SALUTE: Congressional candidates muster their military creds in a tough election year

AURORA | While making his rounds at the Arapahoe County fair last week, Aurora Congressman Mike Coffman took to the Army recruiting booth pull-up bar. A constituent sent in a photo to the campaign with the note, “My congressman can still do 20 pull-ups. Can yours?”

In any other Colorado congressional district, that question may seem irrelevant and even silly. But in the 6th, military service has been a campaign staple so far. Whether that will be a voting issue, however, is a big question. And experts aren’t convinced military service will sway the political winds one way or another.

Coffman served in the Army and later the Marine Corps before taking on several state political offices. He often uses “Marine Corps tough” to describe how agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, should be managed.

His challenger, Jason Crow, is a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is the first time since Coffman was elected to this redrawn congressional district that he’s faced a challenger with military creds like his own. During the past 10 years, Democrats have run big-name candidates against Coffman in a district that was winnable, but to no avail.

Upon winning the Democratic nomination earlier this summer, Crow, who said his campaign was “battle tested,” told supporters he’d learned a lot of lessons in the military that guided him in the primary race, “including the rule that you are only as good as the team around you.”

Coffman often touts his military experience and support. He most recently suggested that somebody from the military — preferably the Marine Corps — should oversee reuniting families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

That subliminal word battle of military experience is no coincidence.

Jeremy Teigen, a political science professor at Ramapo College, said Democrats with military experience are running across the country. Tiegen, who is releasing a book on presidential candidates and military service this fall, said voters tend to think veterans running for office have a better ability to deal with issues related to homeland security and foreign affairs.

He says that having done the research.

Teigen said he ran an experiment that took a real congressional campaign ad and edited it so some of the subjects saw a candidate with his military service, but the others did not see the military service. The result, he said, was that voters who saw the ad that included military service believed the candidate had a better grasp on matters they’d expect Congress to deal with.

That thought process isn’t exclusive to voters. Both Coffman and Crow say their service has shaped their lives beyond the military, most notably on the campaign trail, and for Coffman, in office.

“The military experience I’ve had does make a lot of issues we talk about personal to me,” Crow told the Sentinel. “When we talk about immigration, I served with people who, when they were wearing the uniform, they weren’t citizens. Some of those people gave the ultimate sacrifice.”

A lot of those people came from diverse political backgrounds, too. But out on the battlefield, it didn’t matter who was a Republican or Democrat or who fell somewhere in the middle. They were all in it together, Crow said.

That’s how a lot of veterans are in Congress, Coffman said. He’s a member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee and House Armed Services Committee, which he said is among the most bipartisan on Capitol Hill.

“Veterans, whether Republican or Democrat, stand up for veterans in that committee, I certainly have reflected that,” Coffman, who has attempted to edge to the center on a bevy of issues, said. “The mission comes first and comes before political party. I think that many veterans share that.”

Despite how often buzzwords bubble up in campaign speeches, meetings with voters and in campaign ads, Teigen said it’s difficult to predict whether it’ll make a difference when it comes to the ballot box. Aurora, the bulk of CD6, is home to the Buckley Air Force Base, a new massive VA medical center and several people who work for companies that contract with the federal government.

Having that military background certainly helps addressing those topics, Coffman said. But in the case of Buckley Air Force Base, the largest employer in the district, Coffman said he knew little about it when he first started. After all, he’s a Marines guy.

He said he learned a lot about the issues facing Buckley — namely getting a larger buffer zone to accommodate the F35s — through working with the Aurora Chamber of Commerce. It was his military service that helped him get on the armed forces committee and have some pull there, though.

Crow said he thinks having a veteran representing that community of people who work for and with the military is crucial.

“We need to have some people in office who know how (the military) works and it’s doing what it needs to do,” Crow said.

That understanding and knowledge is probably partly how Crow won the Democratic primary, Teigen said.

“Military service doesn’t give a candidate some kind of blanket 5 percent advantage in an election. If it did we’d have more than 35 veterans in the House,” he said. “Military service does confer advantages, but mostly in the pre-primary process. It’s clear to me that service does help some people in some races, but there’s no overall advantage at the national average.”

The other major variable is that CD6 is so incredibly purple now, compared to what it was like in 2006 when Democrats were running a slew of veteran Democrats — more than 50 — in House seats across the country. That was a losing battle, Teigen said, because these Democrats were swimming up really red streams.

“Now they’re looking for candidates with no skeletons in the closets, are charismatic, great speakers,” Teigen said. “Democrats are just pulling out the stops so that their candidates don’t look like Nancy Pelosi clones. Veterans are part of that.”

But that military service might just be a small piece of what it takes to win the 6th.

“There’s going to be a lot of money, a lot attention,” Teigen said. “This is a very nationalized election, not all races are nationalized. We know presidents tend to lose seats in their first midterms. Democrats are trying extremely hard to take control. Military service tend to be one of their key focus.”