{"id":40457,"date":"2022-05-23T11:38:30","date_gmt":"2022-05-23T17:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wheres-don-coram-lauren-boeberts-gop-challenger-says-his-late-start-is-all-part-of-the-plan\/"},"modified":"2022-05-23T17:38:30","modified_gmt":"2022-05-23T17:38:30","slug":"wheres-don-coram-lauren-boeberts-gop-challenger-says-his-late-start-is-all-part-of-the-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wheres-don-coram-lauren-boeberts-gop-challenger-says-his-late-start-is-all-part-of-the-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Where\u2019s Don Coram? Lauren Boebert\u2019s GOP challenger says his late start is all part of the plan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Colorado
Colorado State Sen. and Republican congressional candidate Don Coram, right, speaks with Colorado 3rd Congressional District voters during an event in downtown Meeker on Saturday. (William Woody\/Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Don Coram has been training race horses for much of his life and has a succinct formula for what it takes to get across the finish line first: \u201cYou train to win. And you win the race at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ditto for his own political race.<\/p>\n

Coram is coming out of the gate late. Just six weeks out from his June 28 Republican primary contest with U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert in the 3rd Congressional District, and two weeks before county clerks begin mailing out ballots, Coram hasn\u2019t been a familiar face on the campaign trail. He has served 11 years in the Colorado Legislature representing Southwest Colorado, but he is a dark horse in his bid to unseat Boebert, the first-term congresswoman from Garfield County with a national following.<\/p>\n

Most political insiders give Coram, who lives in Montrose, only a longshot likelihood to come from behind in such a short time period. His chances, they say, are similar to the winning thoroughbred Rich Strike\u2019s 80-1 odds going into the recent Kentucky Derby.<\/p>\n

Whoever wins the GOP primary is likely to win the general election, too, in the Republican-leaning 3rd District, which covers the Western Slope and wraps around into Pueblo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all position and tactics,\u201d said Coram, the day after a marathon-to-midnight end to his time at the Colorado Legislature, first as a state representative and, for the past five years, as a state senator.<\/p>\n

Waiting to make sure his petitions were solid<\/div>\n

Coram\u2019s limited campaign presence up to this point has made some of his supporters nervous. Some express dismay that he hasn\u2019t been getting out in the 50,000-square-mile district since he announced outside a Grand Junction coffee shop in early January that he would challenge Boebert. In the meantime, Boebert has been running weekly front-page ads in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel<\/em> that refer to her opponent as \u201cCorrupt Coram.\u201d She pops up regularly in the local media as she makes the rounds at award ceremonies and community meetings, dropping incendiary pronouncements about state and national hot topics.<\/p>\n

Coram brushes off her attacks on him as \u201clies \u2013 all lies.\u201d And he cites several reasons for his seeming absence on the campaign trail, mainly that he was at the Colorado Capitol finishing up his work as a state lawmaker.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to finish the job I was elected to do,\u201d he said about closing out the legislative session that ended on May 11.<\/p>\n

Coram also opted to petition onto the primary ballot rather than attempting to go through the Republican caucus process that this year favored the farthest right candidates. That meant waiting until mid-April for the Colorado Secretary of State\u2019s office to determine he had enough valid signatures to make the primary.<\/p>\n

More waiting followed. Within a week of the certification, four voters filed a lawsuit alleging that Coram\u2019s petition shouldn\u2019t have been accepted because it contained nearly 400 invalid signatures. A ruling in his favor was handed down April 28.<\/p>\n

Coram said he felt it was prudent to wait for the court\u2019s decision before he spent campaign money on items like signs and radio ads. He wanted there to be no doubt his name would be on the primary ballot as the only Republican challenger to Boebert.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople will see me now. We have a great ground game planned,\u201d Coram said.<\/p>\n

\"Republican
Republican state Sen. Don Coram speaks with voters in the 3rd Congressional District on Saturday in Meeker. He is running against incumbent U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert in the Republican primary. (William Woody\/Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

That game, in his first week of intense campaigning, included stops in Aspen, Cortez, Meeker, Pueblo, Montrose and Grand Junction.<\/p>\n

He appeared Tuesday at a meeting of a newly formed group of moderates called Restore the Balance at Colorado Mesa University. That group consists of about 2,000 people of all political persuasions who have signed a pledge to advance civility in politics and to combat extremism. Coram has signed that pledge.<\/p>\n

A stream of supporters at the event shook his hand and told him they had switched parties from Democrat to unaffiliated just to vote for him in the primary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been happening everywhere we go,\u201d said his campaign manager JD Key.<\/p>\n

Democrat John Salazar, who knows what it takes to win the 3rd District \u2013 and also how it can be lost \u2013 said now that Coram has hit the ground running, he can\u2019t stop. Salazar represented the 3rd District for three terms from 2004 to 2011 but was knocked off by Cortez businessman Scott Tipton in his 2010 bid for a fourth term. Tipton held the seat until he was ousted in the 2020 GOP primary by Boebert.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe (Coram) is very popular in this valley,\u201d said Salazar, who now farms near Manassa. \u201cBut I know he is going to have to get out there in the district a bunch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dick Wadhams, a veteran of more than 40 years of GOP political campaigning in Colorado, warned it is time \u2013 maybe past time \u2013 for Coram to woo the 758,000 residents of Colorado\u2019s largest geographic congressional district.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is going to have to make his case very aggressively now,\u201d Wadhams said.<\/p>\n

Wadhams, a former chairman of the Colorado GOP, said Boebert will be a formidable opponent.<\/p>\n

She was relatively unknown when she bested Tipton in the 2020 Republican primary. She stomped across the district in high heels and skinny jeans with a Glock strapped to her thigh and a Trump-style litany of cutting zingers for liberals and \u201cwoke\u201d causes. She offered support for fringe causes. She sailed past Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush in the general election after Mitsch Bush ran a lackluster campaign that relied heavily on Zoom amid the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n

Wadhams said Boebert has displayed a vitality and a natural ability to know what to do and say on the campaign trail and, even though she has alienated some centrist Republicans, she is still very popular with voters who see her as a powerful persona in the national political realm.<\/p>\n

The fact that she has accomplished little in terms of legislation doesn\u2019t matter to voters, Wadhams said. He said voters don\u2019t expect a lot of legislative wins for freshman representatives.<\/p>\n

Boebert also has the advantage of being flush with campaign cash. She has outraised Coram by a huge margin. At the end of March, Boebert had $2.2 million on hand. Coram had $55,000.<\/p>\n

The cash advantage means Boebert can get her message out, whether it\u2019s through advertisements in the Daily Sentinel<\/em> or on TV.<\/p>\n

But Key, Coram\u2019s campaign manager, brushed off the lopsided financial warchests.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe has the dollars, but we know that dollars don\u2019t vote,\u201d Key said.<\/p>\n

Unaffiliated voter rolls swelling in the 3rd District<\/div>\n

As evidenced by his welcome at the Restore the Balance meeting in Grand Junction, Coram may get a boost from affiliation-switching Democrats in his primary bid even though they are overshadowed by Republicans in most of the district\u2019s counties.<\/p>\n

Unaffiliated voters currently make up the largest voting bloc in the 3rd District, and the number of unaffiliated voters have increased in each of the district\u2019s counties since the first of this year.<\/p>\n

As of May 1, 42% of the district\u2019s voters were unaffiliated, while 31% were Republicans and 25% were Democrats, according to voter data from the Colorado Secretary of State\u2019s Office. But while Republicans may not make up a majority of the district\u2019s voters, the district is considered safe for the GOP.<\/p>\n

Republicans are favored by 9 percentage points in the 3rd District, according to analysis of election results in the district dating back to 2016 completed by nonpartisan legislative staff. As a result, some Democrats see their best chance of ousting Boebert is through Coram, not through one of their party\u2019s three candidates running in the Democratic primary for a chance to win the seat.<\/p>\n

Anti-Boebert political activists across the district are urging Democrats to become unaffiliated voters and cast ballots in the GOP primary to help oust Boebert. In letters to editors and media interviews around the district, former Democrats have said they made the change because they are sick and tired of what they call Boebert\u2019s showboat antics, including yelling at President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address.<\/p>\n

\"Rep.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., left, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., right, scream \u201cBuild the Wall\u201d as President Joe Biden delivers his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on March 1 in Washington. (Evelyn Hockstein\/Pool via Associated Press)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cPersonally, I think our congresswoman is an embarrassment to our district,\u201d said Thalia Oster, a Gunnison attorney who recently switched her voter registration from Democrat to unaffiliated to vote against Boebert in the primary.<\/p>\n

Oster, her husband, and four friends have taken on the task of trying to convince others to do the same.<\/p>\n

They began their campaign in December after a dinner together that included a lot of bemoaning what they see as Boebert\u2019s shortcomings, along with the overall shift to extremism in politics. They decided to call themselves the \u201cGang of Six\u201d and focused on writing letters to every print newspaper in the 27 counties of the district.<\/p>\n

Their prime message: Boebert needs to be voted out even if it means quitting the Democratic Party to help make that happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cLauren Boebert is so divisive that she has unified a coalition against her,\u201d Key said.<\/p>\n

Mike Ritchey, a retired journalist and one of the Gang of Six, said he is encouraging votes for those who are serious about legislating, not grandstanding. In Ritchey\u2019s estimation, Coram is one of those who takes his servant-of-the-people political role seriously. But Ritchey has been worried about the near silence emanating from Coram\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe encourage him to pick up the pace. We want to see him out there cranking people up and getting them out to vote,\u201d Ritchey said.<\/p>\n

Key said that is happening. He laid out what voters in the district can expect to see over the next six weeks before the June 28 primary.<\/p>\n

The campaigning-in-earnest began the day after the state Legislature wrapped up. That Thursday happened to be Coram\u2019s 74th birthday and he spent it doing media interviews and attending a private fundraising event in Denver. Key said he has stacked Coram\u2019s calendar based on coalitions and lists he built while Coram was wrapping up in the Legislature.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have had time to plan,\u201d he said. \u201cWe will be knocking doors. You will see yard signs and 4\u00d78 signs going up. We are working on a couple of videos. We will get him on the radio. There is going to be a hell of a blitz right at the end. He is totally focused on this race now. And he is a workhorse. He will be constantly on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

A big part of those travels will land Coram in the Pueblo area which Coram called \u201cthe key to the race\u201d with its 122,000 voters and a majority of Democrats and unaffiliated voters overshadowing Republicans.<\/p>\n

In her general election win in 2020, Boebert acknowledged Pueblo\u2019s importance by saying her win was for \u201cthe steel workers in Pueblo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Key said Coram will not be holding Boebert-style, large-scale rallies as he travels the district. Instead, he said Coram will be meeting at farm bureaus, Chambers of Commerce, Cattleman\u2019s Association meetings and other venues where he can interact directly with voters.<\/p>\n

The campaign is finalizing details for two debates. The first is scheduled for Thursday morning at the Sky Ute Casino in Ignacio. The second, planned for Pueblo, is still up in the air. Coram proposed four debates, but Boebert accepted two.<\/p>\n

\"A
A stack of campaign donation envelops sit sealed in a collection bowl during a fundraiser Saturday in Snowmass for state Sen. Don Coram\u2019s GOP primary run in the 3rd Congressional District. (William Woody\/Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Boebert\u2019s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for interviews.<\/p>\n

Wadhams said Coram has another matter to tackle if he is going to be successful. He said Coram likes to stand on his long record of getting things done for voters in his statehouse district. But that tack didn\u2019t work for Tipton when he was defeated by Boebert. He had done plenty for his constituents, but they were ready for change.<\/p>\n

To run against a whirlwind like Boebert, Wadhams said, \u201cyou have to retool your message and your appeal to voters. Don has to create that similar energy for his campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coram finds that fodder for a joke.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve thought about campaigning with a Smith & Wesson and skinny jeans, but I\u2019m not skinny,\u201d Coram said.<\/p>\n

For his nail-biting supporters, Coram offers this consolation: \u201cJust know that I will be out and about in the district. You will see me now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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