Albert C. Yates was born in 1942 in Memphis, Tennessee. After serving in the U.S. Navy for two years, he attended Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis), where he graduated with a B.S. degree in chemistry and physics in 1965. Yates went on to receive a Ph.D. in theoretical chemical physics from Indiana University in 1968, before becoming a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California. He taught chemistry at Indiana U. in 1974 and later became vice president and dean of graduate studies and research at the University of Cincinnati. By 1980, Yates had joined Washington State University as its executive vice president and provost. Most notably, he served as president of Colorado State University (CSU) from January 1990 to 2003.

During his tenure at CSU, Yates established the President’s Multicultural Student Advisory Committee as well as the President’s Commission on Women and Gender Equity. Improving the university’s “ethnic diversity” was one of the foremost tasks for which he was hired by CSU, which would later laud him as a longtime “champion” of “diversity efforts.”

After Colorado voters in November 1992 passed Amendment 2 —  legislation that barred the state as well as local governments from including sexual orientation in anti-discrimination laws — Yates, at a protest demonstration that same month, vowed to defy the measure. Under his watch, CSU began offering Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Student Services in 1998. In recognition of Yates’ contributions to the promotion of leftwing orthodoxy, the university subsequently created the Albert C. Yates Leadership Development Institute to teach black students about “intentional, intersectional, and equitable leadership as it affects individuals, groups, and systems.” The Institute’s primary stated purpose as of 2023 was to help African American students “apply what they learn and unlearn about themselves and leadership in order to confidently disrupt and resist frameworks of leadership that do not include the intersections of Black voices, Black bodies, and Black experiences.”

In 2002, the Center for Colorado Policy Studies hosted a conference entitled, “Colorado’s Future: Meeting the Needs of a Changing State.” With the support of the Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado and the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, the conference brought together 100 local policymakers, nonprofit leaders, and academics in Colorado Springs. Among the more notable panel participants were liberal philanthropist Rutt Bridges and the CEO of Bridges’ left-leaning Bell Policy Center, Wade Buchanan. A document outlining the conference’s agenda listed “research summaries” that focused on such topics as: (a) “Hate Crime, the White Supremacist Movement, and the Politics of Diversity,” and (b) the respective “Costs of Marijuana and Marijuana Prohibition.” Then-CSU president Yates was quoted in the conference’s publication, titled Colorado’s Future, stating: “The challenges facing our state are enormous, ranging from economic pressures to the preservation of our treasured quality of life. The need for thoughtful debate and thorough, unbiased analysis of the issues has never been greater, as the choices we make today will help shape the future of Colorado for decades to come.”

When Yates stepped down from his post as CSU president in 2003, he was granted a compensation package that would subsequently pay him $373,668 per year, a sum that included $40,000 for housing and $10,000 for car expenses.

Also after his resignation from CSU, Yates served as the primary architect of a political strategy commonly known as “The Colorado Model.” Conceptualized as a plan to transform the state’s political landscape from majority-Republican to majority-Democrat, the Colorado Model was implemented to great effect by Yates with the assistance of four wealthy leftists, known as the “Gang of Four”: Rutt Bridges, Tim Gill, Jared Polis, and Pat Stryker. Dissatisfied with what he perceived as the traditional ineffectiveness of Colorado’s Democratic Party, Yates orchestrated meetings with the Gang of Four and other liberal donors in an effort to unite the party around shared political values such as “social justice” and gay rights. Together, the group members poured millions of dollars into Colorado’s 2004 elections to help Democrat candidates. While portraying selected Republican nominees as extremists, Yates and the Gang of Four threw their support behind Democrats who deceptively presented themselves as “centrists.” These efforts by Yates and his four allies paid huge dividends when they managed to: (a) flip a key U.S. House seat from the Republican stronghold of Colorado’s 3rd District; (b) aid Colorado Democrats in reclaiming both chambers of the state legislature for the first time in decades; and (c) help political ally Ken Salazar get elected to the U.S. Senate.

By the end of 2004, Yates and the Gang of Four would collaborate to form the Colorado Democracy Alliance (CODA), which proceeded to help establish a strong infrastructure of wealthy leftwing donors to consistently fund the political campaigns of Democrat candidates throughout the state. With the help of CODA and its network of newly created leftist think tanks and media outlets, Colorado Democrats gained a powerful collection of highly partisan allies – posing as nonpartisans — across the state’s various industries and institutions.

Yates’ Colorado Model became a massive success for the state’s Democratic party, which dominated the majority of Colorado’s presidential, congressional, and state elections from 2008 onward. Indeed, by 2018 it had enabled Democrats to gain control of Colorado’s entire state government for the first time in 80 years. As of January 2023, Colorado Democrats held the governorship, a strong majority in the state legislature, both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats, and a majority of the its U.S. House seats. In short, Colorado — a once-reliably Republican/conservative state — underwent a drastic realignment and became solidly Democrat.

• For additional information on The Colorado Model, click here.

Since retiring from his post as an academic administrator, Yates has served on the boards of numerous corporations and nonprofit organizations. Many of these entities, such as Bohemian Companies and Catalist, maintain strong ties to Yates’ political allies — like Pat Stryker and the Democracy Alliance. Over the years, Stryker has donated some $20 million to Colorado State University through the Bohemian Foundation, including $1.5 million to establish the Albert C. Yates Endowed Chair of Mathematics in 2003.

The University of Cincinnati’s Albert C. Yates Fellowship Program – formerly known as the Graduate Minority Fellows and Scholars Program – was created to “identify, admit, support, and mentor promising individuals of African-American and Appalachian heritage in UC graduate programs.”

In 2012, Yates served as a member of Barack Obama’s presidential reelection campaign, “Obama For America,” later known as “Organizing For America.”

In 2016, Yates worked on the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Over the years, Yates has been a member of the Democracy Alliance, an invite-only group of wealthy donors who contribute massive sums of money to leftwing causes. He also has served as a leader of the Committee on States, a Democracy Alliance ally devoted to the advancement of leftist agendas in individual states.