In 2003, (today's Colorado Governor Jared Polis ) teamed with other wealthy Democratic donors who together became known as the Gang of Four. It included Pat Stryker, a billionaire whose family owned the Fortune-500 medical supply company Stryker Corporation; Tim Gill, who made half a billion dollars selling his stake in the software company he founded, and who has donated more money to LGBTQ causes than any other individual in U.S. history; and Rutt Bridges, a software developer and venture capitalist with centrist politics and — at the time, anyway — his eyes on the governorship. (Foundations founded by Stryker and Gill are both longtime funders of The Colorado Independent.)
Polis, at 29, was the baby of the group. The Gang of Four is credited with flipping Colorado’s state legislature from red to blue in 2004 by pouring more than $3 million — a huge sum at the time — into its effort to oust Republicans, and specifically those who opposed gay marriage. They bankrolled ads, targeted vulnerable opponents and recruited promising young Democrats to run for office.
As has been widely reported, that election was seen as a turning point for Democrats in Colorado – the year the state party, long known for internal conflicts and lack of organization, became coordinated, strategic and virtually unbeatable.
Several Democrats interviewed for this story said that 2004 was the first time they felt supported by real financial muscle in state races, and most agreed that the Gang of Four is the biggest reason the Democratic Party started winning in Colorado. In 2004, Republicans controlled both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats, a 5-2 majority of its congressional seats, the governor’s mansion, both chambers of the state legislature, and the offices of the secretary of state and treasurer. By 2008, the exact opposite was true.
In an interview about the Gang of Four and the 2004 election, Polis told author Robert Frank, “It was more about what the Republicans didn’t do. They weren’t dealing with any of the problems the state faced, like the huge budget deficit.”
Democrat and Republican party leaders who recall the Gang’s spending know better than to understate what all that money meant to the election.
“Money, money, money, money,” Anderson, who was the Senate majority leader at the time, says when asked what she remembers about the Gang of Four’s impact. “They buried the Republicans in money.”
Says Heath: “Even though I’m really a populist about politics and would like to think that anyone can get in the race, there’s a reality in American politics and all the dark money out there.”
The Gang bought the legislature, alleges former Republican state Sen. Bruce Cairns, of Aurora, in a call. Cairns was among the GOP incumbents ousted in 2004, and he remembers walking into the state Capitol building after the election, and feeling like “a tornado had hit.”
“Colorado politics has never been the same since,” he says, adding that the Gang kicked off “a lurch to the left, a lurch to something much more socialistic, a lurch to groupthink, a lurch to the Democratic Party being in control.”
The success of the Gang of Four raised Polis’s profile, upping his stock, and it became a springboard into his next move: the jump from the back rows of statewide office to Washington, D.C. and a seat in Congress.
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