Morgan Carroll dubs GOP candidates fascists and nut jobs at Colorado caucus

AURORA, CO — GOP U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman’s opponent Morgan Carroll called Republicans running for the White House “nut jobs” who are on a “slow and steady, serious march towards fascism,” at a Democratic caucus in a swing county in a swing congressional district.

Carroll, a Democratic state senator from Aurora running for Congress in what is likely to become one of the most closely watched races in the nation, gave a brief speech to more than 100 caucus goers in an auditorium here at North Middle School in a Denver suburb.

So many people had shown up to the school’s cafeteria, many of whom were supporting Bernie Sanders for president, that organizers had to move some precincts to an overflow room down the hall.

Carroll showed up to give a brief Super Tuesday stump speech about her candidacy for higher office.

“For those of you who have watched this seat before, we are now leaning Democratic by one point,” she said to applause. “And we cannot win it without Adams County.”

She didn’t waste much time ripping into the GOP field for president. Thirty seconds in she dropped her remarks about nut jobs and fascism.

“What we’ve seen with President Obama is if you can’t give them a Congress they can work with, they can’t get nearly done what they need to get done,” she said. “What we know about 2016 is there are a few dozen races that we can pick up … which changes the nature of what the president can actually do and accomplish, and for Colorado our 6^th Congressional District is one of them.”

Carroll went on to frame her opponent Coffman as a shapeshifter who “says one thing and does another.” She said Congress is hard to pay attention to, and a generation of Americans might just write it off because it’s plagued with gridlock and demagoguery.

In a room full of Sanders supporters, she pitched herself as a warrior for working people who will fight for a living wage and affordable child care, reduce student debt, and ease the money crunch for retirees.

“Do we do more rights for corporations than we do people? Are we going to do transparency? Are we going to fight for campaign finance reform?” Carroll asked. “None of that’s going to happen unless we get somebody else in the 6^th Congressional District, and in the meantime the one place we know that they’ve been paying a lot of attention to is what happens in your bedroom and what happens in your uterus and who you choose to love and marry.”

She also pitched comprehensive immigration reform as an American necessity, saying Coffman pushed a secret backdoor deal to block reform from reaching the U.S. House floor.

“And then he turns around and says, ‘I’ve taken a couple Spanish classes, so you’ll vote for me, right?”