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About Mike Coffman

Mike Coffman’s career has been dedicated to defending our country and making a difference for Aurora. He grew up in Aurora. He attended Aurora Public Schools before enlisting in the U.S. Army shortly after his junior year of high school. He finished high school through an Army program and attended the University of Colorado under the G.I. Bill. While at the University, he continued his military career by serving in the U.S. Army Reserve.

After he graduated from the University of Colorado in 1979, Mike transferred from the U.S. Army Reserve to the Marine Corps where he served on active duty for three years as an infantry officer.

In 1982, Mike left active duty and returned to Aurora where he started an Aurora-based property management firm in 1983. Mike remained a partner in the property management firm until 2000. During this time, he also continued his military career in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve.

In addition to running his property management firm and serving in the Marine Corps Reserve, Mike was involved in volunteer activities in Aurora. In 1983, he was appointed by the Aurora City Council to serve on the Human Relations Commission and in 1984, to the Citizens Advisory Budget Committee. He served on both until he was elected to the Colorado State House of Representatives in 1988. Mike was also active in the Aurora Chamber of Commerce and was a member of the Aurora Rotary Club.

In 1990, Mike took an unpaid leave of absence from the Colorado State House of Representatives and volunteered to deploy with the Marines for Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. He was assigned as the Executive Officer for a Light Armored Infantry unit that conducted a reconnaissance-by-fire operation, inside of Iraqi-occupied Kuwait, for three consecutive days prior to the main ground attack on February 24th, 1991.

In 1994, Mike retired as a Major from a combined 20 years of military service between the U.S. Army, the Army Reserve, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the Marine Corps Reserve.

In the Colorado State House of Representatives, Mike’s key focus was on health care reform where he passed legislation that prohibited the denial of coverage based on preexisting conditions and prohibited gender discrimination by health insurance companies. For his efforts, he was recognized by the Women's Lobby of Colorado as the "Outstanding Legislator of the Year" for " accomplishments in improving the lives of women in our state.

Mike began serving in the Colorado State Senate in 1995, after winning a vacancy election, where he became the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. In 1997, Mike led the successful effort to implement welfare reform in Colorado. His Colorado Works program required work, training, or education in exchange for receiving benefits.

While serving in the Colorado State Senate, Mike completed the Senior Executive Program for State and Local Government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

In 1998, Mike was elected to the office of Colorado State Treasurer and reelected to the office in 2002. One of Mike’s most notable actions was in taking financial control of the St. Vrain Valley School District in 2002, and then in 2003, the Elizabeth School District. In both cases the school districts were on the verge of insolvency due to gross financial mismanagement. Mike stabilized their finances by forcing the districts to cut their administrative budgets while protecting the teachers in the classroom.

In 2005, Mike resigned from the Office of State Treasurer and returned to the U.S. Marine Corps for an assignment in Iraq. During the first half of his deployment, Mike was the Officer-in-Charge of the Election Coordination Cell for Multi-National Forces West.

After helping with Iraq’s Constitutional Referendum and its first National Election, Mike volunteered for an assignment in the Western Euphrates River Valley where he helped establish transitional local governments. Mike returned from Iraq in 2006 and was appointed by then Governor Bill Owens to serve out the remainder of his term as the State Treasurer.

In 2006, Mike was elected as Colorado’s Secretary of State where his main focus was on ensuring fair elections. Prior to the 2008 election, Mike successfully established a statewide interactive database of registered voters, in compliance with the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA), to help prevent voter fraud.

In 2008, Mike was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the 6th Congressional District of Colorado which included only the southern portion of Aurora. Mike was assigned to the Armed Services Committee because of his extensive military background. On the Armed Services Committee, Mike was instrumental in strengthening the Department of Defense’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration (REPI) program. Appropriations for this program were essential for Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora. Buckley sought funding from the REPI program, to combine with local and state matching funds, to purchase over 1,000 acres of open space outside of the perimeter of the base. From the REPI program, Aurora receives valuable open space and Buckley now has a larger buffer zone outside of its perimeter.

Following the 2010 census, the 6th Congressional District was redrawn to encompass all of Aurora. This meant that starting in 2013, the 6th Congressional District now included the problem plagued Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) hospital construction project on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora.

To better oversee this project, Mike sought an appointment to the Veterans Affairs Committee where he became the Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee Chairman. As the subcommittee’s chairman, he pushed for answers to the construction delays and the cost overruns from VA officials. Concluding that the VA was incapable of completing the project, he led the effort to replace the VA construction management team with one from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The legislation he passed also permanently stripped the VA of its authority to manage the construction of future VA hospital projects.

In January of 2017, with the VA construction project in Aurora on track, Mike remained on the Veterans Affairs Committee but became chairman of the Military Personnel Subcommittee for the Armed Services Committee. In this capacity, Mike worked to develop policies to combat sexual assaults in the military, to provide mental health care for combat veterans who were denied care due to Other-than-Honorable (OTH) discharges, and to provide a process to review OTH discharges for an upgrade if there was a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).

In 2017, at the 118th Annual National Convention of the Vietnam Veterans of America, Mike received the Legislator of the Year award for his work on behalf of combat veterans.

In 2018, he was ranked the 12th most bipartisan member of the U.S. House of Representatives by the Lugar Center’s Bipartisan Index and in 2018 Mike was further recognized for his bipartisan leadership by the University of Mount Union of Ohio’s inaugural Spirit of America Award.

On January 31st, 2019, Mike Coffman announced that he would be a candidate for the office of Mayor of the City of Aurora, Colorado.

Mike has lived in the Meadow Hills neighborhood since 1992, and attends Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora.