When Aurora state Rep. Jovan Melton took to a small room at a local fire station to introduce and endorse Democratic candidate Jason Crow for Congress last week, he echoed what has been a popular talking point for nearly the entirety of the campaign: Congressman Mike Coffman votes with Donald Trump 95 percent of the time.
“You know, I have been here in the district for a number of years and I’ve been frustrated with what I’ve seen out of Congress and our current representative,” Melton said, referencing Coffman. “He comes down here and he tells us what we want to hear, but yet he votes with Donald Trump and Paul Ryan 95 percent of the time.”
Coffman paints himself as a political and partisan moderate in a district that’s politically moderate, too. Democrats say only the former is true.
Beyond the statistic, Melton’s statement is less straightforward, and mirrors what Coffman and other Republicans do in tying opponents to top Democrats, such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver, said the statistic tends to get muddled, especially as the president typically backs policies and legislation that is already popular among the GOP. Mostly, the statistic is being traced back to the “Trump Score” from FiveThirtyEight, a news organization that specializes in statistical analysis of politics, sports and culture.
The score works like this: to calculate, add a member’s “yes” votes on bills the Trump administration supports and the “no” votes the Trump administration has come out against. Divide that by the total number of bills the Trump administration has a clear position on.
FiveThirtyEight admits in explaining the scoring it can be tricky to track, as legislation changes and opinions mutate alongside those changes. So the score rules stick to only counting clear positions by the administration.
Masket said repeating the statistic — which does put Coffman at 95.5 percent aligned with the Trump administration — likely won’t have much of an impact on the election. Voters tend to care more about key votes, like healthcare in 2010. After the Obamacare vote, Masket and Steven Greene, of North Carolina State University, studied the impact of that one vote. They found it cost 13 Democrats their seat in the following election.
The GOP tax plan, which Coffman supported, could certainly rise to that kind of importance if Democrats keep pushing it, Masket said.
Among those touting the statistic the loudest is Crow himself, an attorney and former Army Ranger with backing from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is also quick to point out Coffman’s Trump score.
“Whether he’s toeing the party line to give tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy, raising healthcare costs or caving to Party leaders on immigration, Mike Coffman is a bought-and-sold politician who looks out for himself,” DCCC spokeswoman Rachel Irwin said in a statement.
Crow first took to Twitter in July to point out Coffman’s voting record, after the congressman condemned Trump for a tweet that showed an old WWE video of the president body-slamming a man with a CNN logo doctored over his face.
“@RepMikeCoffman before you feign shock and shallowly condemn this behavior, you should instead act by not voting with him 95% of the time,” Crow wrote.
Since then, the statistic has become a staple in Crow’s speeches, statements and in-person meetings.
“In 2016, Mike Coffman looked into a camera and told us here in Colorado that he would stand up to Donald Trump in Washington,” Crow said in a statement to the Sentinel. “A year and a half later, he has voted 95.5 percent of the time with Trump, the highest in the Colorado delegation.”
FiveThirtyEight puts Western Slope Congressman Scott Tipton at 95.5 percent, too. GOP Rep. Ken Buck aligns with the Trump administration 86.6 percent of the time. And CD5 Congressman Doug Lamborn lands at 92.5 percent.
Masket said those scores aren’t surprising, and that during the Obama era it’d be likely that most Democrats would have a similar record of voting with the Obama administration. FiveThirtyEight didn’t keep an “Obama Score.”
But Coffman’s campaign holds that the congressman is his own man, one of Washington’s most freethinking lawmakers.
“Mike Coffman has one of the most independent records in American politics — he fights first and foremost for his constituents and our nation’s veterans every day,” said Tyler Sandberg, Coffman’s campaign spokesman. “The voters in this district have long split their votes to support Mike because they know and appreciate he has always put country before party. From immigration to VA reform, consumer privacy to condemning President Trump’s too often reckless rhetoric, Mike has never shied away from speaking up and speaking out.”
In a campaign ad from the last election cycle, Coffman said he didn’t personally care for Trump and that if he’s “president, I’ll stand up to him. That simple.”
But Coffman’s opponents say that talk is cheap and the congressman’s loyalty to the party’s leader is evident in votes, such as health care — Coffman voted down the first version of the GOP’s health care plan — and in the tax reform legislation, which Coffman champions as a good deal for his constituents.
Prior to Coffman’s most recent town hall a reporter asked the congressman what he would tell a voter who is discouraged and doesn’t believe Republicans are making any progress, but tends to agree with Coffman on a variety of issues.
Coffman pointed to just one policy he believes has been a win for the GOP: the tax plan.