Follow up needed on whether Coffman is giving personal and specific answers to questions from voters, as promised to Post
UPDATE: The Post’s Kurtis Lee has posted a Spot blog post, headlined, “Liberal group posts video revealing failed attempts to reach Congressman Coffman,” addressing whether Coffman has, in fact, been answering questions, as promised. Thanks to the Post for following up on this matter.
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A recent post in the Spot Blog had a headline that grabbed your attention, if you’ve been following Rep. Mike Coffman’s up-and-down relationship with reporters, a talk show host, and other people who’ve wanted to ask him questions during this election season. The headline read:
“Have a question for Coffman? Reach out, he’ll respond with a ‘very specific’ answer”
A very specific answer? Great!
The article explained:
“Everybody who has a question can come on to my website, at any point and time, and they can get a very specific answer back,” Coffman said.
An answer from the Congressman directly?
“Absolutely,” Coffman said.
A spokesman told The Post that Coffman would take questions by phone and mail and email as well.
Coffman hadn’t been answering my queries, so I got excited after reading this and decided to post some questions that reporters and I could ask Coffman, while Coffman was in the mood for answering questions not hiding (e.g., holding private “town hall meetings” behind the closed doors of large corporations.)
I still got no response from Coffman.
It’s quite a promise Coffman made to personally answer all questions with specificity, when you think about it, especially the answering-questions-personally part, and I was glad Denver Post reporter Kurtis Lee wrote about it.
But now it’s been three weeks, and we don’t know if Coffman has kept his promise. There are signs, including this video and my experience, that he didn’t, but we don’t know for sure, because neither Lee nor any other reporter in town has informed us on how Coffman’s heat-of-the-election-openness-pledge has been working out.
The Post obviously has no obligation to follow up on every blog post, but in this case, given Coffman’s unusual promise, casting him in quite the flattering light, I think The Post owes readers another story assessing whether Coffman’s kept his promise, especially because it was made five weeks before the election and there’s about two weeks left.