Despite launching a governors’ group focused on safeguarding democracy during Donald Trump’s second term, Governor Jared Polis of Colorado said the coalition wasn’t about Trump, a president he’s willing to work with on several key issues.

In recent days, Polis, a Democrat, also praised Trump’s pick of Robert F Kennedy Jr for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, an unexpected endorsement from a governor of a blue state that bucked the national trend and largely moved to the left in the election.

Polis has some ideas as to why the state didn’t shift to the right like most of the country. The state’s Democratic-controlled government has passed policies that have improved lives, he said, and Colorado voters have a higher than average education level, tilting them toward Democrats.

Polis and the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, last week announced Governors Safeguarding Democracy, seeking to defend democratic institutions. The group has been described as an effort to oppose Trump administration policies, but Polis said it was not specifically in response to a Trump presidency.

Then on Thursday, Polis praised RFK’s nomination.

“I’m excited by the news that the President-Elect will appoint @RobertKennedyJr to @HHSGov,” Polis wrote on X after the staffing announcement. “He helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and FDA. I hope he leans into personal choice on vaccines rather than bans (which I think are terrible, just like mandates) but what I’m most optimistic about is taking on big pharma and the corporate ag oligopoly to improve our health.”

Polis’s office didn’t respond to questions about what Polis and Kennedy had worked on together in 2019 in Colorado.

“While opposed to RFK’s positions on a host of issues, including vaccines and banning fluoridation, he would appreciate seeing action on pesticides and efforts to lower prescription drug costs and if Trump is going to nominate someone like him then let them also take on soda, processed food, pesticides and heavy metals contamination,” said a spokesperson for Polis’s office. “But he definitely does not endorse actions that would lead to measles outbreaks and opposes unscientific propaganda that undermines confidence in the lifesaving impact of vaccines.”

Still, his comments were surprising given Kennedy’s embrace of conspiracy theories, especially during his run for president, that appear contrary to the governor’s values. Indivisible, the progressive activist group, called on Democrats to tell Polis his position on RFK Jr was “dangerous” because it gave legitimacy to the anti-vaccine movement and created a “permission structure” for Democrats to work with Trump.

The Guardian spoke with Polis before the RFK Jr tweets, about Colorado and what Democrats nationally could learn from a state that didn’t move toward Trump. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Most of the US shifted right in this election. Colorado didn’t. Why? What’s going on there?

The biggest issue that Coloradans face is really no different than the biggest issue Americans have faced these last few years, which is rising costs. And we took that on early, with cutting the income tax three times, with cutting property taxes, with eliminating the sales tax on necessary items that families buy, like diapers. We’ve just really tried to meet people where they’re at and say, what can we do to get government out of the way, reduce costs and help people afford to live in our great state?

You’ve had a trifecta in state government, which voters kept in this election. Do you think that that’s helped advance those policies?

Some have been at the ballot box. It’s a combination of both. So with income tax cuts, for example, two of them I supported at the ballot box and passed. One of them we passed through the legislature on a bipartisan basis. Free preschool and kindergarten – we got free kindergarten done through the legislature, preschool was approved by the voters, 67% of the voters voted for that.

Do you think there are lessons that Democrats in other states and nationally could take from Colorado?

We’ve really leaned into what I often call a prosperity agenda. How do we grow the pie, grow our economy. We have a lower unemployment rate than the national average. We also acted to reduce commercial property taxes to make our state more competitive for companies that are looking to grow and expand here, and we’ve attracted many employers to our state. It’s a comprehensive approach. Making sure that kids have preschool and kindergarten is a big deal because not only for the kid, which it is, but also because it frees up a second [parent] or parent to work or return to work earlier, if they choose, if they know that they otherwise can barely get ahead just having to work to pay for childcare. Having free preschool and saving families $6,000 a year is a big deal. We really looked at this holistically and have a thoughtful pro-prosperity, pro-abundance agenda that is leading to improvements in the quality of life in our state. And I think the voters are rewarding us accordingly.

Are there any other factors about the populace in Colorado that you think contribute to support for those policies? It’s a highly educated state, comparatively, for instance.

I think that that does correlate with Democratic performance. I don’t think it necessarily correlates with the changes in performance. We have inflow from Republican and Democratic states. In fact, our biggest source of people coming to Colorado are from Texas. We also get people from California, from New York, from Florida, that move to Colorado. One of the reasons that people move from Texas, they come for the mountains, but they stay for the lower property taxes.

There’s obviously been a lot of soul searching happening among Democrats about how to move forward as a party. Is there a lesson to be taken from the performance here?

I’m grateful for the work that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz put into the campaign. They gave it their all. I was proud to support them. Unfortunately, they came up short. And I think the Democratic party has always been the party of ideas. How do we make government more efficient? How do we grow our economy? And how do we make sure that we have a strong social safety net, and how do we show compassion? And how do we support economic growth that helps provide for families and put food on the table? I think the Democrats are becoming a more firmly pro-trade party, with the Republicans doubling down on harmful sanctions that not only raise costs for American consumers but destroy American manufacturing jobs. And we’re excited to provide a thoughtful, innovative alternative way for the American people.

Were you surprised Trump won?

Looking at the polling going in, there was a chance of that. It was really close. So it clearly could have gone either way. I don’t think that we had the level of surprise we’ve already had when Hillary Clinton lost, when all of us thought going in that she was going to win, because the polls showed that. This showed that either candidate could have won. And no, I wasn’t as surprised to see it turn out the way it did.

Trump came to Colorado to talk about Venezuelan gangs in Aurora. Did that narrative catch on locally at all? Did voters see through it?

Well, I don’t think his audience was Colorado, because in Colorado, we know that a lot of the things that have been talked about are not true. Aurora police confirms gangs did not take over buildings, etc. Obviously, we’re happy to work with President Trump, just as we did with President Biden, to apprehend and deport any immigrants who have committed dangerous crimes, and we appreciate any increased federal law enforcement work to do that. But of course, we also know that most immigrants, like most Americans, are hard-working members of our community who contribute to our prosperity, and it would be not only devastating to our economy, but it would reduce our security as a nation if we were to deport hard-working people that have been part of our community for decades.

This is the first election since the Covid dust has settled. Do you think there’s any element of people having a distrust in authority because of Covid measures that played into this election? You handled the pandemic a bit differently than other Democratic governors.

That might be a state-specific thing. We were one of the first states to open, and obviously we had different communities that handled it in different ways, and that’s appropriate. We got through without overwhelming our hospital capacity. We had one of the lowest death rates – in the lowest 10 states – and we were open for business. In fact, our outdoor tourism and recreation sector did very well during that Covid year. It’s hard to say. I mean, I think that Donald Trump obviously shut down the economy as president, but he also helped accelerate the vaccines through Operation Warp Speed. We were very grateful for that. Then President Trump’s handling of Covid was mixed, but it’s an unprecedented event, and I’m not really doing Monday night quarterbacking about how President Trump handled it or didn’t handle it.

Do you think Democratic leaders were too hardline about their Covid restrictions? Why did you choose the way you approached it?

Really, just looking at the data, we were very data-driven. We leaned into individual responsibility and giving the very best information to people and letting them make their own decisions. Do they want to wear masks? Do they want to get vaccines? And some do, some don’t. Many Coloradans chose to get vaccinated, as I did and my family did. Others didn’t, and we just wanted to make the very best information available to them.

You just announced a new group with Governor JB Pritzker focused on safeguarding democracy. What are the goals for that group? What kind of work do you anticipate doing?

It’s really about defending our institutions of democracy at the state level, and doing that in a collaborative way, through governors of goodwill. It’s a bipartisan organization. We have former Republican governors as part of our advisory group. The door’s open for any sitting Republican governors who want to join. Obviously, there’s been a lot more interest among Democratic governors, but it’s not so much about an issue disagreement with what President Trump may or may not do. It’s about the underpinnings of our democracy, the independence of the courts, election integrity and making sure that we can continue through whatever challenging times we face, to make sure that our republic continues to endure.

Trump frequently spoke on the campaign trail about going after Democratically run states and cities. Do you anticipate that there could be a backlash? Are you prepared for that? How are you viewing it?

We always look forward to working with any administration, and we always look for areas that we can make progress on. President Biden worked hard to try to get zoning and permitting reform through, and we’re hopeful President Trump will pick up that mantle and be able to deliver on permitting reform, to expand renewable energy opportunities across the American west, including in our state. I’m hoping he can expedite the FDA approval process for drugs and that they approve our re-importation plan from Canada for prescription drugs that will save Coloradans tens of millions of dollars a year. So we’ll look forward to working with this administration to move America forward.

There’s speculation that the Space Command could be moved from Colorado to Alabama. Is that something that you think could happen? Is the purpose purely political?

It would be a great shame if we sacrificed our preparedness as a nation in the important space frontier for purely political reasons. The data shows that for military preparedness, Space Command should remain in Colorado. We have a strong and successful military and aerospace ecosystem that supports the national mission, and we want to continue to support our national security. And the best way to do that is by keeping Space Command in Colorado Springs.

Polis for President in 2028? How are you looking at your own future?

Well, I’m blessed every day to have just over two more years to serve as governor of what I believe to be the greatest state in the nation, and a lot more work ahead to make Colorado an even more amazing place.