Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has rekindled flame-throwing rhetoric with our neighbors to the south.

It started last week when Polis posted a Facebook message applauding Whole Foods, which is now exclusively selling Pueblo chiles at its Rocky Mountain stores.

The governor wrote it was “about time” Whole Foods stores gave their customers in Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Kansas what’s “widely acknowledged as the best chile in the world.”

But then he took the inflammatory talk one step further.

“New Mexico stores will unfortunately not be offering the best chile and will instead keep offering inferior New Mexico chile,” Polis wrote.

Well, it wasn’t long before the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper picked up on Polis’ post and asked New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who served in Congress with Polis, if she had any thoughts.

“If Pueblo chile were any good, surely it would have been on national shelves before now. But if Gov. Polis wants to go chile to chile, I assure him New Mexico can bring the heat,” Lujan Grisham told the paper. “New Mexico Hatch chile is, has always been and will always be the greatest in the world. It’s very sportsmanlike of Whole Foods to give an inferior chile a chance, but most importantly I’m glad to know that they’ll still be carrying Hatch chile so customers around the country can continue to enjoy the best of the best.”

Wednesday afternoon, Polis threw the question open to the world of Twitter, retweeting a poll from One Colorado asking whether Colorado or New Mexico green chile is better.

Whole Foods starting started stocking Pueblo chiles in its Rocky Mountain stores back in 2015.

Chris Markuson, director of economic development for Pueblo County, told The Denver Post back then that he estimated “the annual increased economic impact (of the Pueblo green chile market) will be $1.1 million in 2015, and that growth rate will increase by 9.4 percent every year.”

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