COLORADO GOVERNOR

Colorado, dubbed the “hate state” due to a controversial 1992 anti-gay law that sparked international backlash, has elected its first openly gay governor.

Rep. Jared Polis, a Democrat who was elected to Congress in 2008, beat Republican Walker Stapleton by six points.

“It’s a historic win — not just for the LGBT community but for the state of Colorado,” Annise Parker, president and CEO of the Victory Fund, a non-profit supporting LGBT politicians, told the Denver Post.

Born in Colorado but raised in California, Polis’s mother and father founded a greeting card company that later sold for hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the Denver Post. One of the wealthiest members of the House, with a reported estimated wealth of $387 million, Polis earned a reputation in Washington as a tech-savvy public education advocate.