For much of the last 100 years, there was little that compared to landing on the cover of Time magazine.

Before the country’s collective attention span splintered in recent decades, Time, a pillar of what’s come to be regarded as a long-gone monoculture, framed the national conversation within its iconic red border in ways that are hard to imagine these days.

Bluntly put, the cover of Time magazine told America what was important each week, putting a spotlight on current events and trends.

Picture trending on Twitter, Tiktok and Reddit, only all at once and for an entire week, with everyone in the country either receiving a copy delivered to their home or seeing it numerous times, on display at newsstands and in grocery store checkout lines, in doctors’ waiting rooms and lobbies. There was no avoiding it.

Those days are gone, but the nearly 100-year-old magazine still packs a punch

with more than 20 million subscribers — roughly seven times the audience drawn by top-rated cable news shows — and this week, a Colorado candidate has the distinction of appearing on Time’s cover.

Pam Anderson, a former Jefferson County clerk and the Republican nominee for Colorado secretary of state, is among a cadre of candidates and officials Time characterizes as being on the front lines defending democracy by standing up to conspiracy theorists who want to take over the country’s election system.

A former head of the Colorado County Clerks Association who consulted on voting systems around the country before launching her campaign, Anderson is hoping to deny Democratic incumbent Jena Griswold a second term as Colorado’s top election official.

In the Oct. 10-17 double issue of Time that hit newsstands on Sept. 30, Anderson’s stylized portrait is tucked between capitol domes and voting machines alongside a half-dozen other leading figures Time dubs “The Defenders: Inside the Fight to Save America’s Elections.”

Charlotte Alter’s cover story touches on candidates from both parties running for key election offices — from governor to county clerk — but spends most of its 3,400 words on in-depth portraits of three candidates for secretary of state — Democrat Adrian Fontes in Arizona, incumbent Republican Brad Raffensperger in Georgia and Democrat Cisco Aguilar in Nevada.

“Unassuming civil servants on the front lines of the fight to protect America’s election system from the Trump allies out to disrupt it,” Alter writes. “They have little in common except a collective purpose: each of them ran this year for an election-oversight position against an opponent who embraces Trump’s ‘Big Lie.’”

The story singles out Anderson as among Republicans who “vouched for the integrity of the 2020 election while beating back election deniers in GOP primaries,” noting that she won the nomination in a GOP primary against Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk who has promoted unfounded claims charging widespread election fraud. Peters was indicted earlier this year on multiple felony charges connected to an alleged plot to breach secure election equipment and software and has pleaded not guilty.

“It’s been very challenging as an elections professional and a lifelong Republican to see people embrace that conspiracy so fervently,” Anderson told Time.

Anderson, Alter writes, “is trying to thread the needle between the two parties’ rhetoric about voting.” Time includes this quote from Anderson in the story: “Security equals suppression for the left, and access equals fraud on the right. I don’t believe either of those things.”

In an interview with Colorado Politics after the cover image and cover story posted online last week, Anderson, a Time subscriber, called it “a little bit surreal, to tell you the truth,” to see her face on the cover of Time.

She thinks Alter told the story well and appreciates the magazine’s nonpartisan approach, adding that she’s crossed paths professionally with several of those profiled in the article — from both sides of the aisle.

“That’s been largely my experience with the hundreds if not thousand of election officials I’ve come across,” she said. “It’s not new to have election management and election administration politicized, but that’s really not the perspective of the people that do it, and that’s one of the reasons I stepped forward is because I don’t think it’s appropriate. It’s bigger than that. These offices should remain above that fray and serve the broader purpose.”

In her campaign, Anderson has criticized the incumbent Griswold for bringing a partisan perspective to election administration, a charge the Democrat rejects.

Said Anderson: “What’s most gratifying is, just like this campaign, I’m running for this for a reason, and it’s a mission of stepping forward and reflecting what I think reflects most people’s viewpoints, that elections are something that’s not a partisan thing. We can care about our elections being easily accessible and that they’re secure and transparent, that they can exist in the same place.”

A spokeswoman for Griswold’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment about her opponent’s appearance on the cover of Time or the cover story.

Anderson said that a professional, nonpartisan style is key to restoring trust in elections, though she admits it’s a monumental task in the face of efforts by Peters and others to undermine that trust.

“When you have leadership and people willing to step forward that are running to stand in the breach and to treat the office and the obligation and the duty with the respect I feel I have in my career, and how so many election officials — thousands — across the country do every day, it means leaders should step foreword and be able to do it in a way with that professionalism and experience and less polarization,” she said.

Anderson said she’s happy to argue with fellow Republicans who question the legitimacy of Colorado’s election system and suggested that often all it takes is showing skeptics how things work.

“I have found that it’s much more effective to not vilify people for where they stand, people of good conscience,” Anderson said.

Colorado Democrats, including Griswold, have been calling on Anderson to denounce Republicans she’s campaigned with and praised despite their embrace of the election conspiracy theories Anderson ran against in her primary.

Among them are 7 th Congressional District GOP nominee Erik Aadland, who told a group of voters shortly before the primary that he believed the 2020 elections “were undermined by fraud ... and now we have an illegitimate government in power,” adding that he wasn’t going to “talk about election integrity on and on because it’s not an issue that wins us this race,” according to a recording of Aadland’s remarks obtained by election data and analysis site Fivethirtyeight.

Anderson told Colorado Politics she understands that not everyone who spouts unfounded claims that American elections are rigged is operating from a position of good faith but disagrees with the approach her political opponents demand she take.

“I see that as divisive and, frankly, it doesn’t contribute to increasing confidence by just becoming more polarizing and doubling down on polarization,” Anderson said.

“There’s a reason why our voters in very large numbers have left the Republican and Democratic parties, is that divisiveness.”