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August 21, 2015 02:14 PM UTC

Coffman Goes Negative Early: Strength or Desperation?

  • 14 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Rep. Mike Coffman (R), Sen. Morgan Carroll (D).
Rep. Mike Coffman (R), Sen. Morgan Carroll (D).

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.

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14 thoughts on “Coffman Goes Negative Early: Strength or Desperation?”

    1. When you have a crappy record as a politician (that would be my man Mike) and someone else points it out that's not negative, that's accurate. When you have a great record showing long term success and improvement in the state under your leadership (that would be Morgan) and someone else tries to pretend that that never happened and use rhetorical fallacy to try to denigrate then it's negative.
      To be clear, Mike is negative and flailing Morgan is not.

    2. Bullshit, Mod. Carroll went after Coffman on his policies and failed leadership over the VA. Coffman can't even name any specific policies against Carroll, because she has been a champion for working people. 

      1. I'd savage her on opposition to the proposed construction defects legislation.  The inability to offer any kind of solution to a clear contributor to the lack of affordable for-sale housing in Colorado isn't championing working people- it's enriching those lucky enough to own a home and disenfranchising those who would like to own one.

    3. Blithering idiots open their mouths — you being a textbook case in point — bad idea!  People with any modicum of intelligence open their mouths — not such a bad idea at all!

      (This wouldn't be nearly so hard to understand if you weren't, you know, such a complete moron …)

  2. Stop expecting them to let objective reality get in their way.

    These are the people who ran in 2010 on skyrocketing taxes hurting the middle class when taxes had gone down for paycheck Americans. They rail against the death tax that hurts middle class people when it only potentially affects a tiny minority who have inherited hugs sums and know how to get around it anyway.

    They claim we desperately need to solve the problem of in person voter fraud when the percentage is too close to zero every year to be expressed in a percentage at all.

    They claim there's a violent crime wave connected with undocumented workers when they actually have a lower crime rate than the American born.

    They claim that illegal southern border immigration is a huge and growing problem when it flat lined years ago and is now crossing into negative territory.

    They claim Obama has dragged our country down when the economy has improved by every measure during the Obama years.

    Their target saps believe it all. Why let reality affect their policies or rhetoric?

    1. Exactly. This will continue until they're put in their tactics backfire on them. And that will only happen when someone slaps their ridiculous statements so hard they return forcefully into the orifice from which they originated.

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