State Democrats launched an attack tying U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday – just hours before the former reality TV star is set to accept the GOP nomination – but Coffman says he’s the only candidate in the race who will stand up to whoever wins the presidency.

“Congressman Coffman has not only pledged to support Donald Trump,” the Democrats’ website charges, citing a comment made by a campaign spokeswoman on the day after the Iowa caucuses, “he has spent his entire political career championing the type of reckless, divisive and discriminatory agenda that created Donald Trump.”

Both sides in the hotly contested 6th Congressional District race – Coffman is facing a challenge by state Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora – have been treating Trump like kryptonite, with Democrats eager to lash Trump to Coffman, while Coffman has been distancing himself from the real estate mogul, some of his more controversial statements and the GOP in general.

“He’s not like other Republicans,” says a woman featured in a web ad released by the Coffman campaign last month.

Strategists on both sides of the aisle say an association with Trump could prove toxic among suburban Colorado voters, including those Coffman represents, but also that the same voters could be more prone than usual to splitting their ticket.

For his part, Coffman rejected the Democrats’ characterization of his position and fired back at Carroll.

“I’ll stand-up to either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton when it’s what’s best for the country,” he told The Colorado Statesman through a spokeswoman. “What about the state senator and ambulance chaser, Morgan Carroll? Will she stand-up to Hillary on any issue, foreign or domestic, ever? Iran arms deal? Demonization of charter schools? Obamacare? The debt? Guantanamo? It’s crickets from the ambulance chaser and state senator.”

The Democrats’ attack site includes an animated video that juxtaposes a number of Trump’s most inflammatory statements with Coffman’s positions, including Trump’s charges that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States paired with Coffman’s notorious comments to a Republican group that he didn’t know if, “in his heart,” Obama was an American.

Some of the links are more tenuous, such as Trump’s declaration about barring Muslims from entering the country alongside charges that Coffman spoke to a leading “anti-Muslim hate group,” and that the two share a position on criminalizing abortion.

“I just disagree with his tone,” the video quotes Coffman as saying, pulling a sentence from a CNN report on Republican reaction to Trump’s remarks about a Hispanic judge. The web video’s announcer asks, “Really?”

“This is the same kind of bald-faced dishonesty that got Nancy Pelosi and her posse a landslide defeat two years ago,” said Coffman campaign spokeswoman Cinamon Watson. “No one is buying this sleazy, junior varsity spin.”

She added that Coffman, who skipped attending the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this week, “has not endorsed Trump nor pledged support to him,” pointing to statements and posts to social media stretching back months.

Carroll’s campaign manager, Jennifer Koch Donovan, suggested Coffman was trying to have it both ways.

“Meaning Trump could earn his support at some point?” she said. “This is too wishy-washy. This is political semantics. He should just man up and say whether he’s voting for Donald Trump or Gary Johnson or writing in ‘Alexander Hamilton,’ as some have said they’re doing.”

She said Carroll’s position on the presidential candidates was clear: “Morgan supports Hillary Clinton, and she will vote for her.”

– ernest@coloradostatesman.com