Mike Coffman

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Mike Coffman (2016)

Michael "Mike" Coffman (born February 27, 1955 in Fort Leonard Wood , Pulaski County , Missouri ) is an American Republican Party politician . The former soldier took from 2009 to 2019 the 6th  congressional district of the state of Colorado in the United States House of Representatives . Previously, he held various offices and mandates at the state level. Since December 2, 2019, Coffman has been the mayor of Aurora .

Family, education and work

Coffman is the son of Harold J. Coffman and his wife Dorothy Manasseh, who met in Shanghai and married there in 1948. His father had served in World War II and the Korean War and received the Purple Heart . He and his family settled as a small business owner, first in Missouri and then in Colorado, where Mike Coffman grew up with two sisters and two brothers. He attended high school in Aurora , Colorado, enlisted in the US Army in 1972, and earned his high school diploma in 1973 while serving. He moved to the US Army Reserve in 1974 and began studying at the University of Colorado at Boulder , from which he graduated in 1979 with a bachelor's degree. During his studies he also completed a semester abroad at Vaishnav College in Chennai in India (1976) and at the Universidad Veracruzana in Mexico (1977). After graduating with a bachelor's degree, Coffman moved from the Army Reserve to the United States Marine Corps in 1979 . In 1983 he was transferred to the Marine Reserves, where he served until 1994. In 1995 he completed a postgraduate degree in regional and local government (Senior Executive Program for State and Local Government) from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University .

In 1983, Coffman started a real estate management firm in Aurora, Colorado, which he ran until 2000. He lives there with his wife, Cynthia.

Political career

He was politically active for the first time as a member of the House of Representatives of Colorado from 1989 to 1994 and shortly after taking office in 1990, he took part in Operation Desert Storm as an infantry soldier . After that he was State Senator until 1998 . From 1999 to 2007, Coffman was State Treasurer of Colorado, with interruptions from 2005 to 2006, when he supported the implementation of the Iraqi National Assembly elections in 2005 . From 2007 to 2008, Coffman was Secretary of State of Colorado.

In the 2008 election to the House of Representatives , Coffman stood in the 6th congressional electoral district of Colorado and won the seat of his no longer-running party friend Tom Tancredo . With 60.7 percent of the vote, he won against the Democrat Hank Eng. He was then confirmed three times, in 2010 in the then second-strongest Republican constituency of Colorado still with 66 percent of the votes, in 2012 after a redistricting of the constituencies with only 48 percent of the votes against Joe Miklosi . Since the constituency has since then included the eastern suburbs of Denver with Aurora and a 20 percent share of Hispanics , the Democrats have structurally more favorable conditions ( Cook Partisan Voting Index : R + 1). In 2014 he won against Andrew Romanoff with 52 percent. Since he was again confirmed in 2016 with 51 to 43 percent against State Senator Morgan Carroll , he is also a member of the 115th Congress , which will last until January 3, 2019 .

In the 2018 election , Coffman was even more at risk than in the previous elections, as the mid-term election was used as a referendum against the Trump administration. The Democrat Hillary Clinton won the 2016 presidential election in this constituency by nine percentage points ahead of Donald Trump . According to polls and observers, the November 2018 election was open to Democrat Jason Crow , a lawyer and former US Army ranger . At the end of September 2018, the Republican election campaign organization in the House of Representatives decided to cancel the election commercials booked for Coffman, which signaled his poor re-election chances. He lost to Crow with 43 to 54 percent of the vote.

After leaving Congress, Coffman announced that he would run for the mayoral election of the city of Aurora, and on November 5, 2019, he prevailed against four other candidates with 35.7 percent of the vote. Coffman took office on December 2, 2019.

Positions and controversies

Coffman is considered a conservative and received 96 of a possible 100 points from the American Conservative Union in 2012 and 5 points from the Americans for Democratic Action . In 2009 he voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act implemented by the new President Barack Obama and in 2010 against Obamacare's health care reform . In 2011 he unsuccessfully proposed a global cut in income for all members of Congress and voted against the abolition of the military directive Don't ask, don't tell . After voicing doubts about Obama's nationality at a fundraising event in 2012 and declaring that Obama was not an American at heart (see Natural Born Citizen ), he apologized to the President.

Coffman moderated his political positions and kept Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a distance in the 2016 election campaign . He criticized Trump for attacking the parents of the fallen Muslim US soldier Humayun Khan . After the video recordings became known , on which Trump said he could do anything with women, Coffman spoke out against Trump as President. He also kept his distance from the White House during Donald Trump's presidency . Coffman also sought the support of ethnic minorities who are well represented in his constituency; Among other things, he learned Spanish for the Latinos living there and worked to attract the community of Ethiopian immigrants in his district.

Web links

Commons : Mike Coffman  - collection of images, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Fred Beisser: Sgt Harold J Coffman. In: Find a Grave , July 19, 2004.
  2. ↑ Michael Coffman's Biography. In: Vote Smart.
  3. ↑ Election 2012: Mike Coffman (R). In: Wall Street Journal .
  4. ↑ See also Inauguration Speech: Colorado Secretary of State, Mike Coffman. In: SOS.state.co.us , January 9, 2007.
  5. ↑ Niels Lesniewski: . GOP Rep Mike Coffman Wins Again in Colorado's 6th District. In: Roll Call , November 8, 2016.
  6. ↑ We polled voters in Colorado's 6th Congressional District. In: The New York Times , September 14, 2018; Alexis Levinson: A Colorado Republican Has Defied Political Gravity For Years. Trump Could Send Him Crashing Down. In: BuzzFeed , September 25, 2018.
  7. ↑ Alex Isenstadt: House GOP super PAC cuts off support for Bishop, Coffman. In: Politico , September 28, 2018.
  8. ↑ General Election 2018: CO District 06. In: Our Campaigns.
  9. ↑ Election 2019: Outcome Of Aurora Mayoral Race Uncertain As Officials Sort Through Signature Discrepancies. In: CBS Denver , November 5, 2019, accessed April 12, 2020.
  10. ↑ Omar Montgomery formally ends his bid for mayor Aurora - almost two weeks after Election Day. In: Sentiel Colorado , November 18, 2019, accessed April 12, 2020.
  11. ↑ Election 2012: Mike Coffman (R). In: Wall Street Journal .
  12. ↑ Alexander Burns, Maggie Haberman, Ashley Parker: Donald Trump's Confrontation With Muslim Soldier's Parents Emerges as Unexpected Flash Point. In: The New York Times , July 30, 2016; Niels Lesniewski: GOP Rep. Mike Coffman Wins Again in Colorado's 6th District. In: Roll Call , November 8, 2016.
  13. ↑ Bente Birkeland: CD6 Has Stubbornly Stood By Coffman. Are Changing Demographics, And Jason Crow, Enough To Beat Him? In: Colorado Public Radio , September 5, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Coffman, Mike
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Coffman, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Republican Party politician
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Fort Leonard Wood , Pulaski County , Missouri