The ceaseless incoherent noise of American politics is filtered and diminished by Colorado’s altitude; it is also diluted by the winds blowing down from the Rockies. That has been my opinion, as I have watched what America has lived through this last decade from my mile high perch. Already in 2026’s first three weeks the deafening noise machine has not stopped. It rather has intensified our current White House occupant’s wants, plans and intentions, most of them illogical and completely inutile. Against that backdrop I have viewed Colorado’s governors and over the years, to my thinking, they have been exceptional men who have managed the affairs of an exceptional state — Colorado. 

You could consider this my humble paean to the men who have occupied Colorado’s Governor’s Mansion.

I knew Bill Ritter before he became a governor as he served as a prosecutor of a cop who had shot his wife’s divorce attorney in Aurora. Ritter came across as a calm, compassionate prosecutor. I was an immigrant trauma surgeon who had been thrown into the middle of an American family tragedy. But such is the nature of the many altercations that a trauma surgeon encounters on a daily basis.

I would later learn that in 1987 Ritter and his wife, Jeannie, spent time as missionary volunteers in Zambia. In 2007 Ritter was elected governor of Colorado. By building a new energy economy, Ritter established Colorado as a national and international leader in clean energy. After his one term as governor, he went to Colorado State University where he founded the Center for New Energy. Bill Ritter is a brilliant, benevolent and truthful man. He was a steady, sober leader of a state that has distinguished itself as politically rational and middle of the road.

I knew Dick Lamm, Colorado’s governor from 1975 to 1987. He was a smart, opinionated man of ideas; a rational and absolutely sane man. As an example, he opposed Denver’s hosting of the 1976 Winter Olympics because of its cost, forcing reversal of the decision. He also was an early leader of the environmental movement. We became friends after he left the office. I remember Dick as an intellectual, a man of reason whose opinions we sometimes disagreed about. But he eschewed chaos and lying, both intellectual and as a way of governing.  

Jared Polis, who is term limited, has been our governor since 2019. His leadership has been particularly good, perhaps mirroring his superior academic distinction. He has wielded a steady, reasonable hand. That he is gay has shown the nation that the Right’s preoccupation with an individual’s sexuality are more often overblown concerns in the Right’s minds. His stance on education has been reasonable, though I wish he had more aggressively advanced K-12 science education in general, and mathematics in particular. But I understand that the issues a governor confronts are more complex than the worry folks like me have about the sinking level of science education in America. I never had the privilege of meeting Polis.

And I never met governors Roy Romer,  Bill Owens or John Hickenlooper. I have resided in Colorado during their occupancy of the governor’s mansion, and know them as every other citizen of the state knows them, with approval or with a degree of disapproval of their ideas. 

In the time I’ve lived in Colorado, I have watched different men and women rise through the ranks, to become leaders. The majority have proved that you can be rational, truthful, steadily consistent, and respectful of those who did or did not vote to elect you. The people we elect to fashion the laws that govern us do so for all of us — a governor maybe a Democrat or Republican, but the legislation they sign into law applies to everyone. It’s what democracy means. 

The point I am making is that we have had the good fortune of electing a substantially steady, rational group of men to be our governors. They have, to a man, believed and lived the principles of veracity, i.e., a house can’t be built on lies. That clarity, and not chaos in action and thought, are what our children should inherit from our leadership.  The result has been a state that is the envy of many other American states. I can I think extrapolate that citizens have an obligation to choose intelligent, intellectually superior and mentally stable legislators if we hope to have sane, stable legislative agendas.

Pius Kamau, M.D., a retired general surgeon, is president of the Aurora-based Africa America Higher Education Partnerships; co-founder of the Africa Enterprise Group and an activist for minority students ‘STEM education. He is a National Public Radio commentator, a Huffington Post blogger, a past columnist for Denver dailies and is featured on the podcast, “Never Again.”