Jared Polis: Post-Gay Candidate?

* 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.