Those are the issues that people care about.”īut would an openly gay candidate have been conceivable when you were growing up here? “We didn’t really hear about that in Colorado. I mean, people are more interested in what you’re going to do to improve our schools and fix our roads and keep our economy strong, address the high cost of living, make sure we have good jobs here in Colorado. Like Reis, Polis says his sexuality was barely an issue in the election.
Marlon Reis: ‘People are just people, like, I’m not much of a stereotype.’ Photograph: Jocelyn Augustino/The Guardian She said: ‘When I signed up to have a gay best friend I thought that you would be taking me out shopping,’ and I said: ‘I can’t stand shopping.’ As a matter of fact, I’d rather do anything.” “People are just people, like, I’m not much of a stereotype. They have Jared to look up to as an example that you can run openly and you can achieve high office.” “Now we’re at the point I’ve met high school kids who are LGBTQ community members and they’re class presidents. “When I was growing up there were people on television that represented stereotypes of what people associated being gay with and it was interesting, you viewed it through a tunnel vision,” he recalls, adding that when he was in high school, he felt “GSAs – gay straight alliances – didn’t exist at least at my school they weren’t present”. In 2006, the state approved a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, later struck down in the wake of a historic supreme court ruling. It was not so long ago, in 1992, that Colorado voters passed a constitutional amendment forbidding local governments from creating special protections for LGBT people, provoking national outrage and earning it the label “hate state”. ‘This is a much higher-profile position, and of course running as an openly gay couple, that gave it an even higher profile.’ Photograph: Jocelyn Augustino/The Guardian
They cared more about issues – healthcare, kindergarten, renewable energy.”
“I’ve been very surprised, and pleasantly so, that it really didn’t matter to Colorado voters. “This is a much higher-profile position, and of course running as an openly gay couple, that gave it an even higher profile,” says Reis. He reflects that, after 10 years of relative anonymity as a congressman’s partner in Washington – raising their children Caspian, seven, and Cora, four – he has suddenly found himself in the public eye. Reis gives an interview in the governor’s office while cradling the couple’s pet dog, Gia, a nine-year-old Cairn terrier mix who has her own Instagram account. He has been a vegan for 15 years and his family recently adopted two llamas and four goats. He is wearing a grey suit, white shirt, animal-patterned tie and Wild Animal Sanctuary badge. There is a calming influence in the form of Colorado’s first gentleman, a fresh-faced 37-year-old named Marlon Reis. During bill signings, young children are welcome and pushchairs are parked by the door. Pet dogs scamper back and forth in the warren of offices. The workplace culture could never be described as stiff or stuffy. Photograph: Jocelyn Augustino/The Guardian Jared Polis, right, and first gentleman Marlon Reis in the governor’s suite. Polis’s desk is clear on top save for a ceramic sign that commands: “Be bold.” His office in the state capitol building in Denver, is furnished with a brass chandelier, artworks by Molly Crabapple and Polis’s father, Stephen Schutz, and a giant framed photo capturing sunset at Last Dollar Ranch in Ouray, Colorado, by John Fielder. It is late March and the Guardian is shadowing Polis for two days.
It really does prove the thesis that the moment calls for a particular candidate and he was the one nobody saw coming.” “The enigma of Jared Polis is how he can take all of those identities and really connect with Colorado. “He’s a Generation Xer, he’s a hacker, he’s a gamer, he’s a nerd,” said Nic Garcia, a politics reporter at the Denver Post. When the actor and comedian Robin Williams died, Polis dressed up as Mork from the show Mork and Mindy and laid flowers outside “Mork’s house” in Boulder. His parents are self-declared hippies his mother attended his first State of the State address with pink and purple hair. Yet he is also warm, good with people and disarmingly quirky. Critics describe him as calculating and at times overbearing. On one level, Polis, 43, is a somewhat robotic politician whose speeches and interviews can sound focus-grouped.