the DMV.

Several states, including Colorado, want to try this out at Medicaid offices, and, last year, Michigan became the first state to approve automatically registering people as they leave prison.

Extending this program to tribal enrollment lists comes from the same desire to make sure fewer people fall through the DMV’s cracks.

Colorado’s reform passed as part of a broader bill to facilitate voting in the state, for instance by expanding ballot access on college campuses. That bill was sponsored by Democrats, and passed with their unanimous support, while most Republicans were in opposition. New Mexico’s reform also passed last year with largely Democratic support, and was also part of a large bill meant to ease voter access. Nevada (in 2021) and Michigan (in 2023) both included tribal enrollment lists in laws meant to expand automatic registration generally.

But unlike efforts to implement automatic voter registration in other settings, the process that’s ongoing in Colorado, Cloud says, requires deep reflection. It invites the state to confront its history of violence and prove to the tribes that the government can be trusted.

Barbara McLachlan, the state representative for southwest Colorado, whose district includes reservation land of both of Colorado’s Ute tribes, says she understands this caution. “We’re trying to turn a cruise ship,” she told me over coffee in downtown Durango. “It takes time, little by little. There is a generational lack of trust; they’ve been treated horribly, and still are, in some ways.”

When she entered office, eight years ago, she did not know how to even broach the subject of collaboration with Native residents she represented. She said it took years, and regular outreach, to build credibility with the tribes. Both Heart and Cloud say they appreciate her work, and name her as one of few people in state government with any consistent presence on their lands.

Prompted by a bill McLachlan sponsored, state government since 2023 has invited Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute leaders to deliver annual addresses to a joint session of the legislature–a platform these leaders have so far used to highlight lingering injustice and inequity in matters of water access, health care, and more. But McLachlan, who is term-limited and exiting office in January, laments that her colleagues in state government mostly still fail to do the sort of relationship-building that might have made it easier to jumpstart automatic voter registration by now. After eight years in the legislature, she told me, she only knows of one state House lawmaker, besides those already based in the region, who has visited either reservation.

“It’s hard, then, to say, ‘trust me on this one,’” she said, of the voter registration proposal.

To reach that trust now, Cloud and Heart both want concrete assurances that state elections officials can provide enough data protections for their membership lists.

Tribal and state leaders each said they’re still unsure of which policy mechanics might emerge from their negotiation. Tiffany Lee, the La Plata County clerk, who oversees U.S. elections on most Southern Ute land, has not been involved with that negotiation, but, in an interview at her Durango office, she floated a possible solution: The state could seal the personal information of anyone who is registered to vote off a tribal enrollment list. (This is also a solution proposed by Neswood in a policy paper she authored recently.) Colorado, like other states, already offers this option for anyone who wants their information to be confidential. That route is popular with public figures, judges, cops, and others who want an extra layer of protection.

The catch, Lee warned, is that sealing people’s records may make it harder for them to then update their voter registration down the line. If they move, or want to switch party affiliation, they’d have to pursue those steps in person at the clerk’s office, she said. “If we make them all confidential, that stops them from being able to do anything electronically with us, or by phone call,” Lee told me. “So, there are drawbacks.”

Jena Griswold, the Colorado secretary of state, is midway through her second and final term in this role. She said she hopes that these policy discussions are resolved in her time, but accepts that they may not be. “The people we’re talking to–them, or their parents, may have been excluded from the franchise in their lifetime. Sometimes things just take time,” she added.

At the Southern Ute headquarters, Cloud and I ambled through the exhibit that commemorated the tribe’s history and the 100-year citizenship anniversary. It contained photos of tribal members long deceased, and posters about the tribe’s relationships with water, land, and one another.

We were nearing the end of our time together, and the missing girl had thankfully just been safely located.

Cloud pointed to photos of her great-grandfather, her grandmother, her grandfather, her aunt, and other relatives. “Can you imagine what they had to give up?” she said. “You live in two different worlds as Ute people: You’re still very much wanting to be connected to your past and your nature, your language, your culture, your tradition–but you also have to be very aware of what’s going on in your community on the other side, the assimilation side.”

She reached the final piece of the gallery, a poster in the shape of a frame with nothing in the middle. Cloud said it represents the unknown things, exciting and daunting alike, yet to come for the tribe. She said she hopes automatic voter registration will be among them. “This is the future, and anything is possible from now,” she said, looking at the frame.

“We’ll get there with Jena, with the voting,” she added. “We’ll get there.”

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If all goes as planned, the deal will calm the state’s multiyear tempest around property tax policy. The turbulence has included the repeal of a decades-old constitutional amendment that governed tax rates, the economic rollercoaster following the COVID pandemic and skyrocketing home values across metro Denver and much of the state.

“Fundamentally, the people of Colorado have had their concerns addressed: long-term relief, a reasonable cap (on tax growth) and over 4,000 entities funded by property taxes, including every school district, (will) have the stability that they need to plan and budget,” Gov. Jared Polis told The Denver Post in an interview Thursday. “ … With all the sort of chaos of the last few years, it’s been very hard on our fire districts, schools, library districts.”

House Bill 1001, which won final approval from the Senate shortly before he spoke, builds off a tax package signed in May that lowered assessment rates and capped how much property tax revenue collected by local governments and districts could grow. The new measure adds about $254 million in cuts to the $1.3 billion in reductions passed in the spring.

It’s expected to trim between $60 and $80 from the typical homeowner’s property tax bill in the 2025 tax year and about $179 the following year. Those are on top of the average $400 or so in savings this year from the prior package.

More importantly to local governments and legislative leaders, the deal passed Thursday will lead the conservative and business groups backing a pair of ballot measures that would’ve instituted stricter growth limits and deeper cuts — initiatives 50 and 108 — to withdraw them from the state’s November ballot. While the particular changes proposed by Initiative 108 would have saved the average homeowner more than $500 a year eventually, officials feared the financial toll on state and local government budgets.

Polis says he expects to sign the bill into law next week. Ahead of that, here is a look at several dynamics on display this week.

The power of power politics

Sen. Chris Hansen, a Denver Democrat and the property tax bill’s primary sponsor, opened the final debate Thursday by defending the process that sparked the special session. He sought to rebut recurring charges — including from his own colleagues — that the bill he was sponsoring was the result of a “backroom deal.”

“I think a dispassionate observer would come to the conclusion this was a public process,” he said, ticking off the public meetings at which the details of the plan were laid out. And he noted that legislative committees in recent days took public testimony.

The deal was negotiated outside public view by Hansen, other legislative leadership, the governor’s office and the supporters of the initiatives. While it’s true that its contours were publicly revealed earlier this month to the state’s Commission on Property Tax, those details had already been agreed upon.

Though support for the plan was bipartisan, lawmakers from both parties chafed at being called back to the Capitol essentially to ratify a deal they had no hand in crafting — and were largely unable to change. Some Republicans criticized the deal for not cutting taxes enough, while progressive Democrats said it exacerbated inequalities in the state and didn’t do enough to help lower-income property owners or renters.

Rep. Jennifer Bacon, a Denver Democrat, spoke at length Wednesday about the need to defend the legislature’s role in governance and said that “no” votes would send a “signal” that “if you want to tell us what to do, you need to understand that not everybody’s down for that.” Most lawmakers in the chamber stood in support as she spoke.

But ultimately, the bill passed. Comfortably. A total of just 22 lawmakers (out of 100), including Bacon, voted against the bill during its journey through the Capitol.

Outside interests had real leverage

Several lawmakers this week derisively referred to Michael Fields, the president of the Advance Colorado Institute and the ballot initiatives’ chief proponent, as “governor.”

Those criticisms only grew when no one from Advance Colorado or its ally, Colorado Concern, a business-oriented advocacy group, testified in support of the bill in committees.

Polis, asked about the moniker, pointed to the almost 200,000 Coloradans who signed petitions placing the initiatives on the ballot, adding: “I think the legislature found a better way to address (property taxes) than risky and divisive ballot initiatives.”

Separately, Rep. Matt Soper, a Delta Republican, noted lawmakers’ aversion to feeling like a rubber stamp.

“We reasoned through that,” he said, “because we also have to be leaders, and we also have to stand up and say, ‘Personally, this is not what I would have wanted.’ … I feel comfortable in what we did because it was a true compromise.”

In a statement, Fields called the bill’s passage “a huge win for Colorado taxpayers,” who have faced property tax increases of 30% or more.

An end to the property tax wars?

Advance Colorado, as part of the deal, has promised not to run any other ballot initiatives around property taxes for at least six years — a period that stretches beyond Polis’ and many lawmakers’ remaining time in office — if the agreed-upon terms are met.

That deal was made in writing, though it has no statutory condition locking it in place more rigidly.

“We get permanency. We get stability here,” Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican involved in the negotiations, said Thursday. “So hopefully it does end the property tax wars, because we are getting to a permanent fix. In the past, we didn’t get the job done. It doesn’t mean that we failed; we just didn’t get it all the way done.”

Others weren’t so sure.

Rep. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat who voted for the deal and said it was the right thing to do, said its passage would give legislators “a reprieve.” Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat who voted against it, said she’d “be shocked” if this latest bill actually brought an end to property tax battles at the legislature.

“We’ll be back here doing the same thing again,” she predicted.

A preview of debates to come

Some Democratic lawmakers introduced policy proposals to limit property tax relief or change how taxes are calculated — ideas that, though swiftly killed this week, may come back in January and open up a new front in the fight.

Fire chiefs from across the state also came to the Capitol to testify against expected cuts to their budgets resulting from the bill. They pulled back their full-scale lobbying only when they won promises from elected officials that they would prioritize finding more stable ways to fund fire districts in upcoming sessions.

“It’s concerning to me that there’s a need with our local governments,” said Sen. Chris Kolker, a Centennial Democrat. “How do we balance that need?”

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“I wish I could say I were surprised, but in a year when a Black woman could become POTUS, those with hate in their heart are going to coordinate these kinds of atrocious, expensive campaigns to stir division,” Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis said in a statement on X.

The first Denver sign was reported around 5 a.m. Thursday by a bus driver on the pole of a bus stop near the intersection of Colfax Avenue and Oneida Street, according to a news release from Regional Transportation District. The two other signs in Denver were found at Colfax’s intersections with Garfield Street, near St. Joseph’s Medical Center, and with Yosemite Street.

Around 8:20 a.m. Thursday, one man in Denver’s Congress Park neighborhood spotted two white women putting up the sign at the bus stop at Colfax and Garfield.

“It was one of those things where you know something is out of place, but you don’t know what’s going on,” Congress Park resident Greg Bell said.

Bell said he passed the two women — who were carrying a white stepladder and trash bags he believes were holding the signs — as he made his way into a nearby grocery store. Minutes later, he saw the pair setting up the stepladder in front of the bus stop and one woman climbing onto it while holding a white, metal sign.

Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas on Friday said all the signs had been posted by 7:30 a.m. so it was more likely the women Bell saw were removing the signs.

Photos posted by Lewis show the signs screwed into the pole of that bus stop.

One white sign reads “Blacks must sit at the back of the bus. Kamala’s migrants sit in the front.” Another yellow caution sign on the same pole warns riders of “Kamala’s illegals,” with imagery of people running that is supposed to signify immigrants crossing the border.

The caution sign mimics real road signage that was posted until 2018 in California, warning drivers near the San Diego border to watch for migrants running across the freeway.

An Instagram account linked to Sabo — a right-wing street artist known for controversial art criticizing progressive policies and candidates — posted photos of the three Denver signs and a fourth at the intersection of Nome Street and East Colfax Avenue in Aurora.

That intersection is near an Aurora apartment complex recently shut down for city health and building code violations, uprooting hundreds of Venezuelan migrants.

The post on the Instagram account that links to Sabo’s UNSAVORYAGENTS website references the apartment closure, standing by claims from building ownership that a Venezuelan gang took over the complex. Aurora police and city officials have repeatedly denied the claims.

“The recent appearance of racist signs in Denver is deeply troubling and does not reflect the values of our city,” the Denver City Council said in an emailed statement Thursday. “… We stand with all residents in condemning these acts and reaffirm our commitment to building a community where everyone feels safe, valued and heard.”

RTD officials said similar signs had appeared recently at bus stops in Chicago and that Colorado officials were connecting with other agencies across the county to “assess the magnitude of the coordinated racist activity.” The Instagram account linked to Sabo includes an Aug. 21 picture of a similar sign the caption states was posted at a bus stop outside the United Center, where the Democratic National Convention was happening.

Shortly before the Legislature ended its property tax-focused special session Thursday, two Denver lawmakers decried the signs from the state House floor.

“What I think is important is that we confront our history and note that if any of us care to say that we have moved forward, that all of us demonstrate in standing here … that this is hate, and that it’s unacceptable,” said Rep. Jennifer Bacon, a Denver Democrat and the House’s assistant majority leader. “We don’t know who put these up, and so we don’t know who’s part of the problem. We know that we cannot continue to allow people to believe that this is acceptable or allow people to believe that they can grow power from posting signs like this.”

RTD officials worked with Denver law enforcement to remove all the reported signs and are investigating each of the incidents..

“RTD strongly condemns the hateful, discriminatory message portrayed by the signs,” transportation officials wrote in the release. “There is no place for racism or discrimination at RTD or within the communities we serve … nor should such vile messaging be tolerated or supported by anyone.”

Anyone who sees unauthorized signs or suspicious behavior at RTD bus stops should call Transit Police Dispatch at 303-299-2911, text 303-434-9100 or submit an anonymous report using RTD’s Transit Watch app.

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Updated at 1:52 p.m. Friday, Aug. 30, 2024: This article was updated to include new information about what two women seen by a witness with a stepladder near one of the posted signs were doing.

WASHINGTON — The high cost of caring for children and the elderly has forced women out of the workforce, devastated family finances and left professional caretakers in low-wage jobs — all while slowing economic growth.

That families are suffering is not up for debate. As the economy emerges as a theme in this presidential election, the Democratic and Republican candidates have sketched out ideas for easing costs that reveal their divergent views about family.

On this topic, the two tickets have one main commonality: Both of the presidential candidates — and their running mates — have, at one point or another, backed an expanded child tax credit.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination last week, has signaled that she plans to build on the ambitions of outgoing President Joe Biden’s administration, which sought to pour billions in taxpayer dollars into making child care and home care for elderly and disabled adults more affordable. She has not etched any of those plans into a formal policy platform. But in a speech earlier this month, she said her vision included raising the child tax credit.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican, has declined to answer questions about how he would make child care more affordable, even though it was an issue he tackled during his own administration. His running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, has a long history of pushing policies that would encourage Americans to have families, floating ideas like giving parents votes for their children. Just this month, Vance said he wants to raise the child tax credit to $5,000. But Vance has opposed government spending on child care, arguing that many children benefit from having one parent at home as caretaker.

The candidates’ care agendas could figure prominently into their appeal to suburban women in swing states, a coveted demographic seen as key to victory in November. Women provide two-thirds of unpaid care work — valued at $1 trillion annually — and are disproportionately impacted when families can’t find affordable care for their children or aging parents. And the cost of care is an urgent problem: Child care prices are rising faster than inflation.

Kamala Harris: Increase the child tax credit

When Harris addressed the Democratic National Convention, she talked first about her own experience with child care. She was raised mostly by a single mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who worked long hours as a breast cancer researcher. Among the people who formed her family’s support network was “Mrs. Shelton, who ran the day care below us and became a second mother.”

As vice president, Harris worked behind the scenes in Congress on Biden’s proposals to establish national paid family leave, make prekindergarten universal and invest billions in child care so families wouldn’t pay more than 7% of their income. She announced, too, the administration’s actions to lower copays for families using federal child care vouchers, and to raise wages for Medicaid-funded home health aides. Before that, her track record as a senator included pressing for greater labor rights for domestic workers, including nannies and home health aides who may be vulnerable to exploitation.

This month at a community college in North Carolina, Harris outlined her campaign’s economic agenda, which includes raising the child tax credit to as much as $3,600 and giving families of newborns even more — $6,000 for the child’s first year.

“That is a vital — vital year of critical development of a child, and the costs can really add up, especially for young parents who need to buy diapers and clothes and a car seat and so much else,” she told the audience. Her running mate selection of Tim Walz, who established paid leave and a child tax credit as governor of Minnesota, has also buoyed optimism among supporters.

Donald Trump: Few specifics, but some past support

For voters grappling with the high cost of child care, Trump has offered little in the way of solutions. During the June presidential debate, CNN moderator Jake Tapper twice asked Trump what he would do to lower child care costs. Both times, he failed to answer, instead pivoting to other topics. His campaign platform is similarly silent. It does tackle the cost of long-term care for the elderly, writing that Republicans would “support unpaid Family Caregivers through Tax Credits and reduced red tape.”

The silence marks a shift from his first campaign, when he pitched paid parental leave, though it was panned by critics because his proposal excluded fathers. When he reached the White House, the former president sought $1 billion for child care, plus a parental leave policy at the urging of his daughter and policy adviser, Ivanka Trump. Congress rejected both proposals, but Trump succeeded in doubling the child tax credit and establishing paid leave for federal employees.

In his 2019 State of the Union address, Trump said he was “proud to be the first president to include in my budget a plan for nationwide paid family leave, so that every new parent has the chance to bond with their newborn child.”

This year, there are signs that his administration might not pursue the same agenda, including his selection of Vance as a running mate. In 2021, before he joined the Senate, Vance co-authored an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal opposing a proposal to invest billions in child care to make it more affordable for families. He and his co-author said expanding child care subsidies would lead to “unhappier, unhealthier children” and that having fewer mothers contributing to the economy might be a worthwhile trade-off.

Vance has floated policies that would make it easier for a family to live off of a single income, making it possible for some parents to stay home while their partners work. Along with his embrace of policies he calls pro-family, he has tagged people who do not have or want children as “sociopaths.” He once derided Harris and other rising Democratic stars as “childless cat ladies,” even though Harris has two stepchildren — they call her “Momala” — and no cats.

Even without details about new care policies, Trump believes that families would ultimately get a better deal under his administration.

The Trump-Vance campaign has attacked Harris’ record on the economy and said the Biden administration’s policies have only made things tougher for families, pointing to recent inflation.

“Harris … has proudly and repeatedly celebrated her role as Joe Biden’s co-pilot on Bidenomics,” said Karoline Leavitt, a campaign spokeswoman. “The basic necessities of food, gas and housing are less affordable, unemployment is rising, and Kamala doesn’t seem to care.”

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