Mike Coffman showed up without an aide and ordered iced tea, 10 minutes early for a coffee meeting with a reporter in downtown Denver Monday afternoon. He was home from Washington for the U.S. House’s district work week.

The Republican congressman from Aurora is still more than a year from his sixth Election Day defense of his 6th Congressional District seat. He’s anything but complacent. Since he got home last Thursday, it’s been a blur of events and meetings, he said, naming off several. Latino, Korean, South Asian, Sihk, Muslim and Ethiopians, Coffman tends to a diverse district, a man that used to preach conservative talking points to more conservative and, yes, wealthier constituency from Douglas County before his district was redrawn by state legislators after the last census.

Anybody who knows Mike Coffman, knows about his campaign energy. He has been an officeholder in Colorado for 28 years. He joined the state House the same month the first George Bush became president. From the state House, he bounced to the state Senate, then he was state treasurer, then he was secretary of state, then in 2008 he won a seat in Congress.

In all that time, he’s never lost a race.

When the district took on a new shape, Coffman inherited an avalanche of immigrants who weren’t initially too friendly to Republicans like him. In 2012, he beat Democrat Joe Miklosi, a former state representative, by just two percentage points, and he has been marked as vulnerable in every election since. Nonetheless, in 2014 he beat former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff by 9 points and repeated the feat last November against former state Sen. Morgan Carroll, who now chairs the state Democratic Party.

Coffman’s politics changed with his district. He became more moderate on immigration, among several issues, because he better understood the real-world implications of such policies, and how Republicans are squandering a chance to show those voters that the GOP is not the enemy.

Coffman said when legislative and congressional districts aren’t competitive, like his, it has a way of closing off thinking about consequences and compromises, while it feeds partisan gridlock.

“Running into the 2012 election, I didn’t know what their issues were, I hadn’t run on any of those issues or anything, so I started a journey,” he said. “I got to know a lot people in a lot of the different communities. The biggest single change – and people say I flipped on immigration – but my vision of where we ought to be as a country hasn’t changed. What has changed is a sense of reality, and how you have to transition to get there. You have to think about how these things affect people, and how they affect the economy.

“You can’t get there overnight. You somehow have to deal with the population that’s already here in some transitional way.”

After President Trump moved to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, called DACA, this month, Coffman mounted a brief effort to legislatively wrest the issue away from the president. he backed off when House Speaker Paul Ryan gave him assurances that the so-called Dreamers wouldn’t be forgotten.

If that happens,  Coffman said, he’ll try again.

Coffman is working with other Republicans and Democrats on what’s called the Problem Solvers Caucus on a moderate approach to amending the DACA, ideally delaying . a decision on the law for three years to find a path to citizenship for those brought to this country as children. He said the Dream Act was always a stop-gap fix, and Washington could do better with a thoughtful, moderate remedy, rather than knee-jerk partisan politics, the kind Coffman used to be tempted by when his district was more conservative.

Immigration isn’t nearly as simple as a bumper sticker, he said.

Coffman offered the name of a young Hispanic woman in his district , bent to serve in the military, who qualified for the U.S. Naval Academy in every category except one, her citizenship status.

“She was brought here as a child,” said Coffman, who served in both Iraq wars and was literally born on an Army base. “This is the only country she has ever known. This is the only flag she’s ever lived under. She wants to serve in the military, and she can’t.

“Seeing these young people like her puts a different dimension in my mind. I think if other members of Congress sat down with the same people I sit down with, I think they’d come to the same conclusion.”

He feels differently about adults who came here illegally and flouted the consequences. He has a zero-tolerance view on illegal immigration.

“I think we have to find a way for people who have been here for a long time and haven’t broken any laws, other than immigration laws, to allow them to come out of the shadows, but I don’t believe in a path to citizenship for the adults who knowingly broke the law,” Coffman said.

He thinks transitional changes to immigration, such as DACA and guest worker programs, can work along with much improved border security. Coffman doesn’t favor President Trump’s 2,000-mile wall, as the president wants. Some areas, a physical barrier makes sense, but in others technology and more border guards are better solutions, Coffman said.

“I know in a lot of circles right now, compromise is seen as a pejorative,” Coffman said. “But I don’t think you can govern unless you’re willing to compromise in a divided government. I think it’s so unhealthy for the political process.”

Coffman said he’s not worried Democrats will again try to tie him to Trump’s most controversial positions, including on immigration, and outlandish behavior. During last year’s election and since he’s publicly disagreed with Trump, but said if the president can reach a compromise on immigration for those like the young woman who couldn’t get in the Naval Academy, “I’ll gladly stand with him on that,” Coffman said.

While his relationship with Trump is not warm, Coffman said he has a great relationship with Vice President Mike Pence.

One of Coffman’s chief opponents, Democratic candidate Jason Crow, himself a combat veteran, isn’t buying it.

“The truth is, there have always been two Mike Coffmans: the one who tells Coloradans what they want to hear and the one who goes to Washington and falls in line behind Speaker Ryan and President Trump,” Crow told Colorado Politics. ” Just over a week ago, Rep. Coffman told Coloradans that he’d stand up for DREAMers; then two-days later struck a deal with Republican leadership that leaves DACA recipients on the back burner.

“It’s time we elect leaders who will follow through and fight for their community. I learned early on that talk is cheap whether it was working minimum wage jobs, serving three combat tours, fighting for Veterans by helping to bring the new VA hospital to Aurora, or defending the rule of law as an attorney. Mike Coffman had his chance to fight for us, now it’s time for a new leader who will focus on getting things done, not his own reelection.”

Levi Tillemann, who also is running against Coffman, thinks the incumbent tilts toward opportunism.

“Some day we ought to memorialize Congressman Mike Coffman with his hand outstretched, finger to the wind,” Tillemann said Monday night. “On DACA, Trump, Obamacare, climate change and so many other issues that serve as a critical test of moral character, Coffman has put politics before common decency and common sense. He’s a brazen political survivalist and Coloradans deserve better.”