Perspective: Gubernatorial candidate Jared Polis, a Democrat, isn’t a socialist like recent ads would have the public believe.

The Republican Governors Association has some nerve. The national political action committee continues to meddle in Colorado politics and posted a “story” on its website this week quoting our editorial criticizing gubernatorial candidate Jared Polis for not attending the Club 20 debate in Grand Junction. Fair enough, we clearly were disappointed by Polis’ decision too.

But the group conveniently did not include the portion of our editorial decrying their ads as lacking substance and asking for better from both the RGA and Republican candidate for governor, Walker Stapleton.

Which brings us to another RGA assertion that readers should know isn’t the whole story.

“Radical Colorado Dem gov nominee Polis embraces abolish ICE agenda,” reads the headline from a July 18, 2018, post on the RGA website.

It’s true that Polis didn’t vote on a House Resolution last month supporting ICE, but neither did 132 other Democratic members of Congress who logged a present vote on the resolution. Another 35 members voted against the resolution, including one Republican.

Polis may be a long way from the immigration policies that the RGA would like to see put in place, but he isn’t a socialist like recent ads would have the public believe.

What Polis does share with this board, and as it turns out the vast majority of Americans, is utter disdain for President Donald Trump’s decision to separate families coming to the U.S. seeking asylum. Punishing the children of immigrants attempting to come to America, whether illegally or legally, is the type of public policy that should result in officials being fired and the entire department being upended and retrained.

Voting on a resolution to support ICE when the agency is still struggling to reunite children with their parents, is a failure to recognize the severity of the damage inflicted on children and parents during this dark period of American history.

Groups like the RGA and Better Colorado Now, are going to try to make this election for Colorado governor about immigration. We hope Colorado voters don’t take the bait. This race should be focused on the important issues that a governor can actually control like education and transportation and what this state should do with a windfall of cash.

It’ll be hard to resist. Already the RGA has poured $1 million into the race to support Walker Stapleton and attack Jared Polis.

Better Colorado Now, a PAC that Stapleton helped raise funds for before he announced his campaign for governor, has also raised about $1 million for the race. The group is putting ads on doors that are pro-Stapleton and anti-Polis that prominently feature the RGA headline about Polis’ vote on the ICE resolution.

Oddly the door hanger also says Polis “even wants to give in-state tuition to illegal immigrants.” Of course he does. It was good public policy with bi-partisan support when Colorado lawmakers voted in 2013 to allow recent graduates of Colorado high schools to attend state colleges with in-state tuition regardless of their legal status.

The policy is a good one for many reasons, but it attracted Republicans who saw the economic importance of removing roadblocks from the success of some of Colorado’s brightest students.

It should make all Colorado voters, regardless of how they feel about immigration and Trump, a bit nauseated that the RGA and Better Colorado Now are using this wedge issue with such dishonesty.

Colorado deserves better this year as it selects the course for the state.