What Citizenship Requires

By Buddy Jericho

At a Jefferson County rally, a mother approached me wearing a button with her teenage daughter’s face on it.

Her daughter was gone.

She had not spent years lost in addiction. She took one pill. It was laced with fentanyl. One decision, one poison hidden inside it, and a family was shattered forever.

I have heard stories of unbearable loss before. During my time overseas, I saw what happened when governments failed their own people: families killed by terrorists, children abducted, girls sold into sex slavery. In those places, I could explain the failure as something happening under a broken system, far from home.

But this was Jefferson County, Colorado. This was America. There was no way to push the failure somewhere else. Our systems had failed her.

That conversation changed something in me. I had no interest in politics. But that mother made the stakes impossible to ignore. She reminded me that politics is not a game played by insiders. It is the difference between whether a system protects real people or fails them after it is too late.

I grew up in Philadelphia, in a blue-collar, Democratic world where politics was tied to neighborhoods, jobs, churches and families. From there, I joined the military, then worked in and around the federal government for nearly two decades, including more than a dozen combat deployments.

In that world, understanding people was not academic. It was life or death. My job required me to assess people - not just what they said, but what drove them. People relied on those assessments to make life-or-death decisions, thousands of times.

That work changes the way you see people. It also changes the way you see politics.

I respect the system our founders built. They understood human nature. They knew power could corrupt. They knew institutions could drift away from the people they were created to serve. And they built a system where, when things go wrong and the pain becomes high enough, any citizen with enough courage can step forward and try to change it.

That is one of the most beautiful things about America.

It is also why I believe Colorado is at such an important moment.

If I wanted a career in government, I would have stayed. I was being promoted quickly. But I was drawn to training soldiers, building teams, solving hard problems and eventually becoming an entrepreneur.

Yes, I received some compensation for helping Victor Marx. No, that is not why I did it. It was a fraction of what I earn in business. I did not do this for money, title, access or status.

I did this because Victor is my friend - and because he is a courageous friend, the kind of man who has spent his life putting others first.

Victor has said he wants to be the man who should have been there for him when he was young. That may be the most important thing I have ever heard him say. It explains why hurting people trust him.

Yes, Victor has an unusual life story. But for people who come from hard places - broken homes, violent neighborhoods, addicted families, abusive situations or abandoned communities - his story does not sound strange. It sounds familiar.

That is what many people most comfortable inside the political system missed. They used the hard parts of his life to attack him, while many of the people he has helped understood exactly why that life mattered.

I watched people attack Victor who had never met him, never called him, never asked him a serious question and never tried to understand the work he has done.

I do not believe every critic acts in bad faith. Criticism is part of public life. But in my previous world, when people repeated serious claims about someone they had never bothered to know, it raised a basic question: what is motivating them?

Sometimes politics is about truth. But too often it is about status, access and career protection. Too often, people mistake the system for the mission. And when that happens, the people are forgotten.

As we traveled Colorado, I met families who love this state but wonder whether they can afford to stay. I met people who work hard, pay taxes, raise children, volunteer and feel like government no longer sees them. They are not extremists. They are exhausted.

And while families are fighting to keep their homes and children safe, Colorado lawmakers considered removing criminal penalties from the commercial sex trade. I have three daughters. Calling that progress while families are suffering is ideology outrunning common sense.

This is what I mean by courage.

Courage is not yelling the loudest or posting the most aggressive thing online. Courage is the willingness to say what is true when your own side would rather stay comfortable.

Colorado Republicans should ask themselves a hard question: have we confused caution with wisdom? Have we learned to lose politely? Have we acted like guests in a state we helped build?

That is not leadership. That is managed decline.

Colorado needs Republicans willing to govern differently - leaders who can look at addiction, crime, homelessness, affordability, education and family breakdown and say: the old way is not working, and we are going to change it.

That requires moral clarity, operational competence and discipline.

That is the part of Victor many critics missed. Yes, he connects with people. But the deeper thing about him is not his stage presence. It is his heart for people in pain.

When tragedy struck my family, Victor showed up. Not publicly. Not performatively. He showed up because that is what he does.

In my private conversations with Victor, we have never talked about how to make money off a crisis or how to take advantage of people. The conversation has always been the same: Who is hurting? Who is being ignored? Who needs help?

Government is not a game. It has consequences. When leaders lack courage, families pay. When leaders lack discipline, taxpayers pay. When leaders lack moral clarity, children pay.

As America marks its 250th birthday, that should force all of us into reflection. The founders did not give us a system so we could admire it from a distance while it fails the people in front of us. They gave us a responsibility. When the system drifts, citizens are supposed to step forward.

When I was a kid, my father ran into a burning house to try to save children trapped inside. He did not wait for permission. He saw danger and moved toward it.

That image shaped me. I saw the same courage in many of the men and women I served with. And I have seen it in Victor Marx.

But one person running toward the fire is not enough. A state cannot be changed by one man or one campaign alone. It takes people willing to run together.

That mother in Jefferson County did not ask me for politics. She reminded me of what citizenship requires.

So I am going to keep running toward the fire. And I am proud to keep running with Victor.