U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman won’t challenge Democrat Michael Bennet in Colorado’s Senate race next year, setting in motion a wild scramble to find a Republican challenger for 2016.
A number of Democrats had assumed Coffman would be the nominee, as evidenced by the heightened number of attacks on him in recent months.
Republicans had been courting him. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky took the congressman to breakfast in May to talk about taking on Bennet.
“It certainly was an option I was looking at,” Coffman, an Aurora Republican, told The Denver Post on Monday. “But the fact is, I’m really able to get things done where I am right now. I’ve emerged as a national leader on veterans’ issues.”
Colorado Democrats scoffed at that, saying Coffman knew he couldn’t beat Bennet.
Coffman shot to national prominence on several fronts. His congressional re-election bid last year was expected to be one of the toughest in the country, but he won by 9 percentage points. And the chairman of the Republican National Committee singled out Coffman for his efforts among Latinos.
Coffman was the first member of Congress to call on then-U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign after a waiting-list scandal, which thrust him into the national furor over mismanagement at the agency. And Coffman has taken the lead on problems with the VA hospital under construction in Aurora.
Andrew Zucker, the spokesman for the Colorado Democratic Party, said Monday that with Coffman out of the race, Republicans in Washington were “in a full-blown panic,” trying to find someone to take on Bennet.
“This ensures what will soon be a crowded GOP primary,” Zucker said.
But Steve House, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, said the GOP is “fortunate to have a lot of options.”
El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn announced in January he was running for the GOP nominate for the Senate, but most politicos consider him a longshot.
Among the Republicans considered as possible contenders: U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton of Cortez, Senate President Bill Cadman of Colorado Springs, Senate President pro tem Ellen Roberts of Durango, Sen. Owen Hill of Colorado Springs, Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler and Coffman’s wife, Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, the top GOP vote getter in 2014.
“Bennet is beatable,” Rep. Coffman said, noting he saw poll numbers during his breakfast with McConnell.
And a recent poll by Quinnipiac University showed Coffman narrowly beating Bennet by 3 points in a head-to-head matchup. (The pollster drew criticism in 2014 for skewing in favor of Republicans in some Colorado surveys.)
Coffman, a former state lawmaker, has won two statewide elections: treasurer in 1998 and secretary of state in 2006. He served in both Iraq wars in a state where the military has a major presence.
In 2008, Coffman beat three other Republicans in the primary to replace retiring Congressman Tom Tancredo in Congressional District 6, which was heavily conservative. But the district was redrawn after the 2010 census, and Coffman found himself representing a district that was equally divided among Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters.
After a little-known state legislator almost defeated Coffman in 2012, he moderated some of his conservative views on immigration reform and personhood measures, took Spanish lessons and met with other minorities in the district.
When Coffman ran for re-election in 2014, opponents made an issue of the fact that his wife still owned and lived in her Denver home. She has said she didn’t want to be living alone in their big house in Aurora when he was in Washington. The congressman said he wasn’t worried that their living arrangements would be an issue.
