Evan Semón Photography
Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce CEO Kelly Brough is a leading contender in the Denver mayoral race.
My colleague Luke Goldstein has written about the warring interests shaping the closely watched mayor’s race in Chicago, where there’s a general election on Tuesday. While this battle has the distinct odor of mid-century Democratic machine politics, the core question of whether grassroots social progressivism can prevail over corporate conservatism is playing out in other major cities as well.
For example, look at Denver’s mayoral race, which is also set for April 4th; if no candidate earns a majority of the vote, there will be a runoff on June 6. Because of the enormous field of 17 candidates, a runoff is highly likely.
The race comes after a decade’s worth of change and social struggle. Denver has not had an open mayoral seat since 2011—before the COVID-19 pandemic, before the Trump administration, before a racial and economic reckoning that continues across cities in education, housing, and police reform. Many recent mayoral races have demonstrated the public’s newly developed resistance to being sold a whitewashed version of history that puts business first and communities last in city management. In other cases like New York City, a heightened state of anxiety over crime and homelessness has predominated. But Denver’s story has yet to be written.
A large candidate field has emerged, each with promises and perspectives on how to better Denver. The city is dealing with a homelessness crisis, and a land development struggle, amidst an overall uncertain economic future for the larger metropolitan area.
Notable amounts of money have been spent on the race. As local outlets have reported, the money is coming from both known and unknown sources. The leading contenders for the race, Kelly Brough and Mike Johnston, have been the main beneficiaries. Brough is the CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, and she is running a business-oriented campaign; as Colorado Newsline reported, Brough has drawn in almost a million dollars from a fund backed by real estate investors and apartment developers. Johnston, a Democrat and former state senator, has been supported by a super PAC mainly funded by venture capitalist and co-founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman, which helped raise $1.3 million for the campaign.
It’s easy to argue that Lisa Calderon has been running the truly progressive campaign, even while bringing in significantly less money. Calderon has mostly been backed by the Working Families Party (WFP), which has donated almost $20,000 to the Calderon campaign. That is dwarfed by the prodigious spending of Brough and Johnston. Still, Calderon has held steady. All three of these candidates are at the top of the polls, with each getting 5 percent, according to a public SurveyUSA from late February. A whopping 58 percent of voters were undecided in that survey. That is the most recent poll in the under-the-radar race.
Brough stands out for a conservative campaign in a progressive city, running on ideas that sound compelling at a surface level, such as unilaterally ending homeless encampments (which avoids addressing the underlying issues) and focusing on building, according to a survey Brough filled out for Denverite, “for-sale housing on city-owned property.” But in a particularly tense social climate that has been increasingly experimenting with alternatives to homelessness, crime, and business, these ideas may not fly with the Denver populace.
Notable amounts of money, from both known and unknown sources, have been spent on the race.
While Brough was at the Chamber of Commerce in 2020, it came out against Proposition 118, a paid family leave proposal that the Chamber called a “legislative overreach on workplace standards.” Brough herself called the proposal a “$2 billion tax increase to fund a state startup,” presumably referring to the bill’s attempt to create a state family leave fund that employers and employees would have paid into equally. WFP, among other progressive outfits like the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition and NARAL Pro-Choice America, endorsed the proposition. It was loudly protested by business groups, and the legislative effort was abandoned. The bill was instead passed by voters through ballot measure in 2020.
Brough attempted to walk back her position on paid leave in a mid-March debate, stating that the opposition came from the bill not going far enough to compensate employees for time off. Calderon quickly—and accurately—labeled that as “revisionist history,” The Denver Post reported.
Calderon has been pushing the boundaries in the race, running on issues such as “decentralizing” the mayor’s office, focusing on small business, and constructing affordable public housing. The race will ultimately come down to how Denver as a city prioritizes pushing progressive issues.
Historically, Johnston has been a reliable Democrat, and there may be something comforting about the former state senator to Denver voters. But Calderon is familiar as well—she finished in third place in the 2019 mayoral race.
Whatever the outcome, the race has pitted commercial interests against social interests. And if nothing else, progressives are not going to let Brough, or anyone, rewrite history.
“She’s trying to sanitize the fact that she is the face of the business community and that is what her candidacy is,” said Wendy Howell, state director of the Colorado Working Families Party. “And we don’t think Denver voters should be confused about that: What she represents [are] the biggest corporations in Colorado.”
