My home state of Colorado used to shine as a Western American land of promise, where economic vigor and free-spirit vibes lured diverse transplants from around the globe. Migrants from great coastal cities likened it to a real-life version of Ayn Rand’s fictional, Colorado-based Galt’s Gulch, where industrialists, inventors, entrepreneurs, and artists established themselves to escape a collectivist society that manifests mediocrity and oppression.
Growth in population and wealth was the norm through the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Business leaders and top-ranking executives flocked to Colorado, with the state becoming a permanent home for at least 12 billionaires and 170,223 millionaire households by 2020 — not bad for a state with fewer than 6 million residents. It was an environment in which liberals, conservatives, libertarians, hippies, cowboys, rednecks, hillbillies, artists, tech entrepreneurs, and free-spirited people of all philosophical and political persuasions led safe and stable lifestyles in a cultural and economic cocoon.
Then came 2018, when the far Left won majorities in both chambers of the legislature, and voters elevated Democrats to every statewide office, including Gov. Jared Polis, Secretary of State Jena Griswold, and Attorney General Phil Weiser. By 2021, the Left held both of Colorado’s U.S. Senate seats and four of the state’s seven House seats (the state gained an eighth district in 2023, first held by a Democrat).
Seven years into this dark blue tsunami, the signs of damage are mounting. At first, Colorado’s stumbles looked eerily like those made notorious by California. Nearing the end of the 2025 legislative session, Colorado has outdone what center-right Coloradans call the “Left Coast.” This year’s legislative agenda — including a countercultural push to rework the state’s Labor Peace Act, tilting the scales toward unions and away from production — hints at more trouble ahead.
For decades, Coloradans have grumbled about “Californication,” the influx of Californians jacking up home prices and hauling in left-leaning politics. It was one part jest, another part gripe, and a nod to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ riff on culture creep. “Colofornia” became a term of consternation among natives and others witnessing the influx. But it’s no laughing matter in 2025. The numbers show a genuine shift, and the fallout — economic strain, cultural friction, and a state generally losing its footing — is hitting hard.
Despite a doctrinaire, radicalized legislature, what’s the matter with Colorado is far from intractable. Colorado cities and towns consistently rank among the top 10 for livability, as ranked on lists by U.S. News & World Report, WalletHub, and other research organizations.
Colorado has become a draw for the country’s booming aerospace industry. Parks, trails, open spaces, ski slopes, and awe-inspiring vistas complement a four-season climate conducive to year-round recreation. A modern proliferation of art venues, museums, and concert arenas gives Coloradans cultural amenities more common in major coastal cities.
What we have here is a governmental leadership crisis of one-party control, with rippling consequences of death, homelessness, addiction, despair, and growing unemployment, disproportionately burdening the most vulnerable among us.
Pre-2018, Colorado reliably flexed economic muscle no matter which party controlled the famously swingy purple state. Studies consistently ranked Colorado in the top five for economic performance, and the state shone as a beacon for go-getters. By 2024, the Centennial State slumped to the bottom 10. It is California’s slow bleed redux: Regulations pile up, costs soar, and growth fizzles. Personal income growth, a bragging right at third nationally pre-2018, crashed to 39th by 2024, even with Polis and company supporting some of the country’s highest minimum wage mandates, consistently projecting themselves as champions of the state’s dwindling working class.
Though wage hikes raise some paychecks, jobs thin out and businesses hesitate to grow or relocate, handing Colorado a growing “income inequality” dilemma like the divide between California’s Silicon Valley/Hollywood crowd and ordinary households.
Housing is referred to as a “crisis” by the legacy media. Median prices hit $541,352 in February, based on Zillow sales and listing data, landing Colorado among the five least affordable states. Apartments.com shows apartments in Denver going for 32% more than the national average.
Inflation across goods and services has risen 15.4% since 2021, outpacing the rest of the country. Colorado’s new and troubling status as the sixth-most-regulated state raises a growing concern: Will top employers continue doing business in what free-market, supply-side defenders view as a freakishly controlling regulatory environment, much less choose Colorado as a good place to start, grow, or relocate a business?
The regulatory excess goes beyond wage mandates, expensive requirements to save the planet by forcing the abandonment of natural gas heating, and countless other regulations that are hostile to businesses. In April, the legislature and Polis banned the sale of most common handguns, rifles, and shotguns except for those with enough free time and money to buy themselves past required training courses and licensure fees.
If that’s not enough to discourage doing business in Colorado, the legislature crafted a bill that penalizes parents, with consequences that include losing custody, if they use a child’s given name instead of one the child prefers. That proposed law alone has families planning to move and much of the country rolling its eyes.
The workforce is taking hits. Oil and gas, a godsend for smart workers without college degrees, dropped 25% in active rigs by 2023, based on industry tallies. Compliance costs from post-2018 rules — $590 million a year, as found by the Common Sense Institute — push layoffs and send firms packing.
The proposed 2025 Labor Peace Act overhaul, making it easier to require “closed shops” in Colorado, could jack up costs for employers running on fumes. The bill now on the table at the legislature to scrap the act would make Colorado join the ranks of the minority of states where one simple majority vote is all that’s needed to force all employees in a workplace to fork over union dues, like it or not. The net effect, worried Colorado development recruiters point out, would be to scare off a lot of employers looking to locate in Colorado or expand their operations here. California, under a union chokehold, is the poster child; employers have been fleeing its closed shops for “right to work” states where unions cannot make nonmembers pay fees or dues. Colorado’s 3.8% unemployment in late 2024 looked rosy. Expect it to rise if this bill becomes law.
Colorado’s energy production provides a case study in control creep. Senate Bill 19-181, signed in 2019, flipped the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from industry booster to eco-enforcer. Industry seats shrank from three to one, swapped for environmentalists. Local governments gained free rein to tighten drilling regulations that the state had long prohibited to protect property rights and the country’s energy supply.
The oil and gas permitting process has become an engineered slog. Permits that took an average of 319 days in 2021 ballooned to 647 days by 2023. A per-barrel fee imposed in 2024 siphons cash for transit and wildlife. Colorado, the country’s fourth-largest energy producer, harvests less than it did in 2019, costing the state high-wage jobs and tax revenues essential to funding schools and infrastructure.
In March, Colorado had the second-highest unemployment rate, 4.8%, falling far below Mississippi, West Virginia, and other states that traditionally struggle economically. That compares with 2017, when Colorado tied for the country’s second-lowest unemployment rate at 2.7% before the left-wing, uni-party tsunami.
In 2017, Colorado’s job-growth rate was the envy of the country at 2.4%, compared with the national rate of 1.5%. The state’s most recent job-growth rate has fallen to 0.17%, compared to the national rate of 1.2%, landing Colorado 43rd in the country for job growth between March 2023 and March 2024, with neighboring Utah and Wyoming in the top 10 for job growth.
As with oil and gas producers, commercial real estate owners also feel the squeeze of excessive regulation. House Bill 1286 (2021) mandates that buildings over 50,000 square feet track energy and cut emissions by 7% by 2026 and 20% by 2030. Owners pay for retrofits, and the electrification mandates ban gas furnaces in buildings erected since 2024, with electric swaps due by 2027.
A 2024 rule tacks on gender-neutral restrooms and baby-diaper changing stations by 2026, raising construction costs even more. Polis pitches sustainability and fairness, but for business leaders, it is the importation of California-style regulatory excess they can choose to reject by moving operations next door to Utah or to any of the other less-regulated states surrounding Colorado.
Since 2019, Polis has backed policies such as House Bill 19-1124, tying the hands of state and local law enforcement when asked to cooperate with federal holds requested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. By 2025, more than 40,000 unvetted immigrants had poured in, landing in a state with 5.8 million permanent residents. Most have no jobs, cash, or prospects for employment and long-term housing.
The economy creaks under the weight of what Denver Mayor Mike Johnston gleefully calls “new arrivals.” It is a view from the perch of an Ivy League politician who grew up in Vail, where the median home price hovers around $2 million. Before the immigrant invasion, housing was a pipe dream for the young, and now these taxpayers shell out big to care for immigrants. Denver dropped $36 million on shelters in 2023, based on city budget data. Culturally, it’s a jolt, as schools strain under language gaps, and neighborhoods grapple with a new population of homeless people on top of scarcities in healthcare, social services, and housing that were problematic before the immigrant surge dramatically increased demand.
Illegal immigrant prison gangs, most notably the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, have notoriously spread from Denver. They have taken over apartment complexes in Aurora, and several of their victims told a member of the Colorado Springs Gazette’s editorial board that the problem is far worse and more widespread than the public has been told.
Similarly, California’s open-door experiment tanked affordability and stretched resources. For a state with seven times fewer residents than the Golden State, 40,000-plus “new arrivals” are a wave too high for the public to surf. Polis might call it compassion, but it amounts to a bill the average Joe and Jane Six Pack can’t afford.
Crime, especially violent crime, was for Coloradans a problem mostly found in distant coastal and Midwestern cities throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. People lived here to avoid crime.
Then, the left-wing cabal decriminalized every illicit drug, on the heels of voters enacting full legalization of marijuana, and indulged a “criminal justice reform” agenda that eased penalties for nearly every crime. The ideology said criminals need reform, but the result has been criminals flocking to Colorado, including Tren de Aragua gangsters, who made Colorado their North American headquarters.
The Common Sense Institute pegged Colorado’s 2022 monthly crime rate at 530 offenses per 100,000 residents, up 7.3% from 2019 and 20% from 2008. Car thefts jumped 13.6% that year, hitting 40,000-plus and topping the nation. Violent crime is at 423 per 100,000 since 2018, above average, with homicides and assaults creeping up. Walking the streets of Denver alone at night — where one risks life and limb in Washington Park, on Capitol Hill, or in other traditionally safe neighborhoods — makes little more sense than walking the streets of south-central Los Angeles.
The Left’s soft-on-crime policies culminated in national notoriety when U.S. News & World Report ranked Colorado the third-most dangerous state in 2024.
Most of Colorado’s 1,927 public schools are faltering, California-style. Post-2020, Colorado Measures of Academic Success found math proficiency at 27.4% of the student population, down from 32.7%, and literacy at 43%, down from 44.5%.
The scores reveal a dilemma nearly identical to California’s 2022 slump to 33% proficiency in math and 47% in English. Gaps for minorities, low-income children, and special education students widened after 2018 gains faded. More funding is the cry, but experience proves it doesn’t buy results.
The state slid from the top 10 for legal in-migration for three decades to the bottom 10 by 2025, perhaps the result of high living costs, crime, and a one-size-fits-all, intolerant political climate incapable of interparty cooperation. Homelessness festers in Colorado’s metropolitan areas, linked to housing woes and limp policies. Tents and shanties make Denver streets and parks look similar to those in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
In the wake of hard-drug decriminalization and full-scale cannabis legalization, fentanyl deaths soared 101.3% from 2019 to 2022. Illegal marijuana trafficking persists. A federal forest official years ago told the Colorado Springs Gazette’s editorial board of large plantations hiding in some of Colorado’s 11 national forests, complete with makeshift buildings and armed guards.
It turns out Latin American cartels prefer producing the drug in a state where illegal products meld right in with their licensed and legal counterparts. So much for the belief that legalizing marijuana would kill the black market.
Colorado’s anything-goes drug orgy, with the second-highest teenage fentanyl overdose rate, has fueled a booming drug rehab sector that has elders liquidating retirement funds to pay the costs of saving their children and grandchildren from substance abuse.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported 413 substance abuse treatment facilities in Colorado in 2020, up from 382 in 2016. By 2022, its national directory listed 448 facilities, suggesting an uptick in corporations feeding on a growing addiction epidemic.
Though numbers tell the rehab story, for the public, it is palpable. Consider the Tri-Lakes region of mountain villages north of Colorado Springs. There, a former Ramada Inn hotel and two luxury mountain resorts have transitioned into rehab centers. The community’s former bowling alley and family fun center houses a large cannabis grow operation and recreational marijuana store.
The California-to-Colorado pipeline has been flowing for years, with estimates showing tens of thousands of California transplants annually for the past three decades.
Though diminishing, the California influx brings Left Coast policies and more. Because of Colorado’s relatively small population of 5.8 million, the demand created by deep-pocketed Californians contributes to housing prices rising so sharply that retirees struggle with property tax bills that rival old mortgage payments.
Politically, Californication has tilted Denver, Boulder, and Fort Collins leftward while eating away at the consistently conservative tendencies of Colorado Springs — the veritable Orange County of Colorado, mimicking shifting political trajectories in south Los Angeles suburbs and San Diego.
In a state with living costs and crime approaching levels endured in California, bringing up children becomes increasingly challenging for many and a near impossibility for the working class.
Birth rates signal the growing unease. Polis, a married parent of two children, frequently champions what he calls family-friendly legislation and insists the state could use more children. Yet, births in his state fell from 62,949 in 2021 to 61,494 in 2023, based on the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and March of Dimes data.
Fertility has fallen as low as 50.2 in recent years for every 1,000 women aged 15 to 44, nearly a 25% fall since 2010, and the steepest decline nationwide. Fertility is at 1.48, which falls below the replacement rate. A slate of new laws, including a tweak to the state’s Medicaid program, encourages and subsidizes terminations of unborn children. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reports abortions increased from 8,873 in 2017 to 14,691 in 2023 (latest available) — a 65.5% increase.
The 2024 Colorado Political Climate Survey from CU-Boulder shows 33% approving of the state’s economy, with a 52% buy-in from Democrats and 16% from Republicans. The gap resembles California’s, in which wealthy tech executives and celebrities don’t typically know or care about the struggles of those living on or below the state’s $96,000 median household income.
Although Colorado’s median household income mirrors California’s, a recent study found that a household of four needs an income of $108,000 in 2025 just to scrape by. In Denver proper, the median household income is $94,157 — nearly $14,000 short of affording a modest family lifestyle.
Similar factors, throughout Colorado’s metropolitan areas, render the state comfortably livable only for those with solid six-figure wages, high net worths, or what frustrated Boulder residents commonly refer to as “trust funders” or “trustafarians” — residents gifted with inherited wealth.
When my wife and I moved to her native Colorado from Washington, D.C., in 1993, the state was indisputably America’s playground — a magnet for workers, young professionals starting families, and free spirits of all sociopolitical and cultural backgrounds. Today, not so much.
THE CALIFORNIACATION OF COLORADO
Colorado’s new economic strains, high crime rates, and the sanctuary misstep have tested its historic grit. High costs, red tape, and policy pivots since 2018 echo California’s stumbles, hitting a smaller state harder and faster. Workers and families feel it as homes slip away, jobs dwindle, and sidewalks and other public spaces head toward blight.
Polis, a well-intentioned optimist, anticipates a brighter tomorrow. Yet, data portend a future that could make California look stable and equitable by comparison. Colorado is far from hopeless — the climate, awe-inspiring terrain, and entertainment amenities will outlive trends, and even humanity’s existence — but the culture and economy tell a cautionary tale of a far-left, central planning agenda gone mad. As the Chili Peppers tell it, “Born and raised by those who praise control of population — it’s Californication.”
Wayne Laugesen is editorial page editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette, from which this is reprinted.