Sotomayor opponent making a name for himself outside Colorado
Jim Pfaff of Colorado Springs is making a name for himself for being able to run successful campaigns on faith-based public policy issues.
Recently he’s turned heads as the leader of a campaign in Colorado against President Barack Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Monday, Sotomayor began her hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Republicans this week are expected to grill her about comments they say suggest her personal views may influence her high court decisions.
In his state campaign against Sotomayor, Pfaff says he’s fighting for judicial, social, fiscal and business issues. “I’m driven by these issues because they are so important for society,” Pfaff said.
Through his campaign, Pfaff hopes to influence U.S. Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennett, both Colorado Democrats, to vote against her confirmation.
John Andrews, a former president of the state Senate who has worked with Pfaff on the anti-Sotomayor campaign, said Pfaff gets things done because he knows how to relate to people no matter their political ideology.
“He’s a nice combination of intensity for his cause with the demeanor of a Christian gentleman,” Andrews said.
Ralph E. Reed Jr., a former head of the Christian Coalition in Washington., D.C., calls Pfaff “one of the greatest grass-roots organizers in the country, and I’m not surprised he’s getting national attention.”
For Pfaff, it’s all in a day’s work.
“I am a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order,” Pfaff, 44, said. “That is where I stand.”
In 2006, Pfaff headed the coalition that included Focus on the Family that resulted in the passage of Amendment 43, which defined marriage in the Colorado Constitution as between a man and woman, and defeated Referendum I, which would have allowed domestic partnership benefits in the state.
Two months ago, he began hosting his own conservative talk radio show, “The Jim Pfaff Show,” on 560 KLZ in Denver.
Pfaff has been involved in grass-roots campaigns since the 1990s. In 1998 he founded Innovative Research and Data Solutions, a public-policy grass-roots consulting company.
After working from 2005 to 2007 in public policy for Focus on the Family Action, the political arm of the Colorado Springs-based ministry headed by James Dobson, Pfaff was asked to head up Colorado Family Institute, which fights for social issues involving families and opposes abortion.
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