Jared Polis, the Democratic nominee for governor in Colorado, had a restraining order filed against him in 1999. In that year, a female former employee of Jared Polis got a temporary restraining order after Polis shoved her in an office altercation, causing “bruise marks” and a “red welt,” according to a police report. Polis changed his name one year later.
Polis — at the time named Jared Polis Schutz — got into an altercation with Patricia Hughes, who had given her resignation a few days earlier. Hughes had warned she had information to “go after” him if her last days at the JPS International LLC did not go smoothly, the Washington Free Beacon’s Todd Shepherd reported.
Polis went to the offices to keep Hughes from removing documents from the business. The altercation got heated, and when police arrived they found Hughes bruised. Polis told police that his former employee hit him with her bag when she attempted to leave with the documents, but Hughes said “he grabbed her and pushed her back into the office.”
According to the police report obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, Hughes said “she was pushed back into a file cabinet, hurting her leg. Hughes said that she then said that she was going to call 911 and went to the phone. Hughes said that she tried calling 911 three times and twice Schutz hung the phone up. The third time Hughes got through.”
“I did observe two bruise marks on Ms. Hughes left inside bicep and a red welt on her thigh. She stated that the bruises on her arms were from Mr. Schutz ‘grabbing’ her with his right hand,” the report added. “The bruises were not conducive with Mr. Schutz’s statement that he pushed her shoulders. Nor were they conducive with Ms. Hughes’s statement of Mr. Schutz standing in front of her and grabbing her.”
“The welt on her thigh she said was from Mr. Schutz pushing her back when she attempted to leave. The welt was conducive with the a [sic] file cabinet in front of the door,” the police reported. “There was also a key protruding from the upper right hand corner of the cabinet that could have produced the welt.”
When the two police officers who came to the scene inspected a bag Hughes was carrying, they found files belonging to the business. The officer who interviewed Polis wrote that Hughes “did knowingly and unlawfully take several files with original contracts and other sensitive documents” from the business.
Even so, two days after the incident, Hughes was awarded a restraining order against Polis. According to the Washington Free Beacon, the order was vacated three weeks later. Hughes remarried, becoming Patricia Janssen, and died in August 2014.
Polis changed his name in 2000, switching from Jared Polis Schutz to Jared Shutz Polis. The Denver Post reported that he chose the new name to honor his mother’s maiden name.
Polis is one of the four wealthy liberals credited with turning Colorado blue in “The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care),” by Rob Witwer and Adam Schrager. The first openly gay candidate elected to Congress, Polis supports single-payer health care and was endorsed by former president Barack Obama in his race for Colorado governor.
He will face Republican State Treasurer Walker Stapleton in November.
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