This interview by Allen Best appeared on BigPivots.com on December 24, 2024. We are sharing it in two parts.
On September 10, then-Senate President Steve Fenberg sat down with Allen Best of Big Pivots to talk about his eight years in the Senate, about what he learned as a legislative leader, his accomplishments, and the instances where legislation fell short.
You said the basic argument of the Republican minority was that this was too much, too quickly. Was there a basic agreement within the Republican minority about the need to change , that some policy was needed, that we needed to decarbonize?
No, not at all. I think that’s shifted a little, but not a ton.
When you think about the oil and gas fight, it wasn’t just the Republican minority, it was an army of oil-and-gas industry lobbyists (and) executives. In some ways they kind of weaponized their workers. There were rallies regularly. It was just a very tense period, and the narrative was that this was going to bankrupt the industry. We were going to have massive layoffs. It would hurt the state’s economy overall.
Those are scary things. It’s people’s livelihoods. It’s personal.
The opposition came more from oil and gas sector as opposed to the coal sector?
Yes. In fact, I can’t even think of a lobbyist for the coal sector. I don’t know that they were ever part of the conversation. Non-existent, basically. The closest thing in Colorado probably is Xcel Energy. Especially back then they had financial entanglements with coal.
They are a major presence at the Capitol.
Xcel? Oh, absolutely. They’re a sophisticated player, for better or for worse, and I would say they are agnostic on the use of fossil fuels, as long as they get to build things that make their shareholders money.
And we’ll get to that presently. Another question. Several people I spoke with described you as an uncommonly good listener and suggested that it has made you a more effective legislative leader. I also heard you described as cautious, careful and perhaps cagey. What are the key skills you believe are necessary for effective legislative leadership?
Listening and communication. Open communication is more important than I thought at first. So when I went into this, “The Art of War” [book by Sun Tzu written in fifth century BC] and positioning and kind of outmaneuvering was very much on my mind. I’m not saying that’s not part of the equation, but I think I’ve learned a lot more. Just as important is treating people like people — basically just treating people with respect, even if they don’t respect you, and especially when you’re in a position of power.
Because when you’re in a minority position, it’s different. You have a different role. In some ways, your job is to push buttons and to poke and to make sure that the voice of the minority is heard. When you’re in the majority, your job is to govern and actually problem-solve. It’s a much heavier responsibility. And you’re not just a political player. You’re an actual public servant. You’re a leader that has to govern and solve problems for people, for communities.
An individual in Boulder how is a master negotiator has said this: The cheapest consolation you can provide in a negotiation or a conflict is respect, because it doesn’t cost you anything, and it means the world to your opponent.
How do you express that respect?
Listening, hearing people out, giving them what they’re asking for to an extent when it doesn’t dramatically undercut what you’re trying to get right.
As an example a request of, “Look, we don’t like this bill. We’re going to fight. What we ask is that you don’t silence us, and you give us some grace, and sometimes that means you give us time to make our case. And we know at the end of the day you’re going to vote and you’re going to win, but don’t steamroll us. Allow us to offer amendments, allow us to make the case, allow us to try to find a path or maybe some little compromises here and there.”
And if you say “No, you’re in the minority, you have no voice. Screw you. We’re passing this and it’s a waste of time to hear you talk,” that will only inflame the situation and probably create more problems in the long run. Whereas, if you treat someone with respect and you say your voice is valued, I disagree, but at the end of the day, you represent almost half of the voters in the state, you can’t just disregard that.
I do think there’s a responsibility being in the majority to not just say, “Well, I won 50% plus one, and therefore I get my way on everything, and you don’t get to have a voice.” Many of my colleagues, many of the members in my caucus over the years, would sit there and be like, “We’re wasting our time. Why are we letting that so and so Republican blabber forever. Let’s get some work done.”
I have concluded that this results in a much longer and less productive process overall than if you just let people have their say, because they will fight back. You might get to a vote on that particular bill faster, but the next bill will come up and they’ll make you pay for it.
Well, that takes us to what can you say about working with Gov. Polis? He’s the leader of the Democratic Party in Colorado, and he wields the power of veto, which he has exercised a few times in regard to energy bills. How much room for discussion is there in any of this?
In other words, how much of the climate energy legislation comes from the Colorado Energy Office and other state agencies, and how much from individual legislators? How does that process work?
There’s absolutely a partnership and a collaboration. Sometimes there are family feuds and disagreements, but at the end of the day, the (Colorado) Energy Office wants what I think the most vocal Democratic legislators want. I think it’s a disagreement about how best to get there. Obviously, that’s a simplified version of what’s going on.
At the end of the day, I do think it’s important to remind ourselves that we’re not dealing with a oppositional governor who fundamentally disagrees with what we’re trying to accomplish. There are times where the governor’s office will communicate their position, and sometimes my members got really frustrated with that, and there are times where the governor’s office doesn’t communicate their position, and then they get surprised at the end, when it comes out that he doesn’t like that bill or whatever.
You can’t have the request of him to just not have an opinion, because he will. He’s an intelligent, thoughtful guy that gets in the weeds on policy. Previous governors were, at the end of the day, pretty hands off and generally speaking, signed the bills without asking a lot of questions. (Polis) is a legislator at heart. He was in Congress for 10 years. So he will be very hands on. He literally will read all the bills, and he will come to a conclusion on every single bill whether he will sign or veto it. There’s no default. He will evaluate every single bill.
It’s always better to know on the front end what his thoughts are. It doesn’t mean you have to meet him there. There have been many times where there are compromises and we meet in the middle.
I’m not just blindly defending the governor. It’s sometimes helpful in politics to have someone to blame. But I think you also need to sometimes to go a layer deeper.
For instance, some bills this past legislative session went by the wayside, and the narrative was, “It was the governor. He was going to veto that.” Go a little deeper, you could ask yourself, “Well, why was that bill stuck in committee for two months? Maybe it didn’t have the votes.” So, you can make the governor the bogeyman, but actually, we didn’t have the votes to get it done in the first place.
We shouldn’t be under this impression that if a liberal Democrat that cares about climate change introduces a bill, it has to pass. It’s not as easy as it was five, six years ago, a matter of just stop burning coal. The answers are no longer as obvious. It is nuanced now, and there is genuine debate among people who want to decarbonize about how to do it.
Allen Best publishes the e-journal Big Pivots, which chronicles the energy transition in Colorado and beyond.