DENVER -- Jared Polis proved to be a savvy, young entrepreneur by selling his Internet greeting-card company for hundreds of millions. Now, he's raising eyebrows by engineering the most expensive political campaign in state Board of Education history.
Although such races usually draw little attention, Polis has made his mark, supplementing slick advertising brochures with water bottles and T-shirts bearing his campaign logo, chocolates and pencils that bear his name.
He travels the state in a yellow school bus, with his Web site splashed outside and all sorts of high-tech computer gadgets inside. And he has taken the unusual step, at least in board races, of buying television ads, putting his boyish face in living rooms across Colorado.
Polis, 25, portrays himself as fresh blood, supporting bilingual education and charter schools in some circumstances. Opponent Ben Alexander, 52, promotes the status quo, supporting student vouchers and increased testing.
Alexander, whose campaign coffers total about 3 percent of Polis' war chest, has grumbled that Polis is buying the election.
"We have somebody now with essentially unlimited funds and obviously he doesn't understand the value of the dollar because there's just no limit to what he'll spend," said Alexander, a Republican former state senator who was appointed to the board in January 1999.
Polis, a Democrat, says the money is a means to the end, providing a way to inform voters about his views and get them interested.
"There are 160,000 more Republican voters and that's why we've been working hard in the past months to bring my message across the state," he said.
Through the reporting period that ended Sept. 27, Polis' campaign had raised $343,465, including $340,762 of his own money. The Denver Rocky Mountain News reported the total was more than all money raised by the 42 candidates who have run for the board since 1988.
Alexander, meanwhile, raised $9,900 through the reporting period, including a $2,000 loan he made to his campaign. Denver-based analyst Eric Sonderman said a number of political and education insiders have rolled their eyes at Polis' funds. "But for every one of them there's 100 prospective voters who've never heard of the state board or the candidates and all of the sudden there's a name they see on TV in their living room and they remember the name," he said.
Polis' parents started Blue Mountain Arts in 1970, going door-to-door to sell silk-screened posters and greeting cards. In 1996, Jared Polis persuaded his parents to let him design a Web site, which he turned into the enormously popular bluemountainarts.com. ExciteAtHome bought the Internet arm last year for $350 million in cash and about $430 million in stock.
Alexander contends if Polis wins, there is a danger the board's major work in recent years -- implementing school accreditation standards Alexander pushed through the Legislature in 1998 -- will be slowed or scrapped.
"The work we're doing can easily be knocked off-track if we don't have the right people on the board, and judging from what my opponent is saying, all he wants to do is knock it off-track," he said.
Polis has been critical of the board and says he hopes to bring a centrist voice to the group that he believes has been moving farther to the political right for years.
"There are people on the state Board of Education I wouldn't put on the board of a $1 million company, no less a $7 billion public endeavor," he said. "Our society and voters should pay more attention, and I hope I can highlight the differences between me and my opponent."
