Not every 2010 redistricting was a win for Republicans. One of our winnable districts, CO-6, is a great example.
The sixth is Tom Tancredo’s old seat, and that racist windbag was able to rack up 60/40 wins until he retired in 2008 so he could fail, badly, at running for President. But the 2010 redistricting changed that. It moved the mostly Republican southern suburbs out of the district, and added in urban, Democratic Aurora. In 2012, a Democrat came within 2 points of beating Mike Coffman, who won the seat after Tancredo retired.
Back in the old CO-6, Coffman could say anything he wanted about abortion or the gays and get away with it. Now, Coffman’s near loss had him running scared, backtracking on personhood laws, and voting for ENDA. Still, as he tries to navigate the gulf between what he really believes and what his new constituents will tolerate, his opponent, Morgan Carroll, is holding his feet to the fire by pointing out that he co-sponsored an abortion bill containing “forcible rape” language.
Morgan was the President of the Colorado Senate. She’s a smart, personable lawyer. 2016 is the year she can forcibly retire Mike Coffman by sending him to the Tom Tancredo home for old bigots. That’s why she’s on our list of winnables this year. If you want Morgan and others like her to have some money to throw out assholes like Coffey, you know what to do:
Patricia Kayden
I hope this story becomes fairly common as gerrymandering falls way to demographics. Go Morgan!
hedgehog mobile
This. I used to live in 6 then redistricting put me in CD 1 (Diana DeGette’s). I’d love to send Coffman packing. Off to donate. Thanks for highligting this.
dedc79
Just contributed. Another race to watch and support is the 5th district in NJ, where Democrat Josh Gottheimer (former speechwriter for Bill Clinton) is looking to unseat New Jersey’s Tea Party congressman Scott Garrett in one of New Jersey’s traditionally more conservative districts:
The race is close and will likely go down to the wire.
StringOnAStick
I’m in Colorado but not this district. Doesn’t matter though, I’ve been contributing to Morgan Carroll since the beginning of her campaign. Coffman is so CO Springs, and he needs to go.
Hal
He did? I dont even remember that.
StringOnAStick
@Hal: He kicked around the idea of running against incumbent Senator Bennett, but wasn’t much of a draw. Instead we ended up with a different guy, still CO Springs and Tea Party crazy though.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Tap, Tap. Is this thing on?
I posted something in the “Give me your tired” open thread but it vanished. Is it in the dungeon?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who may finally change his nym to get rid of the apostrophe this weekend…)
Major Major Major Major
@hedgehog mobile: volunteer!!
Lee
In cases like this, while I hope the Dem wins, I’m happy that the Repub has to play nice and not hurt people/break things if they want to get re-elected.
hovercraft
I knew the name sounded familiar, this is the Jack ass birther who when asked to explain his claim that he knew that Obama in his heart was not an American, kept repeating himself over and over again. I believe that was part of the reason he almost got turfed last time. “I stand by my statement that I misspoke and I apologize,” a total of five times, in answer to every question. Get him.
EDIT: Comment refers to Coffman, though rodent from Jersey is repellent too, maybe I’ll drive and volunteer for his opponent this weekend.
hedgehog mobile
@Major Major Major Major: Doing voter reg in a couple weeks. But yeah Morgan could use some help too.
Miss Bianca
And I contend that CO D3 is also winnable – or at least worth trying for. Go,Gail Schwartz!
Gonna check my bank balance today and donate later.
Miss Bianca
@StringOnAStick: o/t, but sorry to hear about your BIL. Hope you are doing OK.
vheidi
Done, thanks for the (constant) reminders – sometimes they work!
Bokonon
I am resident of CO-6. And I honestly can’t stand Mike Coffman. Having him as my Congressman is like having no representative at all – since he really makes no effort at all to represent anyone other than his GOP faithful. If you don’t agree with him … it is like dealing with a hostile fortress.
But you have to give Coffman credit – he is an absolute pro at surviving, and leveraging his media advantages as the incumbent, and surfing along the top of the changes and cross-currents in this district.
Coffman is very good at branding. He has a cute habit of governing hard right, and then coming back to his constituents with a deluge of shiny campaign fliers, claiming that he is a moderate who works across the aisles with the Democrats on common-sense solutions, is a champion for women’s issues, blah blah blah.
But just try contacting Coffman about your concerns. His office shows open hostility to constituents who call up with the “wrong” viewpoints (like – opposing Coffman’s support for the government shutdowns). They will tell you what you OUGHT to believe instead, and will hang up the phone on you. Or they will send you smackdown e-mails telling you that you are an ignorant dolt. Hilariously, some of those e-mails have been done as cut-and-paste jobs from GOP talking point documents … plainly visible because of the different font sizes and typefaces on the different blocks of text. Come on, guys … elevate your craft.
As part of the same armed fortress approach to representing his district, Coffman generally walls himself off from his general constituent base, and likes to speak to them through the filter of mailings and friendly media (while having closed-door events with the GOP faithful and affiliated groups, where you actually get the straight dope). Coffman’s notorious “birther” statement about Obama happened up front of one of those friendly audiences … and was reported by someone who spread the word outside.
All of this pretty darned offensive if you aren’t a GOP party member inside the fortress walls, but it has also been effective for a long, long time at keeping discontent down to manageable levels.
Given all of this, I have genuine consternation about the way that Morgan Carroll is campaigning.
Carroll needs to break through Coffman’s defenses – and do it hard, to overcome the establishment media bias, plus overcome the general inertia with voters that has enabled Coffman to survive previous challengers. People need to be fired up, and finally feel a REASON to get quit of Coffman in favor of someone better. But Carroll has had low general visibility all summer, and has only started running ads in the district. And the ads that the Democrats have been running pretty soft.
Having seen some previous Democratic campaigns in Colorado misfire and fizzle, and fail to connect with voters, you can count me as skeptical …
RaflW
I donated directly to Morgan back in early summer (I spend part of ski season in CO, though not in the 6th, so I track and support some CO candidates).
About a week ago my phone rang while I was shopping in Costco, and I answered because it was a CO phone number though I didn’t recognize it. I ended up chatting with the candidate for 5 or 6 minutes, and by the end had pledged $250 to her (which I made good on the same day, just not over the phone in a Costco!).
Point is, she struck me as highly capable, engaging and a good communicator. She also said the Keith Ellison played a role in her decision to run. Namely that he assured her she could do some good in D.C. even if the Dems don’t retake the House.
If anyone around here is in the Denver area, Ellison is keynoting a fundraiser dinner tomorrow, Saturday, Sept 24th in the Denver suburb of Aurora at 5:45pm.
RaflW
I donated directly to Morgan back in early summer (I spend part of ski season in CO, though not in the 6th, so I track and support some CO candidates).
About a week ago my phone rang while I was shopping, and I answered because it was a CO phone number though I didn’t recognize it. I ended up chatting with the candidate for 5 or 6 minutes, and by the end had pledged 250 to her.
Point is, she struck me as highly capable, engaging and a good communicator. She also said the Keith Ellison played a role in her decision to run. Namely that he assured her she could do some good in D.C. even if the Dems don’t retake the House.
If anyone around here is in the Denver area, Ellison is keynoting at the Arapaho County Dem’s dinner tomorrow, Saturday, Sept 24th in the Denver suburb of Aurora at 5:45pm.
RaflW
I hate WP so much I can just spit.
I’m trying to tell a moderately interesting story about chatting with Morgan Carroll on the phone, but I have some magic bad words in the story so it gets eaten each time, even as I nibble away at the story as I try to figure out the offending words.
FYWP, never mind!
She’s great. I hope she wins. Give her $$$ is my point.
RaflW
Also, one of her mentors (per my convo with her) Keith Ellison will be in Colorado tomorrow evening speaking at an event in the Denver suburbs in CO-06. If anyone is in the Denver area, look it up (Arapahoe County Dems, 5:45pm Saturday in Aurora) and go! Thx.
RaflW
@Miss Bianca: Cook rates CO-03 as likely Republican, which is not as bad as solid R. If this was looking like a wave election, I’d think she’d have a better shot.
And to be sure, I’m very glad she is running. Even ‘safe’ seats need credible opponents, and ‘likelies’ are by no means shoe-ins for the incumbent. A strong showing, even if Schwartz loses, can set the stage for another run at the jerk in two years. And there are weeks to go. Tipton could stumble and Schwartz could pick up.
Another Scott
@RaflW:
Welcome to my world. :-(
It’s hard to criticize something that’s free and run by volunteers, but something’s broken and it’s very frustrating to try to work around.
Adam was working a few weeks ago on trying to get innocuous words out of the FYWP Dungeon List. I assume he hasn’t had time to finish. But that seems to be the most likely problem, and it seems like whenever Alain fixes a few things that the FYWPDL starts acting up again.
Maybe we should start a blog for FYWP posts and just link to them when we want to post here. ;-p We could call it “Popped-Balloon-Juice” or something…
Hang in there. Know that several of us feel your pain!
Cheers,
Scott.
StringOnAStick
@Miss Bianca: Thanks. I know I am heading into something awful to witness; at this point all you can do is be there and give as much love as you can.