He knew he wanted to get back into politics — Democratic politics. But he kept a low profile because of his judicial post, leaving the court in early 2004 for private law practice.

Staying quiet would change, however, when GOP Utah lawmakers passed a constitutional amendment making marriage just between a man and a woman.

Soon, McCoy quit his lawyering job to become director of "Don't Amend," the official anti-Amendment 3 campaign. In conservative Utah the pro-marriage amendment passed in November 2004. But his "Don't Amend" work got him acquainted with Democrats and noticed by politically active Utahns.

When former Sen. Paula Julander, D-Salt Lake, resigned her seat at the first of the 2005 Legislature because of ill health, McCoy decided at the last minute to stand in a special vote of Senate District 2 delegates.

He survived the first round of voting and narrowly defeated Julander's picked successor, her husband, Rod, by three votes in the second round.

All of a sudden, McCoy, the rural Republican from a small Missouri farming town, was in the Utah Senate as its first openly gay man.

And he has larger political ambitions. McCoy will run for Senate Democratic leadership later this year. "I would never run against (U.S. Democratic Rep.) Jim Matheson. But when Utah gets a fourth (U.S.) House seat, that seat could be pretty Democratic. Who knows what can happen?"

Scott McCoy could just end up back in the U.S. House — but a pretty different fellow from when he left.

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E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com