Republican volunteers and staffers fill a phone-banking room in the GOP’s Aurora field office to support candidates including U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, shown in upper right corner making calls, on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014. (Jon Murray, The Post)
Mike Coffman is about as confident ahead of Tuesday’s election as a congressman can be when he represents one the nation’s most competitive U.S. House districts. For that, the three-term Republican incumbent — — can thank volunteers such as Alex Mowery.
The 16-year-old high school junior has driven from Broomfield to the Colorado Republicans’ Aurora field office once a week to light a fire on the telephone keypad.
During one 10-hour shift a couple weeks ago, Mowery said, he blazed through 1,693 phone calls. It’s the field office’s record.
The vast majority of those calls go unanswered, but the dialers leave voice mails and keep plugging along until they get the rare live undecided voter. In the final days of the campaign, “it tends to be a positive reaction,” Mowery says. “Most people just want to tell you if they voted or not,” and few are still undecided.
The phone-banking operation was humming Saturday afternoon on the seventh floor of an Aurora office building, with the focus shifting to nudging Republicans who hadn’t yet returned their ballots. Colorado GOP Chairman Ryan Call and Coffman himself were dialing calls, as Coffman has done most days during the campaign.
U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman (AP file)
Mowery can’t vote yet, but he said the quality of this year’s top Republican candidates is enough to motivate him. They include Coffman and U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, the party’s U.S. Senate candidate, who also was in the Aurora office Saturday afternoon.
“I feel like the people on the Republican ticket are really good guys,” Mowery said, and he’s mindful of what’s at stake. “Government is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, engine to drive positive change.”
The Colorado Republicans the Democrats’ much-vaunted turnout ground game this year, but they’ve declined to reveal details. On Saturday, that was the reason given when campaign officials told Denver Post reporters and a photographer they wouldn’t allow the media to follow volunteers’ canvassing activity. They limited access to interviews with volunteers in Aurora to those stopping through the field office.
Coffman spent time calling voters his campaign has marked as undecided to check if they had questions for him. One list was for Spanish-speaking voters, giving him another chance to practice his improving Spanish skills. (He .)
Most times, that meant leaving a message. The few who do answer are frustrated from being bombarded by calls from both sides. But “there are people who do have questions,” Coffman said. “They’ve gotten their information from a 30-second ad,” often attacking since redistricting made the formerly conservative district more moderate three years ago. “So I have an opportunity to say, ‘That’s not me.’ “
As we spoke, bell “dings” sounded every few minutes, signaling that a voter had told a caller of a vote, or intention to vote, for Coffman.
Coffman and campaign manager Tyler Sandberg say they’re encouraged the suburban 6th Congressional District’s turnout figures are outpacing the rest of the state, and have a large Republican margin. (See .)
No public polls have been done on the 6th District, and Romanoff’s campaign . Coffman and Sandberg acknowledged that the default mail-in balloting this year and other factors leave plenty of mystery about Tuesday’s results. “I think we’re building a wall,” Coffman said.
Earlier Saturday, .
