A mailing attacking 6th Congressional District candidate Mike Coffman went haywire Thursday when the registered agent for the group taking credit claimed it was done without knowledge of the group’s contributors and most of its officers.
Instead, John Berry, the registered agent and secretary-treasurer for Protect Colorado Jobs, said the group’s chairman, political consultant Curt Cerveny, mailed the attack on his own.
“Curt had failed to run this by myself and the contributors to Protect Colorado Jobs,” Berry said. “It was really a surprise to us, and it was outside what Protect Colorado Jobs was set up to do.”
Cerveny couldn’t be reached for comment. Berry said Cerveny has resigned, and Berry apologized to the Coffman campaign.
The attack also brought a rare response on the race from retiring U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, whom Coffman and the three other men running in the Republican primary are vying to replace. Tancredo has been reluctant to weigh in and has not endorsed a candidate.
“If any candidate is found to be responsible for mailings or ‘push polls’ that try to hide the source of the activity I hope the voters of the 6th District will reject not only the message but the messenger,” Tancredo said in a statement put out by Coffman’s campaign.
Protect Colorado Jobs was formed last year as a nonprofit group and was one of the major financial backers of the campaign that gathered signatures for what became Amendment 47, the right-to-work ballot initiative. It has contributed nearly $289,000 to the effort but nothing since April, according to secretary of state records.
As a nonprofit, Protect Colorado Jobs does not have to disclose its backers.
The race for the Republican nomination in the conservative district has become increasingly contentious and personal in its closing weeks.
The mailing — which attacks Coffman, currently the secretary of state, as a “big government professional politician” — hit mailboxes in the district this week.
The three other candidates in the race — Wil Armstrong and state Sens. Ted Harvey and Steve Ward — said they were not involved in the mailing.
But Dustin Zvonek, Coffman’s campaign manager, said he and Berry are investigating whether the mailing was coordinated with another candidate’s campaign, which would be illegal.
Meanwhile, federal financial reports filed late Thursday showed Armstrong loaned his campaign $500,000 in July, bringing the total the businessman has loaned his election effort to more than $526,000.
Filings also show that Coffman loaned his campaign $100,000 in July, though that figure was not included in his fundraising total for the first three weeks of the month.
John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com
