August 24, 2017 09:28 AM UTC

Follow the Bouncing Ball if Coffman Runs for Governor

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• by: Colorado Pols

When a politician prepares to change jobs — either voluntarily or because of term limits — it can often create a ripple effect that extends several seats down the ballot in the next election. That’s exactly what may happen for Republicans if Attorney General Cynthia Coffman decides to run for Governor in 2018 instead of re-election.

If Coffman goes ahead with plans to seek the top job in the state, a decision that we hear is increasingly likely, it is widely presumed in Republican circles that Rep. Ken Buck — a former Weld County District Attorney — will leave his relatively-safe seat in Congress in order to run for Attorney General.

Should Buck leave CD-4 open for a new Representative, there will be no shortage of Republican suitors for the position. House Minority Leader Patrick Neville will almost certainly take a shot at Congress (remember, the boundaries of CD-4 creep south around Aurora to the Castle Rock area, which puts Neville’s state House seat in the district), but he won’t likely be alone in a Republican Primary. State Senator Jerry Sonnenberg and former state Senators Mark Scheffel, Tom Wiens and Scott Renfroe will all take a long look at running.  

In this scenario, openings would be created in HD-45 (Neville) and SD-1 (Sonnenberg) — both fairly safe GOP seats that would certainly draw plenty of interest among potential candidates looking to slide into a legislative seat.

We’ve been skeptical in this space about Cynthia Coffman’s chances at actually winning the Republican nomination for Governor, but the outcome of a potential Coffman campaign would do plenty to shake up Republican politics in Colorado no matter how well she performs as a candidate.