This is the third
article in The Advocate's continuing coverage
of four battleground states: Colorado, Florida,
Virginia, and Ohio. Entrepreneur and philanthropist Jared
Polis is set to make history by becoming the first
openly gay non-incumbent male elected to the U.S.
Congress, but the milestone has failed to send shock
waves through his Colorado district. Some think that
could represent the greatest progress of all.
* This is the third article in The Advocate's continuing
coverage of four battleground states: Colorado,
Florida, Virginia, and Ohio. Click
here to read the previous installment.
By now
you’ve probably heard the news: Out candidate Jared
Polis prevailed over two opponents in the Democratic
primary for an open seat in Colorado’s second
federal congressional district, garnering 42% of the
vote on August 12. It was an epic contest that pitted the
progressive up-and-comer against his party's
establishment and, given the heavy Democratic leanings
of the area that includes the city of Boulder, he is
expected to trounce the competition in November, which would
make him the first-ever openly gay man elected to
Congress as a freshman.
With all the
media coverage and hype, it's all the more
significant to note that throughout the intense primary
election, and even after his historic victory, the gay
identity of Polis, 33, was hardly discussed.
“His
sexual orientation was really not an issue at all,”
says Sandra Fish, an instructor in the School of
Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of
Colorado at Boulder who followed the race closely.
”The
Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News and
the Daily Camera virtually never mentioned
it,” she says, citing the major mainstream
newspapers for Boulder, located 25 miles northwest of
Denver in north-central Colorado. “It wasn’t
mentioned by the media, and it wasn’t mentioned
by his opponents.”
Of course, after
the groundbreaking win, all three publications ran some
form of acknowledgment, the most high-profile being a
photograph in the Post that showed a triumphant
Polis clasping the hand of his partner, writer and
board game inventor Marlon Reis, at the Election Night
celebration. The latter had already been appearing at
campaign events once or twice a week, without prompting the
scrutiny of reporters.
“I think
it was an afterthought among media,” Fish says, also
noting that constituents in the very liberal district
were not fazed by coverage of the achievement.
“The response among readers was ‘Who cares?'
"
Deborah Goeken,
managing editor of the Rocky Mountain News,
largely agrees with that assessment. ”We never
ignored it,” she says, “but when he
announced his candidacy, it was not a big deal. It was
just part of who he is.” She adds that when Polis
first came out publicly in 2006, while a member of the
Colorado State Board of Education, her publication
debated whether the announcement was news before
deciding on a small story.
Goeken says that
coverage of Polis in the 2008 primary was driven by his
stances on issues as well as readers' interest in his
immense wealth. Polis, the founder of websites such as
greeting card company BlueMountain.com, has a personal
fortune estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of
dollars.
“We
didn’t hear from any readers,” concludes
Goeken. “No one complained about the way we
covered it.”
Still, others
suggest the low-key coverage was determined most by
Polis’s own philosophy of how he wanted to
present his sexual orientation during the campaign.
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Bolcer is a freelance writer based in New York
City. Photograph by Jeffrey Beall.