The following is transcribed from an interview with Roger Edwards, GOP challenger to Colorado’s CD-6 incumbent Rep. Mike Coffman, from the Peter Boyles Show on 710KNUS with guest host and Arapahoe County Tea Party President Randy Corporon. Emphasized statements, in bold, have been highlighted by the Colorado Times Recorder.
GUEST HOST RANDY CORPORON: […] [I am] very excited, though. [I] just read this — first saw the Westword article last week, and I’m told there will be some other writing — some other pieces coming out about this — but Mike Coffman, he of the “Forever Congressman” congressional CD-6 seat, who–. You know, I’ve had breakfasts with this guy – I mean, one-on-one. I have spent time, called his office. He used to meet with the members of my group, the Arapahoe Tea Party once a month at his office, just across the parking lot — almost — from the studio, here. [He] was a conservative, would talk to Tea Partiers at Tea Party events, had the courage several years ago at the start of the Obama presidency to talk about how the — the fact that we really don’t know who Barack Obama is and then started backpedaling on that when it got out. And he has just been running further and further left ever since. And someone has said, “Enough!” — one of his own constituents, a gentleman named Roger Edwards, a man I’ve never met before. We are all going to meet him together, for the very first time. Roger, good morning!
GOP CHALLENGER TO THE INCUMBENT OF COLORADO’S SIXTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT, ROGER EDWARDS: Thank you.
[…]
CORPORON: And so, let’s first intro – Well, you heard the caller on Roger [Roy] Moore. So, before we get into your biography and start talking about primary-ing Mike Coffman, give me your take on Roy Moore.
EDWARDS: Well, it’s not so much “a take on Roy Moore.” It’s the construct that we have set up, that in my mind, is going to be increasingly dangerous as it moves through the — just the attitudes of Americans and things like that. You know, we all — whether you’re a man or a woman, or no matter who you are — there are all people who don’t tell the truth. I had happened to, one time, sit on a jury. And it was a date rape case. And the young man that came in was a really nice looking guy, had a suit on, and he was absolutely terrified. Because if he had been convicted of rape, he was looking at 15 to 20 years. The lady who came in – you know, we heard all the testimony and we looked at all the pictures. And he said it was consensual. She said it was not. The jury, at that particular point, was made primarily of women, it was majority of women.
CORPORON: I’m sure the prosecution did everything they could to make that so.
EDWARDS: Oh, yeah!
CORPORON: Yeah.
EDWARDS: Yeah. And so, when we got back in the jury room and started our deliberations, the women went crazy. They said, “This gal’s story does not match up. She is not telling the truth.” So, and in my own evaluation of the case, I didn’t think he was guilty either. So we returned a ‘not guilty’ verdict on this date rape case, her word against his. And in today, what we’re doing, we’ve set up this construct that you must be believed, [as an accuser of rape]. Well, I’m sorry. I’m going to be skeptical of these things. I’m especially going to be skeptical of something that comes from 30 years, 20 years [ago] — that is an old accusation. If you’re in the workplace –.
CORPORON: Forty years, in the case of Roy Moore!
EDWARDS: If you’re in the commercial world, and whether you’re a man or a woman, and the boss comes in and says, you know, “Where’s this report?! How come you don’t have this up?” and [your boss] starts being critical of your performance, all you have got to do is say, “You know, the guy is harassing me!” And now, the environment — the corporate environment, just the interactions of people – if we allow this to permeate through our system, it is going to become so corrosive that you won’t be able to talk to anybody, about –.
CORPORON: Well, you know, it’s a really good point. And with Roger Moore, of course they come up with the –.
EDWARDS: [correcting Corporon] Roy Moore.
CORPORON: Roy Moore. Yeah, sorry. You’re Roger.
EDWARDS: [laughs],
CORPORON: Roy Moore. I had somebody else do that on the radio. I forget what show it was. So, at least I’m not alone. But, the timing is just unbelievable. And of course they come up with the, what I call –. Part of my legal practice – we’ve got several lawyers and we do a variety of things, but our criminal defense portion — when you get somebody who is accused of a sex crime, then there’s already a presumption of guilt rather than the presumption of innocence. You know if you take that to trial –, which is why people take plea bargains all the time for things they didn’t do with a sex crime [allegation]. Because it is literally a life sentence, even if you get out of jail within a decade or so, you’re tagged forever. And – but then you tack – you add in a child allegation, which is what they did with Roy Moore – 14-year-old, inappropriate touching, as, uh, from a 32-year-old man. It’s the ‘ick factor’.
EDWARDS: Mm-hmm.
CORPORON: You get that heavy duty ‘ick factor’. Immediately, people cringe and you are guilty until proven innocent. But I was suspect right out of the gate just because of the source — Washington Post, just because of the coincidental nature of these four victims all of a sudden, you know, being found right — just coincidentally, I’m sure — a month before an election for a man who is been in public service, been thrown out of office, then reelected by the people for standing up on his principles, just the every bit of the timing and knowing how these Alinsky-ites who control the Democratic Party operate now, and then the attack by Mitch McConnell and the establishment Republicans [inaudible] seemed so well coordinated, so quick, so ready to pounce. I’ve read speculation that Mitch McConnell was — is part of the machine behind this effort to take out Roy Moore. [It will] be interesting to hear from Jenny Beth Martin later, because she’s got her nose on the ground in these important elections, and to see what she thinks about the survival of Roy Moore. So, it sounds like you’re with me, that with an allegation that is this old — as icky as it is, and the suspect timing, and now Gloria Allred with the yearbook that’s already falling apart — signatures that don’t match, dates and initials that don’t make sense – the man is an assistant DA [and] they always sign ADA if they use their initials, although I don’t know any prosecutors that do that — not DA — just all those things — won’t turn it over for analysis, won’t say whether there is a polygraph out there on her client. I just think all this stuff can be used very significantly to help support Roy Moore. And because I’m such a skeptic, and because I think the consequences of allowing that seat — a reliably Republican seat – to turn over to a Democrat, you can’t just put that aside. [impersonating someone who questions Roy Moore’s innocence] “Well, not on this moral issue!” It’s too important. You cannot put that aside. The consequences of giving that seat away would be very, very great. When you factor all those things together, and the simple lack — all the other girls even, and he clearly was dating younger girls. There is no question about that. But the other three said, “…mom’s permission,” … “we’d kiss and hug”… “If it went too far, I’d say, ‘Stop!,” he’d stop… “he was a gentleman.” So, I am not willing to throw a Roy Moore under the bus. It sounds like you feel the same way.
EDWARDS: Well, you know, when I was in the corporate world, prior to moving to Colorado, we had sexual harassment training from our legal staff. Any manager participated in that – in those classes. And just the regular workers participated in the classes. So in today’s world, if you’re a corporate entity and you don’t have some kind of sexual harassment training, you’ve got a real problem because that’s where your legal liability is going to come from, from an accusation that — how do you prove? Unless you have three people in a meeting, every time you meet –.
CORPORON: “He said, she said!” I get those cases in my office all the time! And people think, “Well, without some objective proof –.” No! People get convicted. They get fired. Their reputations are dashed by a mere allegation. And you’re –. So, you’re right. And we’ve got to be very, very cautious about that. And we can’t let a man who’s been vetted for 30 or 40 years — married, kids, grandkids, not a whisper — a lot of political, you know, attacks on him from people who disagree with him — but not a whisper of impropriety in his background. You simply cannot allow these kinds of allegations to wipe all that away.
EDWARDS: Right.
CORPORON: It would just be unfair.
EDWARDS: Mm-hmm.
CORPORON: So, before we get to our first break, we’re speaking with Roger Edwards. He has thrown his hat in the ring. He is the primary challenger — the announced primary challenger– only one so far, running against Mike Coffman in CD-6. You mentioned the corporate world. [Do you] want to take just a couple minutes and give people however much of your biography you think they should know as they start to assess you as a potential candidate, and especially, a potential Congressman.
EDWARDS: Well, they say that over your lifetime, you have six careers. And I have probably had six careers. I have worked, after –. Oh, I’ll just start at the beginning. After I graduated from high school, the Vietnam War was going on, and you either –. If you if you went to college, you got a deferment. So, I didn’t want to go to Vietnam, so I went to college. My second semester, I had nine hours of ‘F’, three hours of ‘D’, three hours of ‘C’, and the college sent me this nasty letter saying, “Don’t ever come back. You’re an idiot. We never want to see you again.” So, off to Vietnam I went. I enlisted. And after — that was a life-changing proposition. I came back, completed – uh, repeated all the ‘Ds’ and ‘Fs’, and was on the Dean’s honor roll. And I graduated with a degree in accounting. I worked in public accounting for a while. I worked in private accounting for a while. And then I moved to the private sector where I was essentially the business manager for a commercial organization.
CORPORON: So, you’re a numbers guy.
EDWARDS: Yes.
CORPORON: And the training that you got in the military, it sounds like, created a level of discipline and maybe even some self-respect and a desire to achieve and be successful that you didn’t have before you went into the military?
EDWARDS: Well, it taught me – and I had this within me, just from my family history. My dad was in the Navy. My uncle was at Pearl Harbor. So I come from a family that served. And it’s one of those things that – you know, sometimes within a person, you know that there’s something greater than yourself. And that’s – you know, I wasn’t particularly excited about going to Vietnam, but I knew there was no way that I was going to do anything to chicken out on that assignment.
CORPORON: Did you fight? Were you in combat?
EDWARDS: I was what you might call a forward air observer. We flew a prototype airplane that was designed by Lockheed. It was essentially the first stealth aircraft. It was a powered glider, and we flew at about 1500 feet and 80 knots. It had all the sound-deadening technology on it. So we could fly, we could fly above you and you couldn’t hear us. If you knew what to listen for, you could hear us. But the enemy couldn’t hear us.
CORPORON: Was it simply for reconnaissance, or did you ever drop anything on people? Or how did that go?
EDWARDS: [laughs] Yeah, we dropped a lot of things!
CORPORON: [chuckles] Like, did you have a hand grenade to throw over, or something –? I don’t know –.
EDWARDS: Well, we were equipped with the technology of a night vision scope. And what we would do is we would locate targets and then we would work with the artillery and helicopter gunships and naval bombardment and we would call in those strikes and on the targets that we found and we’d kill the enemy.
CORPORON: Were you able to fly high enough to be out of range? Or were you subject to being fired on?
EDWARDS: Oh, yeah! Fifteen-hundred feet, I mean, you know.
CORPORON: Wow!
EDWARDS: Yeah, any –.
CORPORON: Oh, you said that – fifteen hundred! Yeah, I’m a private pilot, so that’s not high at all!
EDWARDS: That’s landing pattern!
CORPORON: Yeah! So, all you had – the technology you had to be a stealth player was that you were quiet. You were a glider
EDWARDS: Yes.
CORPORON: You’d go out and glide back. Wow! Well, that’s – how long did you serve?
EDWARDS: I was in Vietnam for about 11 months.
CORPORON: K.
EDWARDS: And, uh –.
CORPORON: Did the war end, or –?
EDWARDS: Well, at that time, President Nixon was trying to cut the armed forces. So we got a month “early-out”.
CORPORON: Pete – I don’t want to drag –. We’ve got to take a break and you’re going to stay with us so we’ll get to know a lot more about you. We’re talking with Roger Edwards, who is running against Mike Coffman. He’s going to give him a primary run for his money. [I’m] Really looking forward to seeing how that works out. But, people have — so many people, if they haven’t taken some time to read, have a complete misunderstanding about the Vietnam War, and you know, think America hasn’t won a war since Vietna – actually, since Korea. That war is still technically ongoing. But we were on the verge of winning the war in Vietnam, when we bailed. And millions of people died as a result of us pulling out there. So, a topic for another day.
EDWARDS: And, that’s a reason – that’s one of the reasons that has motivated me to do this. And we can talk about it a little bit.
CORPORON: Sounds good! Let’s do that. It’s 6:21. We’ll take calls, as well, if you’d like. 303-696-1971. Your chance to get to know the brand new, freshly minted, recently announced primary candidate for Mike Coffman and Congressional District 6, right here in our own backyard. He stays with us. I hope you will, too. I’m Randy Corporon, filling in for Peter Boyles. You’re listening to 710 KNUS.
This concludes the first segment of Edwards’ interview with Corporon on the Peter Boyles Show from November 20, 2017. The audio for the entire interview can be heard from the link below:
