The congressman from Colorado’s 2nd District is Jared Polis, a Democrat first elected in 2008. Polis was born in Boulder, but grew up in San Diego, returning to Colorado with his family during the summers. His mother, a poet, and his father, an artist, were both politically active during the anti-war movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Polis and his younger brother and sister frequently accompanied their parents to demonstrations and rallies. Their activism spurred Polis’s interest in politics and liberal ideas. He graduated from high school in three years, and headed off to Princeton University to study political science. Also fascinated by technology and business, Polis and two friends banded together in their sophomore year to launch an Internet start-up called American Information Systems, an Internet access provider. Soon afterward, he founded bluemountainarts.com, an electronic greeting card site that at its height was the eighth most popular site on the Internet. His next venture was Proflowers.com, a service enabling customers to order fresh flowers directly from growers. All three were successful, and Polis sold them for profits of upwards of $300 million. Read More

The congressman from Colorado’s 2nd District is Jared Polis, a Democrat first elected in 2008. Polis was born in Boulder, but grew up in San Diego, returning to Colorado with his family during the summers. His mother, a poet, and his father, an artist, were both politically active during the anti-war movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Polis and his younger brother and sister frequently accompanied their parents to demonstrations and rallies. Their activism spurred Polis’s interest in politics and liberal ideas. He graduated from high school in three years, and headed off to Princeton University to study political science. Also fascinated by technology and business, Polis and two friends banded together in their sophomore year to launch an Internet start-up called American Information Systems, an Internet access provider. Soon afterward, he founded bluemountainarts.com, an electronic greeting card site that at its height was the eighth most popular site on the Internet. His next venture was Proflowers.com, a service enabling customers to order fresh flowers directly from growers. All three were successful, and Polis sold them for profits of upwards of $300 million.

Financial security from his business ventures allowed Polis to focus on his other passions. “I was always interested in public service. Education is an issue I feel very passionately about, providing an opportunity to all Americans,” he said. In 2000, he was elected to the Colorado state board of education, serving for six years and as chairman for one year. During his tenure, Polis says he was most proud of his advancement of school choice through the establishment of charter schools and his work improving accountability standards for schools. In part with his own money, he founded two innovative charter schools in Colorado, which were geared toward helping new immigrants assimilate. One of the schools, the New America School, targeted 16- to 21-year-old immigrants with flexible day or evening programs, day-care reimbursement and teachers trained to help students learn English. “We really needed a school to cater to their unique needs,” Polis said. At the same time, he partnered with three other Colorado multimillionaires—who were dubbed the “Gang of Four” in newspapers—and built a massive political fundraising operation that raised $3.6 million in 2004.

When Democratic Rep. Mark Udall in Colorado’s 2nd District decided to run for an open Senate seat in 2008, Polis decided to run for Udall’s seat. In the Democratic primary, he faced former state Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald and conservationist Will Shafroth. Most of the state’s Democratic establishment backed Fitz-Gerald, based on her political seasoning. Pouring his own money into the campaign, he outspent his opponents 4-to-1. In the August 2008 primary, he got 42% of the vote, followed by Fitz-Gerald with 38% and Shafroth with 20%. In the general election, Republican nominee Scott Starin, an engineer, raised less than $100,000 and provided little serious opposition. Polis won 63% to 34%. All in all, he spent $7 million, $6 million of it his own. The nonpartisan watchdog, Center for Responsive Politics, ranked Polis in 2009 as the third-wealthiest member of the House, pegging his wealth in the range of $97 million to $254 million, based on his financial disclosure reports. He had little trouble winning re-election in 2010, dispatching tea party-backed Republican Stephen Bailey with 57%.

In Washington, Polis jumped into the health care debate, taking a leading role in fighting a proposal by his own party that would pay for elements of the overhauled health care system with a tax on wealthy Americans. Polis maintained that the tax would hurt small-business owners who aren’t large enough to organize as corporations. He was chided by many in the liberal blogosphere, but he succeeded in corralling 21 other freshman Democrats to sign a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling on her to purge the surtax from the bill, and it was not included as part of the sweeping overhaul of health care that passed the House on Nov. 7, 2009.

Polis also has been a leader in gay and lesbian rights. He is the first openly gay man elected to Congress (Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., is also openly gay but came out after he was elected to the House. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., is the first openly gay woman elected to Congress.) Polis is a co-sponsor of a proposed repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that permits states to refuse to recognize gay marriages. President Obama has said he will sign the repeal if it passes, and Polis says the measure has thus far attracted more than 100 co-sponsors. “It becomes more and more of an issue, the more states that allow same-sex couples to marry,” he said.

Using new media has also been a central element of Polis’ time in office. He has more than 1,900 “friends” on Facebook and more than 6,900 followers on Twitter. “It’s a very tech-savvy district, a very wired district,” he says. Along with Utah Republican freshman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Polis was featured on CNN.com as part of a series called Freshman Year, which chronicled the behind-the-scenes lives of newly elected lawmakers. Polis also has displayed an impressive fundraising ability, collecting from liberal interest groups, investment companies and others and donating money to politically vulnerable Democrats through his Jared Polis Victory Fund. In 2010, he made it onto Time magazine’s “40 Under 40” list of young movers and shakers.

Democratic leaders gave Polis a seat on the influential Rules Committee, which controls the rules of debate for major bills that reach the floor of the House. On the Judiciary Committee in 2010, he sought to protect the rights of medical marijuana dispensaries. He also worked on a proposal to designate more than 340,000 acres of Colorado land as wilderness. Polis hopes to broaden his focus into immigration and education. He introduced a bill in 2010 offering non-dairy alternatives to milk as part of school lunches and drew controversy later that year when he blasted Arizona’s stringent immigration law as “reminiscent” of Nazi Germany. Following the 2010 election, Polis was an early supporter of letting Rep. Nancy Pelosi continue to lead House Democrats, saying she “has led the Democrats out of the wilderness before, and I am confident she can do it again.”