August 21, 2015 02:14 PM UTC

Coffman Goes Negative Early: Strength or Desperation?

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Colorado Statesman’s Ernest Luning offers a preview of the message incumbent GOP Rep. Mike Coffman intends to use against what’s expected to be his toughest challenge ever from former Colorado Senate Minority Leader Morgan Carroll–and it’s all negative all the time:

Coffman acknowledged that it was “going to be a tough race.” His opponent, he said, was Carroll, “a personal-injury attorney.” As the crowd groaned, he quickly added, “and there’s nothing wrong with that. I think that industry, or that profession, has an important role to play in our society. But there are bad apples within that profession, and Morgan Carroll has done her best to represent those bad apples in the State Legislature.”

“She wants to do to America what she’s done to Colorado,” Coffman continued. [Pols emphasis] “What she needs to do in Colorado is help clean up the messes that she’s created here, that have hurt this economy, that have hurt jobs, that have hurt Colorado’s working families. I look forward to a spirited race,” he said, and then repeated his characterization: “Because Morgan Carroll, representing the bad apples of that industry has created a lot of IOUs there and you can bet she’s going to raise a lot of money from them, so I need all your help.”

That Coffman is centering his message on Carroll’s career as (Coffman’s words) a “personal injury attorney” is not unexpected, since “trial lawyers” have been employed as a universal boogeyman for Republican politicians since time immemorial. While that may be an effective message in safely Republican areas dominated by business interests, we have real questions how effective attacking Carroll for being someone who ordinary citizens turn to for justice will prove in swing CD-6–one of the most economically and ethnically diverse districts in the state today.

As for “doing to America” what Carroll “did to Colorado?” All we can assume here is that Coffman must have forgotten about Business Insider’s ranking last year of Colorado as the #1 state in America for economic growth. And Forbes’ ranking of Denver as the best place to do business in America. And Colorado’s unemployment rate that’s a full percentage point below the national average. These facts make exporting whatever we’re doing in Colorado to the rest of America sound, well, pretty good.

Bottom line: in each of Coffman’s last two campaigns in the redistricted swing CD-6, Coffman has opted for a strategy of going harshly negative right out of the gate against his opponents. Victories in 2012 and 2014 against an underfunded and overcautious challenger respectively have almost certainly validated this approach in Coffman’s mind.

But for a host of reasons, Coffman’s hard-charging negativity–we’ll refrain this once from calling it “shrill”–could backfire in 2016.