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March 30, 2018 10:58 AM UTC

Cynthia Coffman Just Keeps Digging and Digging

  • 33 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Cynthia! Are you down there, Cynthia?

We’ve been tough on Attorney General Cynthia Coffman in this space, but it would be impossible to ignore the fantastical absurdity that is her campaign for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Ever since her belated announcement for Governor in November, Coffman has been unable to figure out if she is here or there or anywhere else.

Ernest Luning reports on Coffman’s latest political gymnastics for the publication formerly known as the Colorado Statesman:

Coffman…told a GOP group last week she would sign a bill removing protection based on sexual orientation from Colorado’s anti-discrimination law.

Her remarks drew criticism from the state’s leading LGBTQ-advocacy organization, but Coffman later said she meant she would repeal the protection only if it turned out it wasn’t needed anymore. [Pols emphasis]

Coffman, who has staked out a position as a defender of LGBTQ rights, made the remarks at a March 21 meeting of the Greeley Republican Politics for Breakfast group at the end of a discussion about her controversial role defending the state’s nondiscrimination law in a U.S. Supreme Court Court case about a Lakewood baker who cited religious reasons when he refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

Well, except that she probably did.

Coffman is seeking a place on the June Primary ballot via the caucus/assembly process, which concludes on April 14, and she’s been taking a strange approach in courting diehard Republicans across the state. Coffman’s pitch to GOP voters is that she is the most moderate Republican in the race, and therefore the candidate with the best chance of winning a General Election in November. But it seems like every time she tries to make this case, she ends up walking it back in a very public manner.

Put aside, for a moment, the question of whether or not it makes sense to court right-wing Republicans with a moderate message; Coffman’s bigger problem has been her persistant inability to be consistent in her positions. Coffman’s supposed support of LGBTQ rights is one of her main talking points for her “moderate” image — but when she gets into a room with conservative Republicans, she compulsively un-moderates herself. As Luning explains further:

Last summer, Coffman praised Colorado’s anti-bias laws as among the strongest in the country when she addressed a rally celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered equality on the steps of the state Capitol. She pointed out that her office had recently helped pass bipartisan legislation adding sexual orientation and transgender status to the state’s existing law covering bias-motivated crimes.

“Whatever happens on the national front, and I know there is great fear about what lies ahead because it is unknown to us, let me tell you what we do know about Colorado,” Coffman, the only Republican on stage, told the rally. “This state, your legislators, your state officials — we will all stand up for gay rights, for human rights in Colorado.” [Pols emphasis]

Cynthia Coffman will stand up for LGBTQ rights! Unless she won’t.

We’d guess that Coffman isn’t likely to win over many conservative Republicans with this dance, so why risk losing potential supporters from the LGBTQ community?

After reviewing a recording of Coffman’s remarks before the Republican group, a spokesman for One Colorado, the state’s leading LGBTQ-advocacy organization, said her statement “feels like a betrayal” from someone the group has long considered an ally.

Of course, this isn’t the only issue that has Coffman flopping about. Coffman thinks Colorado voters are anxious to vote for a female candidate at the top of the ticket (which they did in 2016 with Hillary Clinton), yet she is an unabashed supporter of President Trump.

Coffman doesn’t want to talk about Planned Parenthood, but she can’t very well sidestep the issue because of her involvement in important court cases about funding the organization. In fact, Coffman has waffled so much in the past few months on the issue of abortion that it is nearly impossible to ascertain if she is really “pro-choice” or “pro-life” (as far as we can tell, she’s definitely sorta “pro-life” at the moment).

If Coffman’s political strategy is intentional obfuscation, then she’s doing a hell of a job staying on “message.” But if this is NOT the plan, and we’re guessing it isn’t, then it’s almost sad to see Coffman winding down her political career by pulling up whatever policy stakes she once planted.

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33 thoughts on “Cynthia Coffman Just Keeps Digging and Digging”

    1. You fear intelligent women. You fear complex answers to complex questions. And yes, you fear Cynthia Coffman. That's why you bash her every chance you get, even when she agrees with you. It's obvious that Democrats don't want to run against Cynthia, and you're counting on Republicans doing your dirty work for you.

      Don't rule her out just yet liberals!! Cynthia may have the last laugh yet.

      1. Get real, Fluffy. Intelligent people – women and men –
        do not give answers to questions in the manner that she does.

        Isn't it about time you start sucking up to Walker Stapleton?

      2. Nutteranus.  If I feared intelligent women, I wouldn't be backing Cary Kennedy for Governor.  

        If I feared Cynthia Coffman, I would openly acknowledge that she is formidable.  Your idea of complex seems to be having absolutely no core convictions and not being able to articulate complexity.  Much like your posts.

        By the way.  I heard you had proof Obama illegally stole private data to win elections.  We are waiting for it.

        1. Complex (Nutteranus Unabridged Dictionary): adj. describing the ability to get away with stating one position on a public policy issue to one faction in the Grand Old Party while simultaneously telling a different faction the diametric opposite position.

        1. All things are relative…..

          If you stand Cynthia Coffman, Judy Reyher, Lori Saine and Vickie Marble next to each other, Coffman is a rocket scientist compared to the three house plants. 

          1. Coffman is smarter – smart enough not to put racist posts out there on social media, (Reyher), lecture a boy scout troop about how guns prevent rape (Marble), or try to go through airport security with a gun (Saine).

            She may or may not be more liberal on "culture war" issues – abortion and LGBT rights. Nobody really knows, since her public positions are all over the map.

            But she's right there with her reactionary sisterhood on things like suppressing Democratic votes, corporate rights over individual rights, screwing poor people to fund tax cuts, fearing immigrants,  etc. All the things that matter.

            The whole outHouse kerfuffle  was about House's seeming to be more moderate on social issues, particularly voter suppression. Coffman, Tancredo, and Becky Mizel were trying to keep the party steered to the far right and to maintain their power base.  Coffman's methods of trying to make that happen were just as boneheaded as anything the three Stoogettes came up with.

            Maybe it's something about being a loyal Republican woman – it makes for cognitive dissonance, selective attention, and brain fog. Perhaps that is not even a gender-specific disorder.

            1. No, ma'am, it is not…

              From whom do you think most R ladies learn that stupid shit? I submit Laura Bradford as a perfect example. She was a newby and did just what the boys told her to do…up to a point. The Republican party is very hierarchical…with men calling the shots. Rarely does a Republican woman get ahead by NOT learning from the boys.

              Yeah…definitely not gender specific. IMHO. 

              1. She was always a bit out there, even when she was hanging around the feminist community in Denver and doing gigs at the Comedy Works downtown. I didn't know her personally, but she was known.

                I was interested in what she was into running as the Peace and Freedom party candidate for President.  I really didn't disagree with her on the issues. But I do believe in a fact and evidence based reality, and I'm not sure she does.

                I think she's supporting Trump just to be ornery, honestly, and that it backs up some concept or loyalty she has to being working class.

      4. Geezuuuz Fluffy…the majority of Coloradans (and Americans) have already proven they overwhelmingly support intelligent women. (I'd include Cary Kennedy on that list as well).  I've never met the taller Coffman but I'm guessing she's a lovely lady (there are a lot of great Republican women in the state). She'd just never be a voting option for me because she comes with the baggage of being a Republican. 

        I sincerely hope I live long enough to see the GOP, a party I belonged to for 30 years, bring itself back from the abyss.  We need a functioning two-party system. 

        1. I have worked with and for Cynthia Coffman and she is not a lovely lady.  She is not very bright, not very hard working and vindictive if you cross her.  

    2. We're getting ahead of ourselves up in here. We can't even think about answering that question unless and until we figured out how many diametrically opposed Cynthia Coffman "complex answers to complex questions" can fit on the head of a pin inscribed with "the legal definition of blackmail."

  6. The picture is unfair.
    First – it's obviously fake.
    Second- dog can't help being a dog and if he's a digger, he's gonna dig. 

    I love dogs and you shouldda had a better picture.

  7. Ms. Coffman appears to be doing everything in her power to show her confusion between "moderate" and "wishy-washy."

    In case she wants to plan ahead, here's a suggestion for her Halloween costume:

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