I am very pleased to have one of what I think is one of the top candidates. We have a big GOP primary, but most of the candidates that are registered with the Secretary of State, they're not really candidates. They have no fundraising, they have no websites, they are not serious people. So a couple of weeks ago, Ryan Schuling and I had the privilege of moderating a Republican forum.
It was originally going to be a debate, but then when we realized we had three candidates because Victor Marks couldn't make it, we decided to go in a kind of a bigger direction and Sheriff Jason Mixel was there. He did a great I think all the candidates did a really good job representing themselves and sort of giving the people that were there a better feel of who
they were and what their priorities were. And I'm happy to have Sheriff Jason Mixel in the studio with me right now to continue that conversation.
Welcome to the show, Thanks, Manda. I appreciate being here.
Well, I appreciate you driving up from Teller County where you are Sheriff.
Absolutely.
Let's start with your background. For people who are not familiar with you.
Well, a couple of things people don't realize. I do own businesses. I started a small company, grew it to a large company. We my and my wife diversified down to small businesses. So we own several restaurants. We own some parking frants for those, so we own two in Woodland Park. We own one that's called the Ute Lodge Barn Grill, which is actually a steakhouse. And we own another place called One ten Reserve. It's more of a
summer business type right now. And then we own some commercial rentals and some different things.
Okay, I'm a big fan of the Hungry Bear. On on occasion, I will drive to Woodland Park just to get pancakes there.
But that's the story for another time. Married. Obviously, you got kids.
I do. I've got three boys. I have one that's in law enforcement, I have one that's security technologies in California. And I have one the one seventy third Airborne who's just been brought back to the US to serve at the hundred first Airborne or airsol Wing.
Well, thank him for his service for me. I appreciate that.
So they're all grown and gone and is that one of the reasons that you decided now to jump in a race for governor Because you've got a long tenure in law enforcement. Why now, why try to go from sheriff to gov.
Well, I think here's the issue. I was going to the state capitol. I'm fighting things like the Second Amendment rights for people throughout Colorado. We're fighting things for businesses on my private site. We're fighting things that have to deal with safe injection sites throughout Colorado. And the problem was, I'm dealing with a lot of politicians every day and
I'm not getting anywhere right. So We've had so many different governor's candidates come through the mix over the years, and I remember watching all of them and going, they can't win. They're just not that people that can understand the issues they want to do those things. So and I'd always told my boys, if you're going to complain about something, fix it. So I decided one morning, because I had been complaining so much about the way things were going, that I've got to fix it because we've
got to bring back love for law enforcement. We've got to get the state back into control fiscally. And I felt like someone that was out of the box thinking I'm not an age old Republican or the fact that I'm not a politician, but I have run companies and I understand how to bring back economies and look at those things. I understood the crime issues in Colorado is one of the most unsafe states in the United States, and how do you bring that back? Well, I'm a sheriff.
I know how to work with other law enforcement. He's he's across the state to do that with minimal costs and really to have an ability to decrease crime within forty percent within for six months.
So you have been pretty outspoken about the way your department has figured out a way to sort of either I don't want to say get around, because I think that that is a misstatement to say get around, but how are you able to work with federal law enforcement where other sheriffs And we have a story on the blog today where the governor is like, oh, yeah, you guys can work with federal law enforcement all you want.
But the reality is the perception still exists that if you do cooperate with law enforcement when it comes to.
Immigration, you're going to be you could be fined.
Fifty thousand dollars because that's what the law says in Colorado, and our Attorney General will most certainly prosecute.
Well, he's done it, and he's doing it, and he's threatening people. That's the guy that wants to be a governor. Now here's the other side of it. Though Governor Paulis is wrong. I've said he's wrong for the last eight years. I've fought the ACLU on these issues. We've sent letters to him. He's never wanted to sit down personally and have this discussion, even though I'm the one they're going after for the programs.
He just offered to sit down and make that happen with law enforcement, So you should take.
Him up on it.
Well, here's the thing. He will with his people right, right. He won't come down and meet with those of us that understand the real issues. And that's been across the board. We've attempted to meet with him for years, and he'll only go to certain sheriffs or certain policed agencies that work with him, right and do pretty much what he wants in the state of Colorida, which is a yes. So the problem is there is no yes to this right. There is a whole set of circumstances that are killing
us here in Colorado with these issues. But it's across the board with county commissioners wanting to meet with them, all kinds of folks that have better ideas than what's being forced on them. That's what's not coming across because really it's a localized Denver government that's pushing out throughout the whole state with all kinds of issues.
Oh that's true. Let's talk about your battle with the ACLU. How did it start? Well, it started. I became a sheriff.
I actually was asked to come back because the sheriff pro formed me had left early. So I took ownership of the sheriff's office. Could you actually sign ownership to it? My first day back, the ACLU calls me, the head of the ACLU, and he says, hey, listen, are you going to play ball with us? Or are we going to have to sue you? So you're going to have to play ball like all the other sheriffs in Colorado.
And I said, give me five minutes. I don't even know what you're talking about, right, So I called over my jail because when I left, we were working with ice. When I came back. I found out that there had been letters given to the ACLU saying that we weren't going to work with ICE, that we wouldn't support ICE. Then I talked to my staff and that we had a huge issue going on with cartel's illegal marijuana. The logistics line we're coming into Colorado was destroying our community.
Knowing to taking on a fight like that, I was going to have to work with ICE. I called ICE. I said, hey, listen, you send me the first flight in and I'll start taking them today. I called the Aco you.
Back, What do you mean by that? What does that mean?
Well, because they the Aco you did not want us to house for ICE criminals in Colorado, same thing we're doing now. At that time, you could though you knew you were gonna be sued, but nobody had jumped into that. They just were trying to push it away and say, oh, well, you know in theory we're gonna lose, right, So, and I don't like being threatened. I'm not good like that. I just I just don't do well with it. So we immediately got the phone call back from the Aco
you saying what's your what are you gonna do? And I go here's the thing. I'm landing them. They're gonna fill my jail today, sue me. I go, I'll take that battle on. So that's what happened. Three days later, I think I got my first lawsuit and we were embroiled for eight years. And through that eight years we won.
I had a great attorney through the county, and we had a great strategic direction on how I wanted to make sure how we could win, and we won because we were saying, to serve the public and to protect public peace, we need to be able to work with ice.
What does that look like in practice in Teller County where you're a sheriff.
Well, now it's changed, right. They finally were able to get a legislation passed that would stop me from being able to use my two eighty seven G program at this point.
And the two eighty seven G program is a federal program that you could partner and actually have a dedicated person who serves a dual purpose of working for the sheriff's office and immigration and customers enforcement right inside my jail, right right, So you actually have a person that was fulfilling.
That role, yep. And we're dealing with people inside the jail, right, So they're not going back into the community, they're not going back on the streets. You're not having those issues. So that's how it all started. Now it's if there's a major investigation or they need us to investigate something, we can assist with an investigation, but only an investigation.
So that's where it's sits I has to initiate.
ICE has to initiate by sending me a memo saying, hey, we need your assistance with an investigation.
Are there still law enforcement officials that believe that even that level of cooperation on an active investigation couldn't at them a fifty thousand dollars fine?
Oh absolutely, Yeah.
Well, I mean I don't know why they wouldn't.
Phil Weiser has been very aggressive, yeah, in you know, in making sure that this law is balanced, is passed, or what am I trying to say, enforced? So, I mean he's and he's running for governor, right, I Mean, that's that's the thing. When you are thinking about Colorado overall and not just Teller County, what is the biggest issue in your mind?
I think the economy right now and what we're doing to businesses. You know, between twenty three twenty four fiscal year, we lost over thirty thousand businesses in Colorado. Some of those were grocery stores. Some of those had over six hundred some employees, so you figure that's a minimum. If they only have one person each for each business, that's
thirty thousand people laid off from work. In quarter one of twenty twenty five, we lost another nineteen percent of businesses in Colorado because of the way we're doing our overreach in Colorado from Denver and the legislatures on the different fees, that the way that we are handling businesses, on the regulations, it is killing businesses across Colorado. You had a thousand mom and pop gun shops that closed
up early last year just based on the three bill. Right, So, how can we bring back an economy in Colorado when we are driving businesses out, we're driving oil and gas out, we're driving local farmers out. It's just across the board.
I don't disagree with anything you just said, but there is a big old elephant in the room, and that is a democratic legislature. Now, even if Republicans somehow managed to peel off a few seats here and there, I think unless something catastrophic happens, like we all find out
that there are aliens from another planet. The Democrats are going to maintain control of the House in the Senate, how do you begin to walk back the over regulatory burden that you were just talking about with people who are trying in this legislative session to add more to it.
Well, I think you have to educate people. Why right right now you have a governor in office who's not educating people as to what the impacts are of Colorado like you should be. There's no clear leadership throughout Colorado. I think a lot of your Democrats that are in office right now, I think if they understood exactly what was the circumstances are going to happen after they put something into a bill, would understand that hurts even the
direction they want to go with things. The problem is there's no education done at the Capitol unless it's in committee. And the problem with the committees are you have a Democrats side that are taking positions that have been left and their offices that they left office, and they're appointing
people to those committees. So the rest of the Senate and the rest of the House Democrats may not even know what the impacts were coming out of those committees because things are moving so quickly over six hundred to seven hundred bills a year, they don't even know when it hits the floor with the full impacts are because
they're not talking about it. You have a budgetary committee between Democrats and Republicans that are in battle over these things, and the problem is there's no parent going wait a second, If you do that and you pass a budget at that level without looking at the impacts, well we've just lost our budgeting for the next few years and we've
put ourselves in more debt. We're now at threat of losing other programs, other things, and I think that that is something that has to be done across Colorado.
So you would consider yourself more for lack of a better word, and activist governor when it comes to the legislature.
I think you have to be right because we're not going to win in the Republican Party. And I hear this all the time, We're gonna win back all these seats now now, I just don't think that's gonna happen because it's been sway too many to Democratic districts, right yep.
But even Democrats are not happy with progressive Democrats. That's a split that is actually happening, right, So I think that you need to push more towards those folks that was a logical understanding of things rather than a progressive side that is just advocating total destruction in Colorado.
And I think the you know, John Caldera had a great column about the brewing Democrat civil war. But you know, ultimately, however that plays out, you're still going to be dealing with people in the legislature that don't agree with you know that we're overregulated.
Now.
One of the things that I think Governor Jared Poulis has done a really bad job is exactly what you're talking about, and that is leading during the legislative session. And I'm not asking him to go in and write bills and I'm not asking him to do that, but he's been very happy to let the progressives take over the legislative process in Colorado and then selectively vetoing a few bills here or there, in my mind, to shore up his libertarian, fake libertarian credentials.
But that's another story for another time. Let me ask you about energy because.
You mentioned the fact that Colorado is pushing oil and gas out of Colorado.
How would you reverse out?
What would you do like day one when it comes to energy policy, What would be the first things that you would take.
Well, the first thing I'm going to take care of is I need to sit down with those executives and understand the oil and gas industry enough to know where where our shortcomings are in Colorado on how we fix those. Because here's the problem. By twenty six, twenty eight, we have to shut down one of our last coal producing energy plants in the state of Colorado because of a legislation. We're going to go to strictly wind and solar. Here's
a problem with wind and solar. If you want to turn on a an extra heater in your house or something as such, if it draws more energy that wind and solar can't jump up its production, right it can't.
We talked a lot about this on the show, so my audience is very up to speed.
That makes it easey. So because you can't scale, what do you do? I have in my county major snowstorms right I'm in the mountains. Several years ago we had a major snowstorm that came through because we can't have gas stoves, because you can't have fireplaces, you can't go to any thing other than this type of electrical energy. I had homes that could not get heat because you don't have a secondary source. Now that wasn't the sole cause that they'm not having sex a source yet, but
that's what we're talking about doing the Colorado. Look at what happened in Texas when they had mostly all solar and wind and their energy process is broke during windstorms and snowstorms, and then all of a sudden they had a loss of energy across the state. We don't need to create people's deaths because we're too limited to what we want in Colorado. You have to bring back oil and gas, and you have to sit down as grownups.
But we also have to look at nuclear energy. I think you have to bring in nuclear energy because the thing is is we want to create all these jobs with data centers and all these these big types of corporations. You can't do that without electricity reserves. You can't do it.
So practically, what does that look like?
Would you unseat the current Public Utilities Commission because they've adopted rules in December that have sent us down a path that is number one technolo logically impossible.
Yeah.
One of the PUC members actually said, well, we don't know what the technology is going to be between twenty thirty and twenty thirty five.
Are you freaking kidding me with that?
You have the Chancellor of Germany coming out two days ago saying we are undergoing the most expensive energy transition in the world and we've destroyed our economy. It's the exact same thing we're doing here in Colorado. How do you begin to undo that framework?
Well, there's two things, and I've done it in my career as a sheriff and or a CEO of an organization. You have to remove hurdles. And if you have an energy commission, that is being the hurdle because they will not understand, they will not listen because they don't have an understanding of the energy issues in Colorado. They have to be removed or you have to change it to where you have multiple types of energy systems in Colorado.
Maybe the PUC needs to come to the table more with a governor actually standing there talking about these things. I think that's the thing is, where have you seen a governor in this state or any of those those civic leaders, mean leaders to go sit down with them and talk about it.
I think that Jared Poulis probably has had long conversations with the PUC.
We just don't know about them.
I mean, he appointed people from the green energy industry. He has stacked the deck. Every board, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife board is full of animal rights advocates and people who don't actually hunt or do any of those things.
I mean, well, you make it great because here's the thing. And I talked to the Western Sportsman of Colorado and the different sportsman's groups. I've been a hunter my whole life. I grew up here in Colorado. It's part of what my grandchildren do. You're right that commission was put together as Colorado CPW Corondo Parks and Wildlife. Here's the issue with that. It needs to be separated again. Coronto Parks need to be different than divisional Wildlife. We used to
have divisional Wildlife. Their job was to protect animals in Colorado. That's not being done anymore. And I think you're right. All those committees need to be researched, looked at, and had a discussion over what direction we have and they need to do as strategically as that. Is this a five year plan, ten your plan. There's no cur planning Colorado in place.
So for me and I loft at this at the forum, I'm like, would you be in favor of an elected PUC because in my mind, the Public Utilities Commission should be more on the side of the ratepayer than they are the energy companies.
And right now from where I'm sitting.
You have the PUC absolutely rubber stamping whatever Excel says it needs. But Xcel has cover because they're just doing what the State of Colorado's PUC requires. We've created this closed loop where everybody's in the loop except the rate payers.
Yeah, I think Also, I think there's another model to look at as it's you have sixty four counties in the state of Colorado. Those counties, through their commissioners, should have buy in to whom's on these or who is on these committees, right, it's their impacts. The problem in Colorado is that all the control in Colorado's been placed at the state capitol instead of back into local governments
in Colorado. Truly, if a local government has the ability to vote on different people to place into those positions. It allows every county to have a discussion for their voters. If you have an elected position that's across Colorado, then a lot of it's based on money and push and just like every other election we have in Colorado, maybe instead of a governor being able to put those people in office, it needs to be counties with equal votes throughout the state of Colorado.
I'm speaking with Sheriff Jason Mike Sool. He is sheriff of Teller County. He's also running for governor on the Republican side. If you have questions for him, now's the time to get him in and you can you stick around absolutely, Okay, We're going to stick around have him. Like I said, guys, I'm going along with these candidates because I want you guys to be able to make an informed decision when you vote in the primary. I'm taking upon myself to get people to vote in the primary.
That's what we're doing today.
They need them.
Yeah. I do have one comment though that I want to share before we take a quick break. Mandy.
While listening to your interview of Jason mike Sel, I'm also looking at his campaign website. I noticed that his campaign logo uses a similar font for his last name as my favorite brand of potato chips while growing up in Ohio.
Mike Cell's interesting.
I like it, is there a connection because I like.
Those chips too.
There's no connection, but Mike's still such a There's not as many of us out there, so I'm sure it does have a connection. I've had the potato ships. They're wonderful, but yeah, not that I'm aware of.
All Right, we'll be right back with more of your questions. You can text them to five six, six nine zero. We'll be right back. Keep it on, KOA. I don't even know how many. I mean, there's like fifteen people running, and I'm putting air quotes around that, but there's like five serious I would say, serious candidates with fundraising and websites and whatnot.
Right maybe now, maybe just four?
I mean I think we're down for a real candid.
Yeah, I mean it feels that way because Mark Baisley left the race to go run for Senate and Greg Lopez changed his party affiliation as running as an independent, so we don't have to deal.
With that anymore.
A lot of people have questions for you, Jason, and I want to see if I can find the ones that Mandy, please ask Jason what he could do for our roads in Colorado.
You know, here's the thing. I drive all over Colorado and I found that our roads is to be just horrible, miserable. And there is an urban rule divide that we all talk about, right, but you really see it if you're not a nine to twenty five and on a nine seventy. Our road infrastructure is just crumbling.
Oh even outside of the Metro, I seventy falls apart.
It's embarrassing, it's horrible. And here's the thing. We need to put quit spending so much money on special interest issues and really put it back into road infrastructure. They need to get a schedule of different highways and roadways throughout Colorado and how to fix those quickly. They need an adopt a plan that starts dealing with small infrastructure projects that make a larger splash than some of the
bigger ones. And to what I'm saying about that is this, do we need a bridge downtown Denver to the capitol, or do we need a bridge infrastructure that's falling apart rush or in a small town in Colorado like Steamboat or Woodland Park or clear out in Bent County on their roads and the potholes. I mean, that's the things that people want to know. And I think too giving more money back to local governments to work on their
municipal roadways too. Not for bigger Denver areas or auroras, but these are small cities throughout Colorado that just have no infrastructure at all. But you got major highways crossing through them, big impacts.
Well, who would you what sort because I'm assuming you would cut the current Sea Dot director loose? Please cut the current sea dock director loose? What sort of Sea Dot director would you look for? What kind of experience would you want them to have? Because I'm got to tell you, I think that in order to fix our roadways you have to fundamentally change the direction that has been given to the Department of Transportation, which focuses now
on multimodal transport. The fact that we're talking about doing anything to paying you boulevard other than adding freaking lanes is absurd to me. But that's what you get when you put all these green maniacs in charge of our transportation.
Well it is, and then here's the other side, leaving open ending contracts to get roadways done to where is Here's what happens Colorado. We pay upfront for our contracts costs. I don't know if anybody else that does. That's crazy business. But then as you get closer to the end of a contract, what happens is those contracts are always going to go over on costs. Right, so now we're having to double down on giving somebody more money to finish a project to get it done. That needs to be
looked at us. How we do that, how we give our contracts in Colorado, how we write those contracts in Colorado. The other piece of it, I would want somebody to sit in that chair that understands as an engineer, what parts and pieces need to be fixed in Colorado, make roadways last longer, not just quick patch jobs, so that
we're not constantly doing it. The other side of it, too, is finding a structure that looks at the needs of the population growth for an area, not just what has been sustained and it's been a band aid for these areas for multiple years. Those things that need to be fixed. I see it all over Colorado when I go just the amount of debris that's dropped on roadways. Now the Sea Dot can't get too because they don't have the amount of personnelity.
Now it's dirty.
Now it's just dirty, and it's just destroying the roadway. Anyways, you wouldn't leave The amount of front endlignments tires I go through with patrol cars throughout the year, it's ridiculous. The amount of injuries on the roads just dealing with roadway maintenances. So there's a lot of issues and I think that needs that we need to have a look at with all the counties at the what their major projects are and that we fund those major product projects within those certain areas.
I'm trying to get as many of these questions as we can. This one is a big one. It's been asked in a various way, three or four different times.
Mandy.
Let's face it today, it's all about person than party then policy. How will Jason Mike Sell overcome the cult of personality, momentum and associated big funding that Victor Marks currently has to gain the GOP nomination.
Here's the thing, right, I've been a Colorado, a Carraado on for three generations in my family. My got my granddaughter here. I'm from Colorado. Here's the issue you run into. Nobody is getting a lot of donations in Colorado. And I looked at Victor Marx's stuff. If you spend three hundred and some thousand dollars to make six hundred thousand dollars, you don't You're not going to get through an election
cycle with that. And here's the other side. The moneies that are involved in getting somebody election in Colorado come from iecs. They do not come from a governor's candidate. I even talked to Hiding and All before I started this. The most she raised throughout her her push to become a governor in Colorado, I think that came from donations from Colorado ins or throughout Colorado was five hundred thousand dollars total. You don't win any election on that, right.
You have to run it on issues and base because what Colorado we've done in the past is we get this big name, we throw money at that person, thinking they're going to win because they have made money. Right, Dan mays, Right. And here's what happens if we put a bad candidate first, even if they're well funded, it's still going to be a well funded loss.
But there is a culture personality around Victor Marx. I got a really thoughtful email from a listener who said, look, he just came in to our church and though he didn't say anything detail wives, he's a very interesting man and he came out and he's very charismatic and everybody at the church seemed to really like him. But okay, great, then come on my show, Victor. We're trying to invite you. No one's responding. Let us know how to.
Get you on the show. But how do you whoa geez?
How do you overcome that? How do you get past that? Because you're you're a very low key guy. You present yourself beautifully, you speak really well, you were great on the stage, you have great presence.
But if you do have someone who is.
Sucking up all the oxygen for whatever reason, how do.
You get through that?
Well? I mean, I'm consistent, right, My plan is it's a marathon race. I'm consistent. I've been a Republican most life, or all my life. Here's where it's going to start to split here soon. If a candidate does not have an ability to understand what's happening really in Colorado, I think that's hurt some here's the other side. If what you have done in your life, and you talked about that you have done in your life is unverifiable by
anybody in the world, well there's probably an issue. And the problem with voters, I think today, and voters have to look at it is verify what your candidate's saying they have done. If you don't look at that, then why are they your candidate. I mean, I've seen a lot of candidates come and go throughout my career, and I think the more that candidate speaks, I think the more people start to see through it. He can go to churches, right, that's great. But here's what I will
tell you. I'm not trying to run to be the best Christian in the race. I'm a Christian, but I want to be the best governor's candidate in the race. And if I start talking weird things and just saying what you want me to hear, I don't win an election either. And I think that's the difference.
I do think, and this is one of the reasons that I've been trying to help people have the bigger issues, the bigger discussions, is because ultimately, to your point, I'm concerned that a pastor can get elected statewide like less than twenty percent of Colorado's regularly attend church.
So I have concerns about that.
And I think electability has to matter in Colorado, where we have seen nothing but a shellacking for Republicans over the last few years. Some great candidates got shellacked because they had an R behind their name. How do you present yourself as what the reasonable Republican to those unaffiliated voters that maybe are thinking I could never vote Republican.
Hold that thought. We're going to take a break.
I'm with Jason Mike swel He's the sheriff of Teller County. We'll get that answer when we get back. I asked you before the break.
Essentially the question that was.
Embedded in my statement was how do you win independents? They're not enough Republicans. For a Republican to get elected with just Republican votes, you have to win independence which have voted about sixty forty in favor of Democrats as of late.
How do you win them?
Well, I think through the issues right, understanding real issues that are impacting them, and having those discussions. Because here's the thing about independent voters that I know of and unaffiliateds. They don't vote party lines. That's why they left both parties. They want to vote on issues that impact them on a daily basis, and I think that's the difference in the type of candidate and having those discussions. So I've been talking to the sportsmen of Colorado, which are majority
of or are unaffiliated and independent. They voted for Polis even though they're hunters and sportsmen in Colorado, because they thought he was libertarian.
Right ah, they didn't pay attention.
Well, I mean, here's the thing. The media is really what sets the ability for somebody to kind of get away with it, and Polis was a master of it. I don't like to get in his head, but he was smart when he ran because he was able to cloud so many people judgment on things that look where he's at now. So I think in Colorado that's what
independents are looking for. They're looking for a truth, an understanding of things with somebody that actually talks about issues that impact them and are not so involved in the social issues right now.
Right, I agree wholeheartedly.
Big issues that people are concerned about, and the blanket statement of affordability is a big one.
Affordability is one of those words.
My level of affordability is different than your level of affordability. But I think what people really mean is everything here is so damn expensive.
I've just made reservations. For example, my.
Family's going to pay off a Christmas gift. We're going to San Antonio, Texas for a short weekend. I made reservations for Valentine's Day and one of the nicest restaurants in San Antonio for me, my husband, and my daughter. I looked at the menu. Every menu price is a good twenty dollars lower than what you would pay for a similar restaurant here in Denver, YEP. People cannot afford to buy a house the medium. Home prices are so high,
property taxes are insane, homeowners insurance is insane. In our last five minutes, solve all those problems for me?
Well, leadership, right, it's having somebody that looks at where we're at in Colorado with farms and whatnot, and understand that things need to be produced in Colorado. We're shipping everything into Colorado. Now we have through all the different REGI stopped organ or companies and farms and construction companies from having production here in Colorado. They've moved it out
of Colorado, which increasingly causes problems for our market. So when you go buy eggs or you buy groceries for restaurants, our costs are astronautical because it's coming in from out of state.
Oh by the way, eggs three dollars cheaper in Ohio than they are here. But go ahead, lumber all of our lumbers coming from Canada. We sit on massive amounts of lumber, but we have shut all of our lumber mills down pretty much.
In Colorado. Oil and gas, we have to ship all of our fuels from out of state because we have shut down all of our refineries.
Something interesting just happened. The Bureau of Land Management just had a lease sale. Zero bids on the leases in.
Colorado, yep, because there's zero lumber mills to take it to. So the oily gas, oil and gas.
Zero zero bids on the leases here in Colorado. Other leases and other states sold, but our lease is here and they had zero bids. I think that's really telling the business environment.
Heyah, absolutely, And that's what the regulations are doing to us. It's destroying our state of car.
So let me just see if I can encapsulate our conversation, because what I'm really looking for from candidates in these discussions is not detailed, bullet pointed, you know, because there's no way you can do that you're not in office yet. But what I am looking for is sort of an overarching view of how you would be as governor. And it sounds to me like you would be a governor who would number one, put yourself out with the legislature
to actively lobby. Would that be a fair assessment the things that are important to you and have conversations with people about how to maybe move the needle and take some of the pressure off business.
So would that be fair?
Yes?
Okay?
And then how would you communicate on a regular basis with the people of Colorado? Because all I get from Jared Polis is everything is awesome on his ex account.
Well, here's the thing I believe in direct contact to people. Look how many times has polls come out of Denver? Right, He's been to my county twice, He's been to some counties he's never even been to. I think you have to take those road trips around Colorado and have active discussions with people. You have to work with podcasts Colorado. Not your own podcasting. I do my own podcaster in my sheriff's office. I do it a lot, right, I am my own podcasting in the campaign, we do it
a lot. Those are great ways to get things out. But when you stand in front of a camera at the Capitol and you're discussing something on the legislative floor in front of a legislative body on why you won't sign something, that's educating, and that's that leadership that I think is being missed in Colorado. If you're a governor, you should be out ahead of things. You should be
working on things. I have a belief that I wouldn't fire everybody in the state government right, Democrat, independent, unafield. I'm not going to go in and just fire it like other candidates have talked about, right, because some of most people may be really good at what they do, right,
they just need a new direction and a leadership. You don't see even that the president now doesn't go in and fire every person that works in every position, because then you're rebuilding something and it's going to take more time and more cost to get up and running. Whereas it's better to give a direction and then make sure
and follow through with that direction, right. That's what you do when you take over a company or a business, and Colorado does not have time to rebuild a whole organization to be able to get everybody's money back and where we need to be in the next five years to get that struggle moving forward.
We are out of time. This has been a very informative hour. I'll make sure that the podcast is up right away so people can listen to it, share it. I'm going to be having the other candidates on for at least an hour as well. I'm sure i'll talk to you again before the primary. Why should people vote for Sheriff Jason Mixel.
Well, I'm the only one that can win at general election. And I say that because I'm the only normal candidate that's actually running. It's not a politician. I'm understanding of what needs to be done in Colorado, and I will make sure that I support our citizens in this state because I've been doing it and I've been a constant leader in Colorado. So that's why I'll be voted in this Governor.
Jason Mixel's a link to his blog, which I believe is just Mike Soel for Colorado is it m I K E.
Oh yeah, and you guys put the number in there. It messes me up. Mike Cell M I K E. S E l L the.
Number four gov dot com to put a link on the blog today if you want to find it that way. Jason, I appreciate your time to da a great conversation. I look forward to talking to you again in the future.
Thanks Mandy,