https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehxaRM1ZTeo

Colorado Politics has told you before that other Republican candidates could learn a lot about politicking from Mike Coffman. Now a statehouse candidate has.

The congressman from Aurora has been running races in Colorado since before people knew Milli Vanilli was fake. And in 29 years, Coffman has never lost a race – not for state House, state Senate, secretary of state, state treasurer or the U.S. House.

So you can’t blame fellow Republican Grady Nouis for picking a campaign theme that worked well last year for Coffman’s re-election against former state Sen. Morgan Carroll: “One of Us.”

It resonated among voters because the campaign had a clear theme that Mike Coffman, soldier and statesman, was his own man, not the byproduct of Donald Trump and the Washington swamp. And when it comes to campaigning among a diversity of minority and ethnic groups since his district became more liberal after the 2010 Census, Coffman is everywhere. Hence, his supporters proclaimed in his ad that he was “One of Us.”

The theme was used in a TV ad that won a national award.

Nouis is a political newcomer from Westminster. He kicked off his campaign to unseat Rep. Tracy Kraft Tharp, D-Arvada, in October.

She won the seat in 2012, beating Republican incumbent Robert Ramirez by more than eight percentage points in 2012. In 2014 and 2016, Kraft Tharp won re-election over Susan Kochevar, including a 9-point win last year.  That mirrors Coffman’s spreads over Carroll last year and former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff in 2014.

Nouis, a North Dakota native, moved to Colorado in 2012.

On his website, he says, “I stand with the moral conviction that equality, unalienable rights, personal responsibility, limited government, rule of law, free enterprise, free markets, and private property rights are the most important principles of true freedom. Government only gets power from the consent of the governed. I believe that we are all born with the same opportunity, not that we will necessarily achieve the same success in life.”

Team Coffman was amused by the borrowed theme.

“As my mother says, imitation is the highest form of flattery,” said Coffman campaign spokesman Cinamon Watson.