Jared Polis campaign news

Jared Polis personally called Joan Fitz-Gerald, Will Shafroth and both Ken and John Salazar this morning to apologize for the comments made by former campaign staff member Raf Naboa on several blogs yesterday.

"Our campaign looks forward to articulating a bold progressive message for Colorado and the nation, we will not engage in personal attacks and we won’t tolerate that type of behavior coming from our staff,” stated Polis.

The staffer resigned this morning after violating internal policies that plainly state nothing is sent to the public without being cleared by Wanda James, Polis’ Campaign Manager. On top of the unfortunate negative comments, the blog entry contained numerous factual errors.

"The tone of the blog post was clearly not the philosophy of our campaign” states James. “Jared has had a long standing relationship with all of the Democrats who were mentioned in the blog post and we will not participate in this type of negative campaigning."

About Jared Polis

Co-founding his first company, American Information Systems, while still in college, Polis has launched several successful business ventures, including bluemountainarts.com, Proflowers.com and other online start-ups. He has been named an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and one of the top ten young entrepreneurs by Success Magazine.

He won statewide office in 2000 to the Colorado State Board of Education. During his six-year tenure, he was a strong advocate for school reform and enhancing educational opportunities. He played an instrumental role in the passage of Amendment 23 to improve state funding for public schools.

The Jared Polis Foundation was founded in 2000 to improve and expand access to education, recycle computers, and serve at-risk youth by creating two innovative charter schools that meet the needs of underserved students. The New America School, to extend the benefits of English literacy and a high school liberal arts education to all students and the Academy of Urban Learning to serve the challenges faced by teens who struggle with homelessness or unstable living conditions.

Jared is a native of Boulder and received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Princeton University.

Raf started PeakDems. I know he knows better than this. If you are on the campaign staff you are presumed to be speaking for the candidate. I think a combination of excitement about Jared -- and dread that the musty old DLC politics of the past would win in Colorado once again -- propelled him to write his fateful post.

Raf is strong, he'll be back, fighting for what's right with word and deed.

But Jared Polis did the right thing. And when he wins on his merits, the Salazar brothers, Joan, Will, and many others will call to congratulate him and urge on his innovative and successful ideas.