Watch: Mark Baisley on apprenticeships, Pell Grants, housing and Colorado’s U.S. Senate race

Colorado state Sen. Mark Baisley, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Colorado, sat down Aug. 11 for a FoxTalk interview focused on issues affecting college students and young adults.

The interview was hosted by Kaelyn Diep, editor in chief of MSU Denver’s student newspaper, The Metropolitan, as part of a FoxTalk production in partnership with The Metropolitan.

Baisley discussed apprenticeships, federal workforce policy, Pell Grants, housing affordability and where he says he would differ from Democratic U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper.

On apprenticeships, Baisley argued that they can help people coming out of high school or college get a foothold with an employer while giving companies time to train and evaluate new workers. He called the model “a win for everybody.”

Baisley was a prime Senate sponsor of HB 24-1439, a 2024 Colorado law that created tax credits for qualifying employers and grant programs aimed at expanding registered apprenticeships.

Asked what he would do at the federal level, Baisley said he favors policies that give employers incentives to hire more workers while reducing the government’s broader footprint.

The conversation also turned to Pell Grants. Baisley said he would keep funding the grants and argued that return on investment should be part of deciding which programs qualify for federal support. He pointed to MSU Denver’s ties to employers and its aviation programs as examples of education and workforce training with a direct connection to careers.

On housing, Baisley called getting into a first home an “enormous” mountain to climb. He said Congress should work through financial institutions and entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to encourage lower-rate lending, and he criticized the way rising property values can increase property-tax bills.

The interview closed with a question about where Baisley would vote differently from Hickenlooper. Baisley pointed to foreign policy and criticized Hickenlooper’s position on current U.S. military action in the Middle East.

Watch the full interview below.

Production credits

FoxTalk production in partnership with MSU Denver’s student newspaper, The Metropolitan.

Host/interviewer: Kaelyn Diep
Executive producer: Andy Green
Camera: Kevin Rosales
Editor: Dylan Fruh

Transcript

Transcript lightly edited for punctuation and readability. The substance and sequence of the interview are preserved.

Kaelyn Diep: So you sponsored a Colorado law that created tax credits and grants to expand apprenticeship. What part of that approach, if any, would you take to Washington?

Mark Baisley: You know, all of that. The partnerships between industry and education are tremendous, but those apprenticeships that help introduce someone who's just coming out of a university or just coming out of high school, even, to have a foothold in their career with some incentives from Uncle Sam, from the state government, for those companies to grab hold of their hand and say, hey, come on board. Let's try you out.

And the employer even has an opportunity to use that employee in an apprentice role for a while and determine whether they want to have them on board full time. So anyway, it's a win for everybody.

Kaelyn Diep: What federal workforce policy would you vote for?

Mark Baisley: Workforce policy. Well, you know, anything that incentivizes the employers to reach out and hire more folk. You know, I want, just generally speaking, for the government's footprint to be smaller in every aspect of our lives.

So towards that, I guess, would be if we can reduce taxation towards incentivizing employers to bring new folks on.

Kaelyn Diep: Federal Pell grants now cover some eligible short-term workforce programs, as well as traditional undergraduate study. What would you keep or change about Pell as a U.S. Senator?

Mark Baisley: Well, yeah, the Pell just makes it possible for students to have that university career, that higher education career.

So yeah, I would keep those in place and make sure that Pell grants get funded.

Kaelyn Diep: What should determine whether a program qualifies for federal Pell dollars?

Mark Baisley: I guess probably ROI, you know, the return on the investment. I have voted in favor of funding for here at MSU Denver.

And I've done so because I've gotten to know the school and I see the tight relationship that the school has with Lockheed Martin, for instance, and then your aviation programs and so on. This is very real teaching, training, preparation. So when you get the return on the investment very directly back from the education, then those are investments that pay off and that are really worth investing in.

Kaelyn Diep: You serve on Colorado Senate's local government and housing committee. What, if anything, should Congress do to make housing more affordable for college students and young adults in Colorado?

Mark Baisley: Yeah, the mountain to climb to get into one's first home is enormous. To get into that first home, what I think Congress ought to be doing is working with, through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, through our financial institutions, to encourage lenders to lend at very low rates.

Property tax, it adds to the cost of that homeownership, of course. We can do a lot about it. And I did introduce a bill to protect homeowners from all the wild swings in property taxes because that happens when the value of a property goes up, property taxes go up.

That doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't make any sense that we use the property value as part of the multiplier to determine what the property taxes are.

Kaelyn Diep: Lastly, what's one federal policy where you would vote differently from Senator John Hickenlooper, and what would that difference mean for Colorado students?

Mark Baisley: You know, we should not be, as my opponent has been doing, we should not be criticizing our soldiers that are on the front lines right now, that are executing that combat measure right now and trying to calm down the Middle East.

But to say that they are there illegitimately and to criticize the Commander-in-Chief in the middle of battle, I just find to be wholly inappropriate. So that's a big difference between him and me, is we need to defeat the bad guys towards order internationally.