{"id":42768,"date":"2022-01-11T15:05:25","date_gmt":"2022-01-11T22:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/don-coram-brushes-off-super-woke-insult-i-have-no-idea-what-that-means\/"},"modified":"2022-01-11T22:05:25","modified_gmt":"2022-01-11T22:05:25","slug":"don-coram-brushes-off-super-woke-insult-i-have-no-idea-what-that-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/don-coram-brushes-off-super-woke-insult-i-have-no-idea-what-that-means\/","title":{"rendered":"Don Coram brushes off \u2018super woke\u2019 insult: \u2018I have no idea what that means\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"State
State Sen. Don Coram is a Republican candidate for the 3rd Congressional District. He got into the hemp business after he helped legalize the crop in Colorado. (Michael Sakas\/Colorado Public Radio file)<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

GRAND JUNCTION \u2013 Don Coram hasn\u2019t got a clue if he is \u201csuper woke.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no idea what that means,\u201d said the Republican state senator from Montrose before he announced his primary challenge for the 3rd Congressional District on Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Lauren Boebert, the freshman congresswoman he is hoping to unseat in the Republican primary, sent a statement about Coram\u2019s candidacy that morning describing the 73-year-old Montrose native with a background in farming and mining, as a \u201csuper-woke social liberal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that is the tag they want to pin on me, bring it on,\u201d Coram told a crowd of about two dozen reporters and supporters outside his son\u2019s coffee shop in Grand Junction.<\/p>\n

That exchange may lay out a road map for how the campaign may go between the folksy, centrist Republican who likes to say that the R behind his name actually stands for \u201crural,\u201d and Boebert, the far-right, conspiracy-embracing Trump-stalwart.<\/p>\n

Boebert has made her mark as a politician who is always ready with a fiery insult for those on the opposite side of the aisle and the opposite side of an issue.<\/p>\n

In his decade in state office, Coram has touted his willingness to work pragmatically across the aisle without ignoring his conservative leanings when it comes to passing legislation that will benefit his constituents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe middle is where the action is,\u201d Coram told his supporters to a burst of applause.<\/p>\n

Ray Langston, until several months ago the chairman of the Montrose County GOP, was one of those in attendance. He was a Boebert fan (\u201cI really think she will do well, and I really hope she does,\u201d he told CPR after she was sworn into office) until her first year in Congress passed without her having passed a single piece of legislation.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, that\u2019s an issue,\u201d Langston said.<\/p>\n

He said there are plenty of Republicans around Montrose who think that Coram is too liberal, but he has earned respect as a workhorse when it comes to representing his constituents. Langston guessed that 70% of Montrose Republicans are in support of Coram\u2019s candidacy after voting for Boebert in the last primary. Boebert surprised Republicans when she unseated Scott Tipton of Cortez who had served a decade representing the 3rd District.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am fearful she will lose the election if she is the candidate,\u201d said Langston, who disagrees with Boebert\u2019s assertion that the 2020 presidential election was \u201cstolen,\u201d but agrees with her beliefs that President Joe Biden is \u201csenile,\u201d that former President Donald Trump has not been treated fairly by Democrats, and that the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was not an insurrection.<\/p>\n

Coram, in his brief remarks Friday, did use the term \u201cinsurrection\u201d when referring to the attack on the U.S. Capitol.<\/p>\n

Alfred Gilchrist is a Montrose independent who also made the trip to Grand Junction for Coram\u2019s announcement. The former chief executive of the Colorado Medical Society said he will be volunteering with Coram\u2019s campaign. Gilchrist said he has been heartened by the attention Coram\u2019s campaign received, even before he made his official announcement.<\/p>\n

He said he was having coffee with Coram and his campaign manager earlier this week and \u201cboth their phones were buzzing every three or four minutes with people offering support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only one well-known Mesa County Republican was obvious in the crowd for Coram\u2019s announcement. Former state representative and senator Steve King stayed in the background. King left politics in 2015 after pleading guilty to embezzlement and official misconduct for falsifying time cards while working a part-time law enforcement job during his tenure in the Senate.<\/p>\n

Boebert has another Republican challenger. Marina Zimmerman, a crane operator from the Durango area, has also entered the primary race.<\/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":"

73-year-old Montrose native has a background in farming and mining<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[981,233,28,826,774,265,4102],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-42768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-3rd-congressional-district","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-headlines","tag-political-campaigns","tag-political-candidates","tag-politics","tag-state-rep-don-coram"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42768"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=42768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}