March 03, 2023 12:10 PM UTC

Denver Mayoral Race: Unknown Candidates Who Don't Vote

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• by: Colorado Pols

There have been two interesting bits of news in the last 24 hours regarding the race to become the next Mayor of Denver — a campaign sprint that is about to kick into overdrive with ballots dropping in the mail beginning on March 13.

We’ll start with the biggest story: The first public poll of the crowded field of candidates shows that Denver voters don’t know much about ANY of the Mayoral hopefuls. According to a poll conducted by 9News/the Denver Gazette/Metropolitan State University:

Ballots go out in less than two weeks and SurveyUSA found that most voters — 58% of them — are undecided. Voters who do prefer a candidate are split across a field of more than a dozen contenders, with no candidate polling above 5% and a margin of error of 4.9%.

Lisa Calderon, Mike Johnston, and Kelly Brough each poll at 5%.

Denver’s open mayoral races without an incumbent have typically drawn crowded fields of candidates. But no race in modern Denver history, including the 2003 race in which John Hickenlooper emerged from relative obscurity to win, has featured such a fractured field so close to Election Day.

Here’s the graphical breakdown from “Next With Kyle Clark”:

Lisa Calderón took to social media to declare a minor victory, but the reality here is that pretty much every candidate is within the margin of error. In a poll with 594 respondents, the difference between 5% and 1% basically comes down to whoever answered the phone that day.

The other interesting news in the race comes from The Colorado Sun political newsletter called “The Unaffiliated,” which looked at the voting history for each of the 17 Mayoral hopefuls. Dating back to 1999, only three candidates — Kelly Brough, Chris Hansen, and Leslie Herod — have voted in virtually every election for either municipal or statewide elections.

Mike Johnston has failed to vote in a handful of elections, though his campaign claims that the voter file information is inaccurate and that he really did vote in the 2015 municipal election. Debbie Ortega missed the 2007 municipal election and failed to cast a ballot in a couple of Primary Elections prior to 2012. Calderón skipped Primary Elections in 2006, 2010, and 2014.

Some of the candidates for Denver Mayor have indefensibly-terrible voting histories. Republican Andy Rougeot has only even been a registered voter in Denver since 2018 and has only cast a ballot about half of the time he has had the opportunity. Trinidad Rodriguez rarely casts a ballot in a Primary Election. Al Gardner is a recent convert to the Democratic Party who didn’t vote in the 2003, 2005, 2011 or 2015 municipal elections. Kwame Spearman, Aurelio Martinez, and Robert Treta have rarely cast ballots in any election.

There are few things more irritating in politics than watching a candidate who rarely votes asking others to cast a ballot on their behalf. We’re reminded of Jaime Giellis, the 2019 Denver Mayoral candidate who didn’t even bother to vote in the 2018 Primary Election 10 months earlier. As Giellis said to Marshall Zelinger of 9News at the time, “I didn’t realize that there was a litmus test for being willing to step up and take a leadership role in the city.”

There isn’t a litmus test, but perhaps there should be; if you can’t do the bare minimum to participate in a Democracy, then you shouldn’t be asking voters to do the same for you.