Noting strong leads in Arapahoe and Adams counties at press time, The Denver Post projected the re-election of Republican Rep. Mike Coffman in Colorado’s 6th Congressional District.
Based on the performance of Democrat Rep. Joe Miklosi throughout the evening, the gap appeared insurmountable, and The Associated Press also called the race for Coffman late Tuesday night.
“It feels great. It was a hard-fought race right up until the end,” Coffman said. “I think I always had a feeling that things were going well, but you just don’t know until you see the numbers.”
Miklosi had not conceded at press time but instead chose to focus on the long lines and the thousands of uncounted ballots in Arapahoe County.
“There are tens of thousands of votes waiting to come in, so we are watching those closely,” said Ryan Hobart, campaign spokesman, on behalf of Miklosi. “There were people waiting in lines at Aurora late into the night.”
The votes counted represent nearly 60 percent of all active registered voters, placing Coffman’s lead at 50 percent to 45 percent.
The race was hotly contested and widely monitored at the national level. And it included a number of vitriolic advertisements.
Once a Republican stronghold, the Aurora-based district — which spans Arapahoe and Adams County, and a small portion of Douglas County — became one of the most competitive in Colorado and the nation.
“Once these district lines were drawn, everyone knew this was an at-the-margin kind of seat,” said Eric Sondermann, an independent political analyst. “It was no longer the cakewalk seat that Mike Coffman and his predecessors had so long enjoyed.”
Washington spent a lot of money in trying to take this seat.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the National Republican Campaign Committee each contributed about $2 million to their respective candidates’ campaigns.
The Republicans, who held a 240-190 advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives entering Tuesday’s election, saw a weakness forming in a district that they didn’t want to lose. Meanwhile, the Democrats, needing a net gain of 25 seats to take control of the House, pounced on the race once it was targeted by the national party.
“Once (the Democrats) determined they had a decent candidate, they put in a huge amount of money,” said Floyd Ciruli, a political analyst. “It would have never been competitive otherwise.”
Coffman, previously considered to be outside of straight-line party politics, gave Democrats a few potent opportunities to portray him as an “extreme” Tea Party Republican.
The two-term incumbent’s comments about President Barack Obama being “un-American” fell unfavorably with the district’s voters, and his past support of a personhood amendment has been used against him by the Democrats in an appeal to the district’s undecided women.
“I think early on Coffman aided and abetted the closeness of the race by shooting himself in the foot a couple of times,” Sondermann said.
However, Coffman and the Republicans held off Miklosi with a few tactics of their own. They assailed Miklosi as a tax-raising liberal who moved to the district from Denver purely for political gain. Additionally, they cited several pieces of legislation that Miklosi has supported in the state legislature that would have raised fees in Colorado.
Coffman, after giving his acceptance speech, said he is wasting no more time. He jumps straight off the campaign trail and back into his life as a politician Wednesday morning.
“I actually have an early- morning meeting with the Colorado Forum to discuss the upcoming lame-duck Congress and how to avoid the fiscal cliff,” said Coffman.
When asked if he felt confident that Congress could find a solution to the impending budget cuts known as sequestration, Coffman referenced a similar lame-duck session in 2010.
“I feel pretty good. I think that was the one time Washington worked the way it was really supposed to work,” Coffman said. “No one was finger-pointing, no one was taking cheap shots, and while there were parts of it that I didn’t like, I felt the bulk of it was good for the country.”
Miklosi and his supporters gathered Tuesday night at the Red Lion Inn in Aurora watching returns come in; Coffman gathered with Republicans at Sports Authority Field at Mile High.
Kristen Leigh Painter: 303-954-1638, kpainter@denverpost.com or twitter.com/kristenpainter
