Jim Kolbe Passed Away!

Former Arizona lawmaker Jim Kolbe passed away from a stroke.

Former Arizona Republican congressman who was openly gay while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives passed away from a stroke at the age of 80.

Jim Kolbe came out as gay in August 1996 after his vote in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act spurred efforts by some gay rights activists to out him. He won re-election that year. In 2000, he became the first openly gay person to address the Republican National Convention, although his speech did not address gay rights. 

Kolbe served in the Arizona Legislature before being elected in 1984 to Congress, where he often was at odds with other Republicans over his support for free trade and an immigrant guest worker program.

Kolbe started his political career at 15 as a page for the late U.S Sen. Barry Goldwater in Washington and later served on the board that oversees the page program. He attended Northwestern University and then Stanford, earning a master’s degree in economics.

From 1965 to 1969, he served in the Navy. He was deployed to Vietnam, where he was awarded a congressional medal for valor.

After stints working in the Illinois governor’s office and in real estate, he entered Arizona politics. Kolbe was elected in 1976 to the state Senate and served until 1982. He was sworn in to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1985, the first Republican since Arizona statehood to represent a majority-Democratic district in the southern part of the state.

Kolbe was known in Congress for his advocacy for free trade, international development, immigration and Social Security reform. He also waged an unsuccessful campaign to eliminate the penny due to production costs.

He repeatedly co-sponsored a bill to scrap the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality. He sat on the national advisory board of the Log Cabin Republicans, which represents the LGBT community.

Kolbe was married to Sarah Dinham, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Arizona, from 1977 to 1992.

In 2013, Kolbe married his partner, Hector Alfonso. That year, Kolbe was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the Hollingsworth v. Perry case.

“He belongs to so many people,” Alfonso was quoted as saying Saturday by the Arizona Daily Star. “He gave his life for this city. He loved Tucson, he loved Arizona.”

Some people might have questioned Kolbe at times on political decisions, Alfonso said, “but no one could question his integrity and his love for Arizona,” the paper reported.

Kolbe endorsed anti-LGBTQ bills before denouncing them.

Although a moderate, pro-choice Republican, Kolbe came under fire for being anti-LGBTQ despite being associated with the community. It took almost 20 years and the Obergefell v. Hodges decision for him to finally support marriage equality.

Others anti-LGBTQ gay Republicans were Mark Foley and Aaron Schock before they came full circle and embrace Washed Up 45.

Kolbe would end up leaving the Republican Party in 2018 shortly after Martha McSally threw away her moderate positions for the extremism. McSally would lose to bisexual Democrat and moderate Kyrsten Sinema in a competitive Senate race.

McSally after being appointed to the Senate would later lose to Mark Kelly, the husband of Gabrielle Giffords, the lawmaker who succeeded Kolbe and survivor of a mass shooting attack.

Kolbe would endorse Joe Biden in 2020.