Republican Mike Coffman and Democrat Andrew Romanoff. (The Denver Post)
Several new TV ads have hit the air in the last week in the hotly contested 6th Congressional District race between U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, a Republican, and Democratic challenger Andrew Romanoff.
I’ll take a brief look at three: a Romanoff ad that accuses Coffman of having a disregard for paycheck fairness issues, a Coffman ad attacking Romanoff for his campaign conduct and being a spendy liberal, and an outside group’s ad praising Coffman for being one of a handful of Republicans supporting a gay-friendly non-discrimination bill.
Romanoff’s attack on Coffman
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The gist of this ad is that Coffman didn’t support key bills to help establish paycheck fairness for women, including the Paycheck Fairness Act (which never became law) and (which did). At the same time, the ad says, Coffman has voted for “first-class flights and taxpayer-funded pensions” for members of Congress. Those claims are specious at best — an old game in which a campaign digs up votes that aren’t on bills but on floor amendments, usually offered by members of the opposing party. In one case, Coffman actually has sponsored a bipartisan bill with Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat, . That’s the opposite of what the ad claims. The ad, which started running last week, was partially funded by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee after on independent ad buys for the last two weeks of the campaign.
Coffman’s campaign didn’t dispute that he voted against the paycheck fairness bills but pointed out that on his congressional office staff, , on average, than men (several are high-ranking).
Coffman’s attack on Romanoff
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It’s become an old chestnut for Coffman’s campaign to against U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet. This ad kicks off with the Bennet campaign’s criticism of Romanoff’s campaign that year, flashing the words “dishonest” and “sleazy” on the screen to give viewers a flavor. (Of late, Bennet has embraced Romanoff on the campaign trail, including at an event for Democrats last week.) The Coffman ad then goes in an interesting direction by pivoting to say “ads for Romanoff” are “entirely deceptive,” citing a local CBS affiliate’s appraisal of one recent ad. (See .) The reference flies by in Coffman’s new ad, but it stretches to connect Romanoff’s past campaign conduct with a deceptive ad run by someone other than his campaign, in this case the DCCC.
The ad suggests Romanoff (and his allies) engage in sleaze to hide his “extreme agenda.” Here, it cites Romanoff’s support for the Affordable Care Act and says he supports slashing Medicare to pay for it. That’s based on a common GOP reading of the health care reform law’s impact on Medicare. But the nonpartisan PolitiFact fact-checking website at best, since the program will grow overall in coming years despite attempted spending reductions in the privatized Medicare Advantage part of the program. The other part of Romanoff’s agenda, according to the ad, is higher taxes, based on his votes to raise taxes and fees “over 50 times” while he served four terms in the Colorado House. Counting up votes on bills, amendments and other measures that have varying impact also is a big campaign parlour game (kind of like the one Romanoff’s campaign ad plays), so it’s hard to discern how many of the Romanoff votes in that grouping were meaningful.
Romanoff’s campaign pushed back to note that in Colorado, tax increases generally require voters’ support. And while in the legislature, including as speaker for four years, Romanoff voted for a host of tax cuts, according to an unverified list the campaign provided. Sorting through the competing claims is murky at best because they’re probably both true, to some extent.
American Unity PAC’s ad supporting Coffman
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The final recent ad comes from American Unity PAC, an interest group that sprang to prominence as a GOP ally to groups fighting to expand same-sex marriage rights. In this case, Coffman doesn’t support gay marriage, but he . Among his actions is signing on this year as a rare Republican co-sponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. That bill is pending in Congress; Republican House leaders haven’t allowed it to proceed yet. The TV ad praises Coffman for reflecting Colorado’s values of “common sense and compromise” by supporting the ENDA bill and a few other bipartisan efforts, including the Violence Against Women Act and a bill to crack down on sexual assault in the military.
The group is spending $300,000 on the TV ad and five mailers that echo similar themes. They generally get the facts right, while loudly playing up Coffman’s bucking of his party. “Mike is a thoughtful and open-minded leader who works hard to represent all Coloradans, regardless of who they are,” said Jeff Cook-McCormac, a senior advisor to the American Unity PAC. It’s the kind of appeal that aims to blunt the intense criticism that Romanoff and Democratic groups have aimed at Coffman.
