No shortage of ire, from either side, at Coffman town hall

If U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman’s spring town hall was subject to a bull rush by more liberal constituents, then his event Tuesday night was more of a brawl between constituents on both sides of the aisle.

One attendee framed a health care question by defining the Republican stance as: Individuals who are sick and uninsured “should just die.”  Another described the audience as “a lot of spoiled kids” wanting free things, such as health care.

The crowd at Prairie View High School in Henderson was a fraction of the 500 people who showed up to Coffman’s April town hall. But what it lacked in size, it made up for in rancor. Max Stroeher, a 19-year-old at his first town hall-style event, described it as a “bar fight with words.”

The questioners were selected by lottery, and attendance required tickets and photo IDs. Harsh words aside, the dialogue seemed to mimic the split inside the suburban Denver district that Coffman, a Republican, has represented since 2009. Boos, cheers and heckling were frequent and bipartisan.

Coffman won re-election in 2016 with about 51 percent of the vote, versus his Democratic opponent's 42.6 percent; Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won that same district by nine percentage points over Republican Donald Trump. Trump lost Colorado overall but won the presidency.

Coffman said in a pre-event press scrum that he expected a partisan element in the auditorium and acknowledged a lot of “anxiety” going on in the district. At times, he tried to explain the segments of Medicaid he wanted reformed to an audience largely uninterested in nuance — for the constituents present, it was either yank Obamacare out by the roots or single-payer-or-else. 

Coffman spun the heavy divide as a good problem for his district and one he wished more Congressional representatives faced.

“The fundamental problem in these United States is that so many districts are either very red or very blue,” Coffman said. He said he’s part of a congressional group working on a supporting brief for a gerrymandering lawsuit involving Wisconsin. He told the crowd he wants partisanship in a proposed district to be part of the criteria for its approval.

Carolyn Pace, 27, said after the event that she was a bit miffed at how narrow the event became; health care dominated it, and she was able to ask about immigration. She wished education and climate change were able to make more substantive appearances. If folks asked more concise — and less charged — questions, and Coffman had answered in more concise ways, a lot more ground could have been covered, she said.

“Is it what I was expecting?” the first-time town hall attendee asked. “I guess I wished people had risen to my expectations.”