It’s late October 2008 in a small, strip-mall coffee shop near the edge of southeast Aurora.
Carino Coffee, which mirrors the attitude and decor of the nearby upper-middle class tract homes, is alive this morning. In just a few days, USA Today will tell readers that Carino Coffee, and by extension Arapahoe County, is the “new center of the political universe.” That’s a dramatic shift for half of a hypothetical group that sits at the long table next to the window up front in the coffee shop. That half remember longtime Colorado Republicans like Tom Tancredo and Dan Schaefer, who, for more than two decades represented most of the county and Aurora, at the state house and in Congress. Those Republicans boasted unquestionable conservative credentials. Fiscally more than socially, those candidates placed a premium on small government. That focus resonated with most of the electorate during their terms. In fact, the only thing that was liberal about any of those Republicans were their margins of victory — “competitive” elections for Tancredo and others still swung in their favor by more than 10 percent, hardly close.
The other half of our figurative five examples of voters in the new political universe wouldn’t know those politicians because it’s possible they’re not from here. A Brookings Institute report released in 2008 shows a population explosion in Denver suburbs in Arapahoe and Adams counties. Most of the population boom there has come from California, with more coming into Colorado from the Golden State than all other states combined. What’s more, the population influx is predominately Hispanic and college-educated white voters, who are leaning Democratic in their voting habits.
But for now, that transformation hasn’t officially happened — at least not yet. But it’s been well underway for more than two decades. Colorado will be called a leader of the “New West” in the next few days, after President Barack Obama wins the county, state and ultimately the national race.
What happened wasn’t wholly surprising to some. Many outsiders predicted that Colorado would be a crucial swing state in 2008 and, combined, both presidential candidates and their affiliated organizations spent more than $20 million in the state, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Considering the state’s past, Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his supporters spent over $8 million to keep Colorado red. Betting on its future, Obama and his supporters spent more than $12 million to turn it blue. And Aurora became a battleground for both sides. The question is how it got that way.
BLOC PARTY
Of the 45 legislators from Aurora in the history of the Colorado General Assembly, only 20 have been Republican. That may sound like fairly equal representation, but a closer look at recent history reveals a Republican-leaning region for much of Aurora. From 1960 to 1988, Aurora Republicans outnumbered Aurora Democrats 2-to-1 in the state House and Senate, and included names that read like Colorado GOP royalty: Bill Armstrong, Mike Coffman and Bill Owens. Breaking through in the time of Nixon and Reagan appeared hard for even the most fiscally conservative Dem.
And that was fairly indicative of Colorado’s history as a voting bloc. The state, from 1960 to 1988, only voted for a Democratic presidential candidate once — Lyndon Johnson in 1964 — before breaking the GOP streak in 1992 when the state picked Bill Clinton. (That didn’t last long. Voters in 1996 preferred his challenger Bob Dole, and George W. Bush won in 2000 and 2004.)
Owens moved to Aurora’s Mission Viejo neighborhood when it was still new in 1977. The neighborhood rested on the eastern edge of the metro area — traditionally Republican. “Aurora was always a middle-class bedroom community,” he says. “The politics of suburbia is that the outer ring is typically more Republican than the inner ring … The same thing is true around Aurora. Unincorporated (Arapahoe County) around Aurora is probably very Republican (now).”
In 1982, Owens was elected to the state House from Aurora as part of a split city delegation. That year, Adams County had gone solid blue in districts that represented Aurora, and Arapahoe County split with Owens and others like Jack Fenlon. Molly Markert, who was elected to the state House that year as part of the solid blue delegation in northern Aurora, recalled a delegation that was split more along lines of personalities, not partisanship.
“It was a very different time,” she recalls. “I tell people that I was lucky enough to be elected in a very good time. It was Camelot in those days … we always said Denver potholes don’t care about your party.”
State Democrats in those days didn’t struggle to get elected, but perhaps struggled with an identity at the state Capitol. Dick Lamm wasn’t a personable figure. Roy Romer was a pragmatist, not a party man. And although Republicans had controlled the state House and Senate for decades — and would for decades more — Markert remembers a congenial atmosphere in the Legislature between both parties. Party policies weren’t written in stone, she says. If you voted for something against your party, it wasn’t a big deal, and lawmakers routinely hosted parties, defended one another, and played pranks on each other.
“I was known as the woman in the shower with Wayne Allard. It was a surprise birthday party … and Wayne and I were hiding in the shower. That’s how it went,” she says.
But if there were any questions about who was in control, one needed only to look at the then-newly formed Congressional District 6, drawn in 1980 — and the resulting returns from 1982. That year, Republican Jack Swigert drubbed his Democrat challenger Steve Hogan almost 2-to-1. (Hogan switched parties later, was elected to Aurora City Council and eventually became mayor in 2011). Even the special election held after Swigert’s death before he took office wasn’t close. Republican Dan Schaefer beat Hogan again — nearly 2-to-1 that time, too. Natalie Meyer, the Republican who was elected Colorado Secretary of State in 1983, says those returns weren’t an aberration.
“It was always a pretty conservative, definitely Republican county. There were candidates in those days running for office who had no Democrat opponent. As the boom from the people coming in changed some — and maybe even the population in Arapahoe changed some with the current residents, either with the quality of representation or various issues that were popping up — I think Arapahoe is considered a conservative county in my mind … (and) still is,” Meyer says.
Two years earlier, in Colorado’s Congressional District 5, which included parts of Arapahoe County, Republican Ken Kramer beat his challenger for Congress 4-to-1, presidential challenger Ronald Reagan beat then President Jimmy Carter by nearly 50,000 votes out of a total 110,000 cast. Four years later, President Reagan thumped Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in Arapahoe County, 107,556 to 39,891. That same year, Democrats didn’t put up a challenger in CD6, perhaps because the tide for a monumental nationwide Republican wave was already on the horizon. The short of the long: In national races, Arapahoe County and Aurora were predictably red. For that, Markert has two theories.
First, she says, when voters are approached in local races they’re amenable to breaking party philosophy because candidates are offering more direct representation. And they’re also looking to retain seniority in Congress to better “bring home the bacon,” which is why they can stick with Republicans, even in an off year. Second, Denver had Pat Schroeder. “This is just my theory,” Markert says. “But I have a feeling voters here went against everything Pat Schroeder did.”
For some Aurorans, that was certainly true. How much it drove turnout against Democrats is hard to say, but for 14 of Schroeder’s 24-year congressional tenure, Schaefer represented the district next door to hers. And he was followed by Tom Tancredo — who said he thought Miami had become a “third-world country” — in 1998.
Of course there was an exception. Adams County, in the northern half of Aurora, was predictably Democratic in many respects. Beginning in 1988, Adams County voted consistently for a Democratic presidential candidate and consistently sent Democratic lawmakers to the state House. But like any good exception, there’s an exception to that, too. Ted Strickland, the Republican “statesman” from Adams County, represented the county and parts of Aurora for nearly 30 years. His bid for governor in 1986 ended, in part, because of a remark that rubbed conservatives the wrong way. Meyer, who ran Strickland’s gubernatorial bid, remembers an offhand remark about Lowry Air Force Base near Aurora.
“Someone asked him that if Lowry were not profitable, would you consider closing it? He said he would,” Meyer says. That was the beginning of the end. She says as daily polls ran in, Strickland lost support with military families — many of whom lived in Aurora — and older conservative voters. Before the comment, Strickland polled ahead of Romer, Meyer says. He lost by 17 points in the overall election. The fact that the base was closed only five years later — in part, because it was too expensive for the Air Force to maintain — turned out to be coincidental.
Beginning in 1988, population shifts and changes began appearing in parts of Arapahoe County and Denver. In the years leading up to 1988, Arapahoe County had boomed in population. Registered voters in the county had gone from just more than 147,000 in 1980, to 181,523 in 1984, to more than 238,000 in 1988. Fueled by tech jobs in and around Denver and cheap housing, Arapahoe County grew by nearly 100,000 people from 1980 to 1990 according to census data. In that same time, Adams County grew by 20,000 people. Between 1970 and 1990 the City of Aurora estimates it grew nearly three-fold, from more than 74,974 to 222,103 people. If Arapahoe County grew by 100,000 people in the 1980s, Aurora alone can easily claim responsibility for half that. In the 1990s, Colorado was the third-fastest-growing state in the country.
“We had heard that Arapahoe County, in particular, was growing quickly. People from California were moving there for cheap houses,” Meyer says.
Matt Crane, who handles elections for Arapahoe County now and is a Republican, would know.
“We’re those dreaded people that came from California. People always joke about the people from California coming out here. Ironically both of my parents are from New York, so when we left California the idea was that we were going to go back to New York, and my mom’s sister lived here. We stopped by to see them and we ended up never leaving. We’re just the typical story that way.”
The Brookings report pointed to migration from California into Arapahoe County as one of the few factors that began breaking up the traditionally red Colorado voting bloc. From 1988, when Vice President George H. W. Bush beat Democrat Michael Dukakis in the county by 34,000 votes, the national margins began dwindling. The march toward a more purple county and district was undeniable. In 1992, Bush beat Democrat Bill Clinton by just over 6,000 votes. Clinton went on to win in the state, the first Democrat to win Colorado since LBJ. And although Republican challenger Bob Dole beat Clinton in Arapahoe County in 1996 by nearly 14,000 votes, the margin was only 9 percent, much smaller than 12 years prior when Reagan beat Mondale in the county by 269 percent.
“Well, there’s no question that there’s been a trend. Twenty years ago, Arapahoe County was a very red, traditional stronghold—a very Republican stronghold. Over the last 10 years we saw those trends reversed,” says Crane.
If we have five figurative coffee drinkers in 2008, it’s fair to say at least three would have been Republican if they spent any substantial time in Arapahoe County in the 20 years prior.
MAKING HISTORY
“Basically, and I don’t mean this negatively, you see the gentrification of the suburbs,” former Governor Bill Owens says. “ As they get older, they change in demographics and newer suburbs further out are created. This isn’t unique to Denver and Aurora, it’s the case in any city. You’d see it in St. Louis and Los Angeles. What 30 years ago and 40 years ago were newer suburbs are now older, and newer ones are further out.”
In 2004 and even before, Aurora — and Colorado — was undeniably changing politically. Starting in 2000, as Colorado was saddled with the “hate state” label, Democrats began picking up seats in the state Legislature. In 2002, by happenstance or checkbook, the state Senate went to the Democrats by the narrowest margin. Democrat Ed Perlmutter, then a senator from Jefferson County, recognized the opportunity.
“The state was very red between 1998 and 2000. We had one statewide Democrat, and that was Ken Salazar. Otherwise it was Bill Owens and all the other state officers in the House and the Senate. Mike Feeley was minority leader in the House; I was in the Senate. We all worked very hard as a team to do something we didn’t think we could do, which was win the Senate. We, the Democrats, hadn’t held the Senate since John Kennedy had been president. We won it 18-17, which gave Democrats a seat at the table in the congressional redistricting process,” says Perlmutter.
Bolstered by money from the Democratic Senate Campaign Fund of Colorado — funded in part by now-Congressman Jared Polis — Democrats capitalized on a blistering recession and appealed to alienated fiscal conservatives who weren’t swayed by the Focus on the Family Republicans calling for new social measures.
Much like Republicans had done in 1980, Democrats had their eye on drawing the newest congressional seat awarded to Colorado in favorable terms. Congressional District 7, awarded in part because of the Aurora and Arapahoe County population boom, would be partially shaped by Democrats this time around. (Arapahoe County accounted for one-quarter of the state’s population swing in the 1980s alone.)
Bookended by a Republican majority in the House and Owens, a Republican, in the governor’s seat, Democrats knew any “favorable” map for the Seventh would be quickly rejected by either. Instead of passing their own map, state Senate Democrats hoped the courts would rule in favor of better districts for congressional Democrats. One special session, two lawsuits and more than 20 proposed maps came before the state Legislature without both chambers agreeing on anything. In the end, courts drew a map based on a Republican-passed House bill that died in the Senate, placing the Seventh district partially in north Aurora and predominately in Adams County. On paper, it was one of the most competitive districts in the country with nearly a three-way split between unaffiliated, Democrat and Republican voters. Its first election in 2002 reflected that: Republican Bob Beauprez won in one of the closest races in the country, by only 121 votes out of nearly 176,000 cast. In 2004, Beauprez won again by more than 11 percent of the overall votes cast — some 30,000 votes — or, statistically speaking, a “safe” margin.
However, many outsiders noted the migration of Denverites moving into the 7th and that district’s swing toward Democrats. After all, Adams County had traditionally been a safe harbor for many statewide Dems — outside of Strickland — so why would their congressional seat be any different?
“I wish we could take credit for being so prescient. You could see some demographic trends, but clearly we felt that in an evenly split district, Democrats could have a chance … if we had a fair shot at it,” says Perlmutter.
In fact, after watching fellow Democrat Feeley narrowly lose in 2002, and Dave Thomas in 2004, Perlmutter ran for the Seventh himself in 2006 against Republican Rick O’Donnell. Perlmutter didn’t face an incumbent thanks in large part to Beauprez’s decision to take a shot at governor against another Aurora native, Democrat Bill Ritter, that year. It would appear Perlmutter’s run was perfectly timed.
“A lot of times it’s the year,” Owens says. “The year that Ed was elected — ‘06 — was a huge Democratic year. Often all politics is, is running in the right year. Once you’re an incumbent, as Ed is, you put down roots, you extend constituent services and you get yourself safe. But the beauty of what Ed did was he ran the first time in a very good year. And Bob ran in ‘02, that was the year I won the governorship in the largest margin in Colorado history. And so you had that underlying. You had a huge Republican tide in ‘02 — or at least some. And in ‘06, which was the unpopular Bush sixth-year election with Iraq and all that. (Perlmutter won) not in a landslide, I’ll bet it was 52-48. But once you get an incumbent in, you don’t defeat incumbents very often. If you did, you wouldn’t have Diana DeGette there forever.” (Ed won that year with 53 percent of the vote.)
With one Democrat in Congress up in north Aurora, and dropping support for Republicans in the Arapahoe County portion of Aurora, the table was set for a once “Republican stronghold” to waver a little in its predictability.
President George W. Bush’s popularity in the state was shrinking. In 2000, he won the state by 9 percent, but in 2004 only carried the state by 5 percent. That was mirrored in Arapahoe County when Bush won in 2000 by 8 percent over Al Gore and only 4 percent over John Kerry. In Adams County, Bush had lost to Gore and Kerry already anyway. The 2008 report by Brookings showed that in exit polling, Bush was losing heavily with minority voters in Colorado, and support from the white working class — Aurora’s middle-class voting wheelhouse for decades — was dwindling. California imports and college-educated white voters were defecting to the Democratic side in Aurora by 2004, quickly.
“We could go to the state House in 2004, when I became the first Democratic speaker of the House (in decades),” says Andrew Romanoff, a Democrat who represented Denver for eight years in the state House. “It wasn’t so much that the people wanted to shift from red to blue. I don’t know that you could describe that motivation (for) the voters in all the districts that flipped. In other words, voters in all these competitive counties in the state didn’t necessarily get together and hand control of the Legislature over to the Democrats. Voters are electing representatives district by district — they’re not engaged in some grand conspiracy. It wasn’t so much a shift red to blue, I would argue, it was a shift from paralysis to progress. The state was at the time suffering what we used to call ‘the worst fiscal crisis’ since the Great Depression. We now call it the second-worst crisis since the Great Depression, because we’ve had one that’s been worse since then. And the Legislature back then like Congress now was just fiddling, with different dynamics and different places.”
In 2004, only one state Senator — Nancy Spence — and two House representatives — David Balmer and Debbie Stafford — representing Aurora were Republican. Aurora Democrats would outnumber Aurora Republicans 2-to-1 by 2008. And ahead of the 2008 election, national Democrats were already targeting Colorado, and Arapahoe County, as one of the most important battlegrounds for the election between Obama and McCain.
Boosted by gains in the state Legislature, shrinking margins for Republican victories and an unprecedented effort to organize young and minority voters, national Democrats turned their sights to Colorado, hoping to flip the state in 2008. By November that debate at Carino Coffee had been raging for months.
In the USA Today story, area Republicans said they were confused by dropping home prices and Bush’s record. Democrats said they hoped Obama could break a unproductive Washington, D.C. cycle. If there were an exception to the Democratic swing in the state — and especially in Aurora — it would be Mike Coffman.
Only one year before, Congressman Tom Tancredo announced he would step down from the Sixth Congressional District, which opened the seat for the only logical choice in the state. To be sure, Coffman had paid his dues in political administrative positions. Eight years as state treasurer and two years as secretary of state had solidified his position as a statewide Republican name, but perhaps not the way Mike himself wanted.
Jason Bane, who founded ColoradoPols.com, says Coffman made no bones about his political ambitions before 2008.
“His dream was governor, he had made no secret about that and he got pushed out in 2005,” Bane says.
Coffman acknowledges he pondered a gubernatorial run while treasurer in 2005. Coffman says he thought about running for governor, but decided against it later. Beauprez’s announcement that he would run against Ritter for governor — a potential party leap-frogging over Coffman — certainly didn’t help.
“I wonder if being pushed aside in the governor’s race, winning the statewide races and not seeing the benefit career-wise, I wonder if that sort of naturally made him start moving more to the right and thinking, ‘The only way I’m going through the nominee process for higher offices is if I’m the more conservative guy?’” says Bane.
Coffman’s run for Congress wasn’t fazed by the national Democratic swing, he says. The district was solid red, and even in an unprecedented year for Democrats in Colorado, his congressional bid was a near lock.
“‘(2008) was destined to be a bad year for Republicans,” Coffman says. “There was the Iraq war. Bush was fairly unpopular by that time. It was certainly not a good year for Republicans, but that was to be expected.” But he won “because I was in a fairly Republican district.”
He was. Coffman defeated Democrat Hank Eng in the district 57-36, a comfortable margin considering the machine he was up against.
“It was very difficult, this congressional district was a battleground district in a battleground state, and (Obama) put most of his resources in this district with a massive organization that went door to door and had a turnout machine second-to-none. They started over a year out in working the area,” Coffman wrote in an e-mail in response to questions about the story.
Owens says the only outlier in 2008 was Obama, not Coffman. The swing toward Democrats in Arapahoe County was measurable, but not decisive, he says.
“But I think 2008 might have been — given President Obama’s get-out-the-vote effort and the excitement of a first-time African-American president, we’ll see with the Coffman race how stable that electoral vote is again—2008 may have been an outlier. But it’s clear that Aurora is more Democratic than it used to be, and that Arapahoe County is more Democratic than it used to be. It’s also clear that Douglas County is bigger than it used to be and it’s more dominant Republican,” Owens says.
There was one indicator that stood out after 2008. Coffman had only won Arapahoe County 53-46 against a challenger with no name recognition before the race. And according to Meyer, “you cannot educate and introduce yourself at the same time.”
The Sixth Congressional District was almost equally electorally split between Arapahoe and Douglas counties, and while support in Douglas County was strong, it was shifting in Arapahoe County with concerted Democratic effort.
THE RACE AHEAD
The blueprint for the old Sixth Congressional District was simple.
“Water and wildfires,” Coffman says. Those issues comfortably propelled him in 2010 past Democratic challenger John Flerlage both in the county and district. Nationwide, it was a good year for Republicans, too.
“In 2010, the Republican Party in the U.S. just dominated. The brand isn’t broken,” says Bill Owens.
But perhaps like Coffman had seen in 2008, Perlmutter could have trouble holding on in the Seventh District in 2010. Challenged up north by Ryan Frazier, a young Republican and former Aurora City Councilman. Frazier could swing a neutral district the other way with a moderate approach and name ID.
“The Seventh was the closest thing we had to an equal district. If you have a Democratic year, and an incumbent that knows how to stay in office, then it’ll perceptually be a Democratic district. Although if Ed weren’t there, if it were a good Republican year, and we had a good year … that could change,” Owens says.
Perlmutter handily beat Frazier by more than 24,000 votes, 52-40 overall. It was clear that Perlmutter was holding on to a Jefferson County seat he had, in part, created with help from a growing Democratic base in north Aurora. (Perlmutter beat Frazier in both Adams and Arapahoe county portions of Aurora by nearly 13,000 votes). Although Owens says the seat could be won, in 2010 it would have taken an extraordinary effort — especially considering the gains Republicans were making nationwide.
Down south, the Sixth wasn’t only safe perceptually, it was also safe electorally. It had been for the entire 30 years of its existence in Colorado. Only a court could change that.
“Today’s Sixth is a product of gerrymander, just as the old Sixth was. Today’s Sixth was designed to create another Democratic district. And the Democrats completely controlled that process. I’m not being political, I’m being factual. They created this new sixth. They wanted to solidify DeGette in Denver, Perlmutter over in JeffCo and they wanted to try to pick up one more seat and that’s what the Sixth is for,” Owens says.
On paper, it would appear that could be within reach. After all, voter registrations in the Sixth are fairly evenly split: 34 percent unaffiliated, 33 percent Republican and 32 percent Democrat. But one of the few places challenger Andrew Romanoff and Congressman Mike Coffman agree on is that those numbers don’t tell the whole story.
“The demographics and politics are changing,” says Romanoff. “A court stepped in and drew a very different map. Those two factors combined to produce a hyper-competitive map. In my view, it’s good news for voters.”
It also could be good news for Romanoff. The deeper numbers on the new Sixth show a tilting district, not unlike the Seventh when it was first created. In 2010, Arapahoe and Douglas counties cast nearly the same number of ballots in the Sixth—more than 182,000 for Arapahoe and nearly 160,000 for Douglas. In 2012, the first year for the new Sixth, that number from the traditionally red Douglas County plummeted to nearly 57,000, opposed to more than 258,000 for Arapahoe. Today, Arapahoe County is 73 percent of the overall CD-6 vote, of that, Aurora comprises more than half.
Aurora, which is 38 percent registered Democrat, 25 percent Republican and 34 percent unaffiliated, comprises nearly 37 percent of the 6th, more than any other city, and the largest share of that district since its creation.
Coffman says in nearly the same breath that the city he’s represented since 1988 has changed, but also hasn’t.
“What I’ve noticed over the years are growing differences between the northern and southern parts of Aurora. This has led to a growing economic divide that has translated into two very different sets of issues between the north and the south,” Coffman wrote in his e-mail. “While the northern part expects a greater role for government in their lives, and supports higher taxes on higher income earners to pay for it, the southern part still wants a lower tax burden and a smaller government.”
He said later, “Certainly north Aurora is different. But I don’t think south Aurora was all that different back (in 1988). Or any different than it is today — I still live there.”
Romanoff has his own take: “I think what you’re seeing unfold in Arapahoe County in a lot of ways is a crucible of the broader changes. … Obviously the Sixth district is a profoundly purple place. And to be blunt, if every district were as diverse as this one and as politically competitive, Congress would not be the disaster it is now.”
Romanoff knows he has the support of a national party that he didn’t have for his failed Senate bid in 2010 against Michael Bennet. He also has the support that Joe Miklosi didn’t receive until the waning days of the race, when national Democrats saw the seat as potentially vulnerable.
“I ran despite the opposition of the governor of Colorado, the entire congressional delegation of Colorado, the president of the United States, the Democratic party and all the powers that be in D.C.” Romanoff says. “It was an entirely liberating experience, It liberated me of my house, for one thing. It also liberated me of any notion that you should do what your party wants because your party wants you to.”
That advice could be useful for Coffman, whose slide toward the right has potentially cost him voters at home. In the days leading up to the government shutdown, Coffman stoked the fight over Obamacare and its cost.
“He wasn’t only in the car driving over the cliff for Republicans, he was in the front seat,” says Bane.
Then weeks after the shutdown began, Coffman switched and penned editorials that ran in metro newspapers calling to end the shutdown, blaming “extremist” parties on the left and right. Coffman then said funding the government could be tied to the vote to raise the debt ceiling, something Republicans largely ignored. Despite that, Coffman says he’s focused on representing the new Sixth and its constituents, however different they may be.
“I’m working on behalf of my constituents and that’s what I’m focused on,” Coffman says. “I’m excited about the new district. I spent two hours yesterday on my Spanish tutorial. It’s a mosaic on many different groups.”
And Owens, who hasn’t run for office in Colorado for more than a decade now, looks forward to the looming competition.
“2014 will be very important. And quite frankly Colorado’s Sixth Congressional district will be very important. It’s one of the biggest toss-up districts in the country. I think Republicans will win that race because President Obama’s turnout machine is not as effective absent him. And when he was on the ballot in ‘08 and ‘12, you were able to get that turnout up, but I don’t think they’ll be able to do it in his 6th.”
Bane sees it from a different perspective.
“(Coffman) is a top target. It’s a top-10 race around the country. There’s going to be plenty of money for Romanoff … Coffman’s raising money, too. That’s going to be a wash at the end of the day. Romanoff’s name ID is equal to that or better than Coffman’s. The separating force is that Coffman has presented himself as a Tea Party Republican, at a time when people are openly expressing negativity toward those candidates. There is so much that Romanoff and third-party groups are going to hit Coffman with … what are they going to hit Romanoff with? Denver liberal?”
Sitting in Carino Coffee, Romanoff ponders the idea that he can’t connect with voters in the district he’s running in.
Intentionally, I’ve riddled him with questions that are meant to unsettle the man who was campaigning in the shop from the very moment he walked in: “You’re the party man,” I challenge him. “Your party hates you,” “Your record on immigration at the state House will haunt you.” (Romanoff led a special session in 2006, convened by the governor to address immigration in the state. The laws passed by the legislature were restrictive by the standards of that day, a solution Romanoff admitted was “imperfect.”)
But there’s one that confounds the candidate more than others: “You’re too smart. Your intelligence is intimidating and makes you somewhat unapproachable.”
“I’ve never heard that,” Romanoff says. “Honestly, I never have.”
Immediately, Robert Kennedy comes to mind and he shrugs off the comment in the same way Kennedy responded to the question, “Do you think you’re too young to run for elected office?”
“I’m working on that every day,” Romanoff says.
But he comes back to it later in the conversation and doesn’t hesitate to ask again, “Unapproachable?”
“Yes. I’ve heard that from a few people,” I say.
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“They said so.”
“I still don’t get it.”
It’s unfair criticism, Romanoff says, because he’s been working the district since February 2012 when he announced his candidacy. The war chest he’s amassed is nearly equal to his opponent’s and his campaign secretary is quick to point out when we first meet that the good news from the campaign right now is that they edged out Coffman in a quarterly filing report.
Even minutes before he can’t believe someone would think he’s too smart for elected office, Romanoff was shaking hands with coffee regulars, whom he described as one being “moderate Republican” and the other “left of liberal.” For Carino Coffee and its short but storied political history, it’s not surprising those two customers would be drinking coffee together on a fall day. The shop and its owner, Alina Laikola, encourage that kind of patronage and discussion.
But what is surprising is that a moderate Republican and a left-of-liberal voter would be in this far-off, upper-middle class suburban coffee shop and ever meet a Democrat who had a shot at winning a congressional seat one year before the actual election.