I’m writing this column before Election Day. No one knows the outcome, but I have my speculations. Republicans will take back the United States Congress and a slight majority in the U.S. Senate.

But my political arena is the state of Colorado, a blue, blue state. And if there was ever an election when Republicans could make major advances on the state level it is this one.

This is a midterm election, always a benefit to the party not in national power. Add to that what every voter here knows:

• Colorado has one of the highest inflation rates in the nation.

• We have never seen such rampant crime and ugliness on our streets

• After a year of forced online learning, many parents got a peek into what’s really being taught in their kids’ classrooms, including environmental activism and racial and trans indoctrination instead of reading and math.

If Colorado Republicans can’t win in 2022, when can they?

Jared Polis is a nice guy. The adage is nice guys finish last. That doesn’t apply when the nice guy can self-fund his campaign by some $14 million. How telling is it that, for what should be a shoo-in re-election, he needed to put in that much.

The next real measure of Republican success will be in the state legislature and, less so (but still important), the following contests in this order: state attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer.

Whether after the election we have mixed-party control of governor and legislature (and glorious political stagnation), or continued socialist blitzkrieg, the real world of Colorado in 2023 is going to face some tough realities.

A law can be passed, or new regulation put into effect, but it takes years until the unintended consequences start rippling through the economy and people’s lives. And some bad policies are just starting to take hold. Just a couple examples incoming:

• Localities now can raise, but not lower, the minimum wage. Denver attached theirs to inflation, so starting next year the wage of the largest city in the state will be at least $17.29-an-hour. That’s great if you’re working for the minimum, until it drives your employer out of business.

• At the same time the Family Leave Act goes into effect in 2023 levying a heavy payroll tax split between employer and employee, hitting small and service businesses the hardest. It will be the most luxurious leave mandate in the country. Beyond the extra payroll costs, hiring and training of temporary replacement staff will be cripplingly expensive. Bottom line: you think prices are high and service is slow now, just wait.

• The legislature recently passed a 40% gas tax increase, calling it a “fee,” to be phased in over a few years. Polis delayed it until after his reelection. It starts, yep, in 2023.

• The new gas tax is nothing compared to the 30-to-50 cents-a-gallon-more coming soon to re-formulate our gasoline since Governor Polis rescinded Governor John Hickenlooper’s EPA ozone waiver.

The untold story in Colorado politics is the exponential growth of the regulatory state. Only insiders really understand the threat because it is boring for any person with a life to keep up.

For illustration, the Air Quality Control “Council” (just one of the innumerable alphabet soup of economy-crushing regulatory agencies) has been mutated like a Marvel super-villain into a “Commission.” It now has massive regulatory power on par with the Public Utilities Commission (the regulators pushing our utility rates skyward).

This AQCC has been toying with the idea of requiring employers to track how their employees get to work. And if too many of them come by car, have the company beaten into submission. It could be your boss’s job to track how you live and commute and report back to the state.

Since we are joined at the hip with California’s emissions standards, they might decide to extend California’s ban on internal combustion engines, like tractors and chainsaws, to Colorado.

If Republicans win back the legislature, great, they can stop future bad laws. Stopping the bleeding is triage.

But assuming Mr. Polis wins Tuesday, it means for 52 years Colorado will have had a Republican governor for only eight of them. Bad regulations will continue, even with a different legislature.

No matter what we wake up to Wednesday, Colorado faces the challenges the left created for us.

Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute in Denver and hosts “The Devil’s Advocate with Jon Caldara” on Colorado Public Television Channel 12. His column appears Sundays in Colorado Politics.