President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
December 06, 2011 08:18 PM UTC
28 Comments
of money into this taken for granted seat.
Tie up as much resources as they can and suddenly be OK with a non-ideological campaign that promotes rational treatment of all the constituents in the district not just the members of the United States of Republicans.
Red Meat Coffman suddenly finds moderation in all things.
Will he compromise his positions on anything or will he stay with shrill extremism?
And Colorado will be a swing state again for the Presidential race so expect to see Obama spend some time campaigning in CD 6.
Competitive districts as a way to break the deadlock in Washington. What an idea.
I don’t think the GOP bigwigs were looking at the news for stories about how Coffman’s district is now configured. They already knew that and didn’t need to count the number of media pundits jumping on the news bandwagon to figure it out.
The CO-06 race will see a metric buttload of cash this year until and unless the Democratic candidate fails to make any inroads in the district.
as the McGinnis-Maes-Tancredo soup opera last year.
Will Coffmans Senate dreams disappear because when confronted with neutral district he choked on his own ideological purity beliefs? Will Democrats make him pay the price for all those years encouraging the red rabble to burn immigrants at the stake and destroy our government before the Islamic Jihadist can.
The blog Gods continue to shine on Colorado politics..
with Tancredo still in the post.
Oh, please.
Unless there’s a credible challenger, and that won’t be established for some time until whichever Democrats are in the race post some big numbers, of course the NRCC absolutely “will continue to support” Coffman. They stuck with Musgrave until right before the end, and she was a far more problematic candidate than Coffman.
Besides, the NRCC doesn’t exist to bet on sure things, it’s there to make a difference when it needs to make a difference, and it’s yet to be demonstrated that’s even needed to keep this seat in Republican hands.
The better question is whether the DCCC, which has publicly anointed Pace and Shaffer, indicates that this district will get their attention. It’s an entirely different proposition defending an incumbent who’s got some tougher numbers and trying to dislodge that incumbent. Especially when he’s likely to have a million dollars in the bank after this quarter ends and raised nearly $850K at a single NRCC event this year.
CD-4 was always R+8 or so, wasn’t it? That’s a lot better numbers than Coffman has now.
I’m not really disagreeing with you, just pointing it out.
I suspect the D-Trip will find CD-6 much more fertile than CD-4 now. Too bad for Brandon.
might start answering Joe’s calls (and that Brandon will start finding his calls routed directly to voice mail).
In other words, what you just said . . .
I wonder who he pissed off?
Long and short answer: he pissed off the god of demographics. There were really no maps drawn that favored Shaffer during the entire process, and that’s largely because where he lives it’s hard to put him in a district that is even competitive (unless you throw his house in to CO-02, which puts him in an already D district).
Coffman is a pretty smart guy and is both a strong campaigner and a strong fundraiser. So for Democrats to assume the seat is now theirs is pure fantasy.
It’s certainly possible as a pickup, but Democrats shouldn’t count their chickens before they are hatched. Winning the seat will take a LOT of work and even more money, to say nothing of a strong candidate.
Given a choice between a decorated veteran and a relatively unknown state rep, smart money is on the decorated veteran unless he runs a mediocre or worse campaign.
… for Colorado Dems to talk to Joe Rice about getting into CD-6. Coffman’s a veteran, Joe Rice is a veteran. Problem solved.
Was a veteran also? Is that true?
and do better GOTV.
Should be starting now.
There’s enough material: Ryan VoucherCare budget, Eggmendment, Xenophobic ballot restrictions…
By the time CD6 voters start to pay attention to the race, they’ll already dislike their new congressman.
As RG says, of course they’ll continue to support him and do so to the max since he’s still a much better bet to win than to lose. If R powers that be play up poor Coffman’s dangerous position then they get to brag about his win as if it’s some kind of huge triumph. On the off chance that enough lucky breaks for Dems align that Dems pull off a true upset win, then the talking point would be that it isn’t an upset, just what naturally followed from evil Dem redistricting scheme. Not their fault.
For Rs, just covering all the bases, setting up a spin worthy, no fault outcome. For the media, something to wax dramatic about.
isn’t looking like such a smart move now.
A few years back I actually respected Coffman for refusing to share a stage with the demagogue/draft evader Tom Tancredo.
But then for some reason Coffman felt he had to get all kissy-face with Tancredo, and he began talking about what a wonderful person Tancredo was and how he wanted to be just like him if not more so.
I hope the Democratic Party can brush off those quotes of Tancredo praise by Mike Coffman, and run them in Aurora.
But I agree that Coffman will be a formidable candidate in 2012 if only due to name recognition and incumbency.
Then again, Coffman has done absolutely nothing to help solve joblessness and reduce the deficit. And he’s one of those fools who signed the Grover Norquist pledge of no tax increases ever again, ever, for any reason.
is what did he do to improve employment over the last four years.
What did he do?
If nothing else it might make him buckle in 2012 and quit obstructing everything. That way he actually could run on doing something.
and it appears that it has, then Coffman will be more moderate which is probably closer to his real comfort zone. Until this year Coffman has always seemed pretty moderate. If that means that he can then help drag the national GOP more to the center then that would be good for CO and the nation.
Having said that I hope that Miklosi can win.
He’s just been smart enough to be understated in his conservatism and within the middle of the admittedly conservative GOP pack.
Until this year, when he’s gone out of his way to move to the right. Why? Dunno. Democrats might be able to make something of that.
when you could have just said, “he’s a fucking phony.”
Mike Coffman has wide name recognition, is a formidable fundraiser, has a substantial war chest, is a tireless campaigner, is very popular with current and ex-military folks, and has long term ties to Aurora. Joe Miklosi has none of these.
There is a reason Morgan Carroll, Andrew Romanoff, and just about every other prominent Democrat has stayed out of this race. They believe Coffman will win in 2012 and challenge Mark Udall in 2014. They are waiting for a shot at an open seat in two years. They are not going to risk any political capital this campaign cycle by taking on a well-known and popular incumbent.
Ironically, Coffman may have been content to have remained the 6th CD congressman had the boundaries stayed the same. This new district practically compels him to to take on Udall in two years. The last thing Udall needs is a GOP opponent who has won three statewide races, including bucking the Democratic trend in 2006.
It’s fun for liberals to criticize Coffman’s congressional record, but he… Tom Tancredo… and Dan Schaefer all represented their constituencies well. That’s why Democratic opponents had done so miserably in the 6th CD for the past 30 years.
Sure, the make-up of the new 6th CD is different, but there are still more R’s than D’s (most registered Hispanic voters are already D’s) in it. 2012 is not looking like a good year for Democrats with independent voters. (Ask Barack Obama!) I doubt it is any different in the new 6th CD. I don’t see the unaffiliateds bolting for a little known Denver politician to be Aurora’s first congressman.
Watch the money flow from the DNCC. They may have promised a boatload of cash for Romanoff, but I don’t think they see Miklosi’s chances anywhere as promising. The Dem big bucks will be in the 3rd CD, maybe the 7th (depending on the GOP candidate), and — most importantly — trying to keep Colorado in the Obama column, which may be a tall order, particularly if Romney is the Republican nominee.
A large part of this will not be Coffman vs Miklosi, it will be Republican vs Democrat. This seat could very well come down to which party the voters are more disgusted with.
And at present that favors Miklosi. But with that said, Coffman is one hell of a good campaigner.
Good point, David, but I just don’t see Joe Miklosi being as good, and certainly not as an experienced, a campaigner as Mike Coffman. The incumbent is tenacious — and at his best — on the campaign trail. Morgan Carroll or Andrew Romanoff would have been a more formidable challenger. Miklosi simply is not in the same league as Coffman when it comes to campaigning… and the Dem starts out with little name recognition and the fact that he is a Denver politician running for Aurora’s new congressional seat.
Americans seem enamored with divided government, particularly at the national level. If Barack Obama is seemingly headed for re-election, a significant number of voters will pull the lever for the GOP candidate for Congress.
Like Bill Clinton in ’94, 96, and 98 — and George W. Bush in ’06 — voters are not comfortable leaving the White House and both houses of Congress in the hands of the same political party. That was abundantly clear in 2010 congressional elections, after the Democrats swept the board in the presidential and congressional elections two years earlier.
Miklosi truly faces an uphill battle. It will be interesting to see just how much money big Democratic donors and the national party is willing to put into this race. There is no doubt Republicans won’t hesitate to back Coffman to the hilt… but that is if it looks like they need to.
He hasn’t had a serious campaign challenge since 2006. I was out of the state for that race so I can’t really comment on how tough it really was. But going two races facing who ever wanted to be sacrificed makes me wonder how strong he is.
On your other point, americans may want divided government, but they don’t want dysfunctional government and that is what they have now. Throw in some of Coffman’s extremist positions and I think Joe has a decent shot.
Congress has an approval rating that’s not terribly far away from statistical ZERO. People want something done about the economy, and the current Congress isn’t doing the job.
How that plays out this year is, I think, anyone’s guess, and subject to the way the debate gets framed. Republicans are counting on being able to criticize Obama for not fixing the economy. Obama is counting on being able to blame Republican obstruction and policies that allowed this crisis to occur. Who wins this discussion? I don’t know, but if I had to make a wild guess, the political conversation is beginning to swing back from the conservative edge and toward the 99% vs 1% mantra.
If Republican framing wins, or the people believe neither party, we’ll probably wind up with a split government and at least 2 more years of inaction. If Democratic framing wins, we’ll see a weakened GOP House majority or perhaps even a new wave election, and the tone in D.C. will begin to shift back toward moderation.
Is people saw it as a complete Democratic majority across the system for ’09 & ’10 – and the economy didn’t get better, the banks didn’t get reined in, and healthcare & education costs keep climbing.
Sort of makes it hard to argue that electing Democrats will fix the problem.
People have been getting the message lately that Republicans in Congress have been the ones doing the obstruction.
The message war is a jump ball right now. Obama clearly thinks he can set the pace of the game afresh by directly coming out and blaming Republicans for a change (in the past, he’s blamed Congress as a whole). And Republicans are clearly dug in on saying “it hasn’t been fixed”.