November 21, 2025 10:05 AM UTC

Barb Kirkmeyer's Awful Endorsement Featuring Even Worse Timing

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• by: Colorado Pols

Yesterday afternoon, for reasons we find moderately puzzling, Republican gubernatorial candidate Barb Kirkmeyer announced an endorsement of her lackluster campaign by a fellow Republican who is, like Kirkmeyer, on the downward back slope from his career apex:

After years of labor and considerable expense building a majority on the Aurora City Council to carry out his agenda, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman’s dreams of a municipal return to greatness after losing his seat in Congress in 2018 were snuffed out in this year’s council elections, in which Coffman’s Republican-in-all-but-name city council majority was driven from power in a historic rout that took even many Democrats by surprise. Danielle Jurinsky, once an ally of Coffman’s on the City Council whose wild exaggerations about gang activity in the city became part of Donald Trump’s canon of falsehoods on the campaign trail last year, is now short, nasty footnote in the city’s history.

All of which raises the question of why Kirkmeyer would choose the present moment to trot out Coffman’s endorsement, just a couple short weeks after Coffman’s historic proxy trouncing in the Aurora city elections. It would be been much better to release this endorsement with a bunch of others next spring…or perhaps not at all.

Following the destruction of Coffman’s City Council majority this month, Coffman memorably understated, “If I’m reading this right, it doesn’t look good for Republicans.”

If we’re reading this endorsement right, it doesn’t look good for Barb Kirkmeyer.