Denver’s Largest Mayoral Race in 40 years

The list of candidates who made the ballot for Denver’s mayoral race have been finalized and the order in which they’ll appear set. A total of 17 candidates will appear on voter’s ballots with four write-in candidates confirming they are running, making this the largest race for the city’s mayor office in 40 years.

Ballots will go out by mail on March 13, and voters will have until April 4 to vote. If no candidate receives 50% of the vote, a likely outcome considering the size of the candidate pool, a runoff election will be held on June 6.

Leslie Herod

Reelected as State Representative this past fall, Herod has fought successfully for criminal justice reform, Black Lives Matter, and reproductive rights. She is the first LGBTQ Black woman to serve in the Colorado Capitol. She has a long track record as a community organizer and legislator, and recently got a state penalty for not filing required personal financial disclosures required of state legislators

Kelly Brough

Brough’s resume includes a year as the Chief Strategy Officer at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, a decade as CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce. Her time in the Chamber, and the exhaustive list of conservative positions it took on matters such as public health care and paid family leave, will be her biggest hurdle for her campaign in a progressive city.

Debbie Ortega

City Councilmember Debbie Ortega is currently serving her second time as council member, her first from 1987 to 2003. Ortega has fought for environmental cleanup throughout the state, as well as affordable housing. From 2003 to 2011, during her time away from city council, she served as the first head of the Denver Homeless Commission, and voted against Mayor Hancock’s urban camping ban.

Lisa Calderón

Calderón is a professor at both Regis University and the University of Colorado Boulder and has said that she became more involved in politics following an incident of police brutality involving her son. She rose to prominence, in part, as an antagonist of Hancock after the city canceled her jail reentry program contract, resulting in her filing a federal lawsuit against the city.

Andy Rougeot

Rougeot decided to run for mayor after an incident where he and his 2-year-old daughter discovered a man using their local park as a restroom. He is running as a “law and order” candidate and is the rare republican-registered candidate in an otherwise nonpartisan race. “I just want to highlight (that) I’m the only person in favor of enforcing the camping ban in this race, which to me is mind-blowing,” Rougeot tells the Denverite.

Tafoya is the current co-chair of the Colorado Environmental Justice Action task force and the founder of Headwater Protectors, which provides trash and water services to houseless people. The grassroots candidate has led several ballot successful initiatives, including the recently passed “Waste No More,” which mandated recycling in apartments and businesses, and the Green Roofs Initiative.

Wolf is an accredited investment banker who has worked at JP Morgan in New York and Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley in London. He last ran for mayor’s office in 2011 with a “free” campaign, meaning he wouldn’t accept campaign contributions. Wolf’s main priority is ending street houselessness. As mayor, Wolf promises to remove encampments from Denver’s streets and “shelter, identify” and diagnose” unhoused Denverites.

Rodriguez is the son of former Denver City Council and school board member Rosemary Rodriguez and describes himself as a city builder who grew up in public housing. As mayor, Rodriguez promises to declare a “state of emergency” over houselessness and push for involuntary holds for addiction and mental health treatment.

Former State Senator Mike Johnston has been a high school teacher, a published author, a CEO of the foundation of Gary Community Ventures, and an architect of affordable housing policies. Johnston promises to end houselessness in Denver in just one term in office. His plan includes the construction of 20 micro-communities to replace urban encampments.

Tattered Cover CEO Spearman comes to the mayoral race with a background in corporate America. He led and consulted at several successful corporations and headed an expansion at real-estate company Knotel, which filed for bankruptcy in 2021. He says he wants to be Denver’s “neighborhood mayor,” in the footsteps of former mayor Wellington Webb.

Terrance Roberts

Former gang member turned activist, Roberts is most known for his anti-gang organization in the Five Points neighborhood. In 2013, Roberts shot and paralyzed a suspected gang member after a group of men attempted to assault the mayoral candidate at a rally he was holding for his organization. A jury found that he was acting in self-defense, though he remains a polarizing figure after getting into a confrontation which almost turned physical, with members of the public during a 9News segment in 2021.

Aurelio Martinez

Former boxer and CEO of Inside Boxing Aurelio Martinez grew up in the Cole and Five Points neighborhoods. He has worked as a neighborhood organizer, advocating for more input from registered neighborhood organizations, and wants to see more housing for minimum and low-wage workers, as well as more community youth programs

Chris Hansen

State Senator Hansen has been a democratic leader in both the House and the Senate. He advocated for cutting property taxes, ending ties with businesses operating in Russia, and banning gas-powered lawn equipment. As mayor, Hansen has promised to keep the urban camping ban in place and focus on building affordable housing more quickly.

Al Gardner

Gardner has spent several years as an IT professional at Salud Family Health, as well as a member of boards and commissions throughout Denver, including the Denver African American Commission and the Citizen Oversight Board. He is in support of improving recruiting efforts for the Denver Police Department, which has been experiencing high turnover and vacancies.

James Walsh

James Walsh is an academic from CU Denver who studies immigration and labor movements. The grassroots candidate who’s staff includes a dozen students promises to make Denver the most “worker-friendly city in the country.” Walsh has proposed giving city workers access to collective bargaining, the creation of safe-use sites to address the city’s substance abuse issues, and the utilization of preexisting city resources to shelter unhoused people

Robert Treta

Treta has worked as a city contractor for over 20 years. He wants to see faster, more affordable permitting, as well as other incentives for developers to build affordable housing. Treta has also set his focus on infrastructure for electric vehicles and has promised to cut street sweeping tickets to $25 on day one of being in office.

Renate Behrens

Little is known about Behrens, who has minimal online presence. According to online voter records, she is registered as having no party affiliation.

Write-ins

Four candidates are voting as write-ins, which means they failed to get enough signatures to appear on the ballot, but you can write their name in on election day. Social justice activist Jesse Parris, Ballet dancer and singer songwriter Paul Fiorino, and cybersecurity company owner Abass Yaya Bamba are all running as write-ins, as well as one Matt Brady, who has yet to make public comment.

by Denny Patterson