Crow unseats Coffman in 6th Congressional District
Jason Crow has done what no other Democrat has done before: The combat veteran and first-time candidate defeated Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora.
Coffman has been called “bullet proof” and the “Harry Houdini of Colorado elections” for his ability to split ballots and hang on to Colorado’s 6th Congressional District as it grew bluer and more diverse. But national politics and President Donald Trump proved insurmountable Tuesday night, and he conceded about an hour after polls closed.
“I knew that my only hope of winning was to localize the race to a referendum on my leadership, and that if the race was nationalized as a referendum on the president, then I simply could not win this race,” Coffman said after calling Crow to concede. “In the end, the waves were too big for this ship of ours to stay afloat.”
Colorado’s 6th Congressional District, which arcs through Denver’s eastern and southern suburbs, was the kind of seat both House Republicans and Democrats needed to win Tuesday night. It’s one of two dozen suburban districts across the country where voters chose a Republican representative and Hillary Clinton for president in 2016.
Enough of those districts broke for Democrats Tuesday night, which means Crow is headed to a Democrat House of Representatives.
He had 53 percent of the vote to Coffman’s 44 percent as of almost 11 p.m.
“We set out with a goal to bring new leadership to the country and move us forward again. It was a bold idea for someone who had never run for office before,” Crow said to an overflowing room of cheering supporters gathered at a Greenwood Village hotel. “Today, we achieved it.”
Crow, an Army Ranger veteran and first-time candidate, tied Coffman to President Donald Trump at every turn by saying he voted with the president 96 percent of the time. It’s a number that resonated with voters in the 6th District, where Trump’s approval rating has hovered just below 40 percent.
Crow will be the first Democrat to represent Colorado’s 6th District, and he owes that win in part to women in the red parts of the district who worked tirelessly to turn out Democrats and unaffiliated voters in Arapahoe and Douglas counties.
Coffman tried to distance himself from Trump throughout the campaign, describing himself as an independent congressman who has stood up to presidents from both parties. Coffman called for the firing of an adviser who was reported to be behind the “zero-tolerance” immigration policy that separated families at the border, and he publicly disagreed with Trump’s opinion that an executive order could end birthright citizenship.
But Trump’s words, thoughts and tweets found their way to voters in the 6th District.
“Donald Trump did what Democrats could not accomplish, which is the defeat of Mike Coffman,” GOP Strategist Dick Wadhams said. “Coffman lost because there was such an antiTrump sentiment running through the district that no Republican could survive it.”
Coffman spent most of his adult life in elected office in Colorado, serving in the statehouse, treasurer’s office and secretary of state before running for Congress.
This was his first defeat in nearly 30 years in Colorado politics.
“Serving this country has been the greatest honor of my life,” Coffman said.
The 6th District was one of the most expensive races in the country this year, with the majority of that money coming from outside spending groups that supported Crow.
Two prominent Republican groups, the Congressional Leadership Fund and the National Republican Congressional Committee, pulled their money out of the race in the final weeks.
“Tonight, we started a new chapter in the story of our democracy. There is a new generation of servant leaders on its way to Washington,” Crow said. “We have taken these oaths before, and we are ready to bring the values they uphold to Congress.”