President (To Win Colorado) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Biden*

(R) Donald Trump

80%

20%↓

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

90%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

90%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(D) Adam Frisch

(R) Jeff Hurd

(R) Ron Hanks

40%

30%

20%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert

(R) J. Sonnenberg

(R) Ted Harvey

20%↑

15%↑

10%

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Dave Williams

(R) Jeff Crank

(R) Doug Bruce

20%

20%

20%

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

90%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) Brittany Pettersen

85%↑

 

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(D) Yadira Caraveo

(R) Gabe Evans

(R) Janak Joshi

60%↑

40%↑

20%↑

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

5%

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
July 20, 2015 11:47 AM UTC

Cynthia Coffman Has Yet to Air All of Her Grievances about Steve House?

  • 14 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

harveyhocDuring her June 26 testimony before a Republican committee, which was investigating numerous allegations against Colorado’s GOP chair, State Attorney General Cynthia Coffman was unable to present “significant facts” because of time restrictions.

That’s the allegation in a post today on the conservative Politichicks blog. In the post, Kathryn Porter claims to have had an exclusive interview with Coffman, during which the Attorney General reportedly said she was unable to lay out all her concerns about Steve House, the Chair of the Colorado Republican Party. Porter reported:

“I galloped through my prepared chronology of events but was not able to finish in five minutes. I felt I had to leave out significant facts,” Coffman said.

But Porter, who is a Republican activist and blogger, did not disclose the facts that Coffman omitted or whether the facts might have swayed the Republican executive committee, which ended up supporting House by a 22-1 vote, to denounce the state chair.

“Coffman broke her silence and exposed a stunning disregard for decorum in its treatment of both elected officials and party activists by the executive committee,” wrote Porter.

Porter’s post, titled “Behind Closed Doors in the CO GOP: From Bedrooms to Boardrooms,” outlined the chaotic atmosphere at the June 26 meeting, which was conducted under adverse conditions and unclear guidelines.

As reported previously, former Congressman Tom Tancredo and former Pueblo GOP Chair Becky Mizel were allegedly prevented from distributing a lengthy list of grievances against House, but it’s not clear who wrote Tancredo’s document.

And it’s also not known whether all of Coffman’s “significant facts” were included on the document.

Comments

14 thoughts on “Cynthia Coffman Has Yet to Air All of Her Grievances about Steve House?

  1. Coffman must have the IQ of a fence post. Once again, new life is given to discussion of the whole embarrassing fiasco, once again with no specifics to back up a word she says, and all she had to do after House won full support and declined to pursue the matter further was shut up and let it fade. Hope she plans to keep dredging it up indefinitely. She just might make ColPols' most dire predictions come true after all. I'd be hiring a taster if I were her. Her party must be wishing pretty hard for some way to get her to just shut up.

    1. After reading the Politichicks article, the "hearing" was obviously a poorly conceived attempt at a whitewash with a fair amount of sweeping everything and everybody beneath any available rug! (did I miss any cliches? 🙂

      The state GOP's problem is that the AG is an attorney, and limiting any attorney with a long list of grievances to just 5 minutes can't help but raise her internal temperature beyond the boiling point.

      The divisions in the party seem to be widening, not healing at all.

      1. Of course it was about sweeping everything under the rug.  That was the point. It wasn't a trial. It wasn't a legal proceeding.  It was all about cleaning up a mess. And, ill conceived or not, and I wouldn't look to anything in Politichicks as definitive, was initially working just fine. House is supported. Coffman is supported.  House agrees to let the whole thing go away. Nice nice all round, no matter how unconvincing.  Nothing to see here.

        We were sadly accepting the fact that the fun was over for us, at least for the time being. And it would have been if Coffman, Tanc, Mizel and Marks had accepted their failure, accepted the fact that the party felt it was in its own best interests to cauterize the wound and stop feeding the media. There would have been nothing new to talk about since that night. No embarrassing story in the Washington Post weeks later. No new stories at all, at least until further developments which may or may not ever materialize. Instead they chose to keep it out there.

        All I can figure is that we all know the rule about striking at the King. Succeed or die. Maybe Coffman is convinced that if she just keeps this up House will be ousted, she will be vindicated and her career resurrected. That would be delusional but I can't think of why else she keeps giving interviews and won't let this die a natural death. Nothing she says has done her any good. Every time she opens her mouth she hurts herself more than she hurts House. It's really pathetic.

  2. Stunning that these people are still trying to float the old line about the earth-shaking, horrible, terrible very huge concerns they have about their Chairman, but they just can't tell you what they are!

    Jason, the link you have above doesn't go to the politichicks blog – it refers back to your own diary. Porter's heavy-breathing sensationalist piece is here. It reveals few new facts, except some hearsay and anonymously sourced "party insider" opinions that contradict what was written previously. For example, the "Liberty People" were supposed to be House's severest critics – now, according to Porter,

    Republican activists described the “liberty” members of the committee as meek followers without the backbone to challenge tactics that were utilized to guide the meeting to an outcome in support of House.

    Ouch! Kathryn Porter will not let this story die, no matter how much damage the continuing flogging of the dead elephant does.  I wish her godspeed. The more damage to the GOP, the better for Dems. Let's go 2016!

    1. Thanks for providing the link. you're right but Coffman must also want to keep the story going if she's saying she didn't get a chance to speak her mind. Why would she grant this interview?

      So much of this saga defies logic that it's a fool's errand to try to figure it out rationally. Just follow it and see what happens. that's the best we can do.

       

      1. I think it defies logic because Coffman stupid and delusional. Otherwise she'd realize by now that every time she gives one of these interviews she only makes thing worse for herself, not for House. Does she think that if she keeps it up House will somehow be ousted after all, she'll be vindicated and her political future restored? That certainly does defy logic at this point. 

        1. Well said BC. Coffman needs to realize the press is more interested in her than they will ever be in Mr. House. By giving another interview all she does is refocus attention on herself without any explanation for what she said, which of course just raises the same questions about her behavior at the June 15th meeting that have been asked and left unanswered for the past five weeks. By handling this event the way she has she has reinforced suspicions about her. She isn't playing her hand well at all.

        2. Three possibilities:

          1) Cynthia Coffman is so completely lacking in adult judgement that she does not understand why beating the dead elephant is toxic for her, the GOP, and possibly her hubby,

          or

          2) She's a Houdini sleight-of-hand master magician, keeping us focused on the fading OutHouse "scandal", so that we don't look too closely at….what? Her campaign finances?

          There are some very dubious things in there – the Republican Attorney Generals Association , a 527 org, functioned like a money laundromat in the last two elections….tons of money came in, tons of money went out, not only to Coffman's TV ads and campaign videos, but to the Colorado Governor's race, and races all over the country. I'm still learning the finer points of campaign finance law, but it sure looks to me like coordination between the candidate and the nonprofits happened, although I haven’t found anything which directly points to wrongdoing by Coffman herself. It's not sexy like "SEX! UNDER THE COVERS! BEDROOM to BOARDROOM! But….Tyler Harber went to jail over it…

          or…

          3) This is just the latest battle in a long term turf war between the official party establishment and the 527 groups. Eli Stokols' insightful 2015 piece supports this view. Stokols wrote:

          “The back-room party boss has been replaced by shadowy nonprofit entities called 527s, 501c3s and 4s, funded by mostly unnamed millionaires and billionaires.”

          For several cycles now, as detailed in Witwer’s book, Democrats have shifted their operations almost entirely to independent groups and away from the state party; Republicans, meanwhile, continue to act as if the party and the role of its chairman still matter.

          So…at some level, this could be a power struggle…Cynthia Coffman has been the kingmaker-she took Ryan Call down, per Stokols' piece, but then House refused to be properly grateful, nor to act like her puppet. And that power struggle between the party boss, and the dark money groups, continues.  Is that what this baffling refusal to let the scandal die is about?

          1. Unfortunately for Coffman, no matter how such a power struggle turns out, she's put a fork in it done. She's demonstrated nothing but incompetence in the keystone cops effort to oust House so she's no good to anyone, establishment or the 527s. And if it's true that this isn't about her wanting Harvey to get the job, WTF was it about for her and why did she enter into a cabal with those who did back Harvey? And if so many people were voicing grievances and concerns why aren't any of these concerned people, outside of the cabal, coming forward and backing that claim up?

            The longer this goes on and the more she says about it, the more convinced I am that this doesn't make sense because she's so hopelessly clueless, confused and in over her head it's pointless to try to find any sense or logic in her motivations, actions or continued self defeating interviews.

            I suspect she got snookered into this in the first place and has just been flailing ever since. It's tough to see this dim bulb as the author of any conspiracy, the real head of any cabal. More likely whoever were the real movers behind this told her it would be easy. All she had to do was say the magic word "Julie" and House would resign quietly with some family issues type excuse. It turns out it wasn't easy, she's the one with the most to lose and she's losing it.

Leave a Comment

Recent Comments


Posts about

Donald Trump
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Lauren Boebert
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Yadira Caraveo
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado House
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado Senate
SEE MORE

212 readers online now

Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!