Dan Baer enters Democratic race against Cory Gardner, seeks to be first openly gay man elected to

Dan Baer enters Democratic race against Cory Gardner, seeks to be first openly gay man elected to Senate


Dan Baer can remember being 15 years old in 1992 and watching as Colorado voters passed Amendment 2, which prevented cities and towns from protecting LGBT people. He can remember doubting then whether he would ever have a successful career, especially in public life.

“The idea that I could run for office as a gay person in Colorado, in the ’90s, was far-fetched,” said Baer, now 42 years old, at his home in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood on Monday.

But 2019 looks a lot different than 1992 and Baer is now running for U.S. Senate, joining a crowded Democratic field that hopes to defeat Sen. Cory Gardner, a Yuma Republican, next November. If successful, Baer would be the first openly gay man elected to the Senate.

He is a Harvard and Oxford graduate who was U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe between 2013 and 2017 and a deputy assistant secretary of state for four years before that. He served as Colorado’s executive director of higher education last year.

Read more: https://www.denverpost.com/2019/04/15/dan-baer-democratic-challenger-cory-gardner/