Tom Cruise is not running for Colorado state treasurer. Yet, we have Lang Sias. He’s like Top Gun’s Maverick — in real-life — minus the risky test-the-limits behavior.

After a conversation with Sias, one must wonder why we lack candidates of this quality for president of the United States. That’s not an exaggeration. He is exceedingly well read and knowledgeable in every social and political issue relevant to our present and past. He holds a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a juris doctor from Michigan. He talks about practical solutions, not doctrinaire philosophies of the left or right.

Simply put, Colorado could not put the state treasury in more capable hands.

Sias began his limited political career as a state representative from Jefferson County and ran as lieutenant governor under former State Treasurer Walker Stapleton during the big blue wave of 2018. He remains a member of the Colorado bar while flying 777s for Federal Express.

Sias knows, loves and cares about small businesses — the lifeblood of Colorado’s economy. He grew up working in his family’s small manufacturing firm. As a young adult, he became a combat fighter pilot flying FA-18s for the Navy. He deployed on combat missions, including several in Operation Desert Storm. He later flew F-16s for the Air National Guard before retiring as a lieutenant colonel.

Sias was no average performer in the sky. Like the fictional Maverick, the Navy chose him as an elite Top Gun instructor at the Navy Fighter Weapons School. Along with teaching some of the country’s most accomplished officers, Sias edited the Navy’s premier aviation tactics journal — a task granted only to the best among the best.

Feeling called back to small business, Sias worked as an attorney for a major national law firm where he specialized in counseling emerging and start-up high-tech companies.

Sias casually converses as someone who has thought through every potential social and political crisis. His eloquent command of the language makes Barack Obama and other high-level communicators sound like Joe Biden grasping for words like “God.”

Sias comprehends inflation like few others we have met, understanding that subsidized incomes, short staffing, supply chain shortages and long lines and long waits for services are manifestations of too much capital chasing too few goods, services and commodities. He grasps the entire equation and would work to eliminate obstructions to labor and employment to lower inflation.

Sias promises to ensure state investments are “safe, liquid, and generate yield that equals or exceeds appropriate benchmarks.”

As a board member of Colorado’s Public Employee Retirement Association, Sias feels personally responsible for ensuring teachers, first responders and other state employees receive the returns they were promised and earned.

As a legislator, Sias helped pass bipartisan legislation to increase funding for public school choice. By doing so, he created new hope and better futures for Colorado’s least advantaged children. He will work to find more money for the most effective teachers.

Treasurer Dave Young, a former state legislator, spent 20 years as a junior high teacher and served as president of the Greeley Education Association teachers’ union. He pledges to fight for the rights of public employees to collectively bargain — an activity that has failed to achieve adequate wages for even the highest-performing educators. He has never changed a troubling paradigm: union leaders serve the union, not the teachers who fund it with hard-earned substandard wages.

While no one should question Young’s passion for education, he has spent decades as an educator and union leader watching test scores and other performance metrics plummet. Teachers’ wages have not substantially improved in all his years as an educator, union leader and state treasurer. Yet he lists education as his top priority.

Like Sias, Young campaigns on concerns about Colorado’s record-high inflation. Yet, this happened and persists under his watch.

Young talks in political doublespeak about investing state funds in fossil fuels and other high-return investments that don’t appeal to his Democratic Party’s left-wing base. He wants to invest state funds within Colorado but seems conflicted about oil and gas — a major component of Colorado’s employment and economy.

“Everybody needs to have energy, but I’m particularly interested in fossil fuel companies that may not apparently be moving publicly to being an energy company and not solely a fossil fuel company,” Young said, as quoted in the Grand Junction Sentinel.

If Sias spoke with such opacity, his former students might crash multi-million-dollar jets.

Seldom, if ever, has Colorado had a candidate better qualified to manage the state’s budgeting, accounting and human resources. Vote for Lang Sias, a Top Gun candidate ready and able to serve like no other.