June 07, 2015 09:16 PM UTC

Pay No Attention To Mike Coffman's Buddy Ben Carson

• 1 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

The Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels reported Friday afternoon:

Aurora Congressman Mike Coffman paid Republican Ben Carson $15,000 to speak at a fundraiser, according to a Wall Street Journal story reporting that the GOP presidential candidate and his wife earned between $8.9 million and $27 million in a recent 16-month period…

Democrats thought that they had redrawn the seat after the 2010 census to make it competitive enough to kick out the Republican but Coffman has moderated his views on immigration reform and other issues.

The DCCC says the speech is another reason to be skeptical of the shift.

“After years of running to the right, embracing the birther movement and paying the extremely controversial Ben Carson thousands of dollars, Mike Coffman has been attempting a fake moderate rebrand to keep his seat. Voters will see right through that,” said Tyler Law, press secretary for the Mountain West Region of the DCCC.

But as Rep. Mike Coffman’s spokesman Tyler Sandberg was quick to respond, zing!

Responded Coffman spokesman Tyler Sandberg: “They said that all last cycle and their No. 1 recruit in the country got steamrolled by 9 points.”

The swing between a Democratic-leaning electorate in presidential election years and a more conservative electorate in midterm elections is a well-established phenomenon all over the country, and can be easily seen in the very different election results here in 2012 versus 2014–or for that matter, 2008 versus 2010. In 2012, Coffman barely survived against an underfunded Democratic opponent, which raised hopes that Coffman would be ousted in 2014. But a strong national “GOP wave” combined with a surprisingly weak Democratic candidate in the form of uninspiring technocrat Andrew Romanoff allowed Coffman to outperform other Republicans substantially within the highly competitive Sixth District.

In 2016, the game will be very different for number of reasons, and Democrats should not be deterred by previous results in terms of how to go after Coffman. The 2016 electorate will be more receptive to Democratic hits on Coffman than they were last year, and that means crazy stuff that Ben Carson has said over the years–that Obamacare is the “worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery,” even worse than 9/11–will be more of a liability to Coffman than last year.

And that’s before Carson goes nuts on the presidential campaign trail, which is more or less guaranteed.