April 05, 2023 01:11 PM UTC

What Just Happened? Assessing a Fascinating Election Day

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• by: Colorado Pols

Tuesday was a huge election night in Colorado, particular in Denver and Colorado Springs. But there were other big races across the country that can tell us more about how things might look in 2024.

Let’s start with the big headlines:

Denver Mayor and Public Financing

It appears that Mike Johnston and Kelly Brough will advance to the June 6 runoff election, matching the two candidates who had the most well-funded campaigns throughout the race.  Johnston’s place in the runoff is secure, but there is an outside chance that Lisa Calderón could surpass Brough once all ballots have been tallied in Denver.

Tuesday was also a sobering moment for advocates of Denver’s new Fair Election Fund (FEF), which used taxpayer money to help qualifying candidates greatly infuse their campaign warchests. We’ll dig into this more at a later date, but there were a few significant outcomes that do not bode well for the FEF experiment. Not only did FEF not magically advance the candidacies of lesser-known and unprepared candidates, it might have actually ended up increasing the impact of outside independent expenditure groups that FEF had intended to weaken.

The nine candidates who were outside the top tier of Mayoral hopefuls averaged a miserable 600 votes apiece, and only two of them even cracked the 1,000-vote mark. Ean Thomas Tafoya did the best of the bottom nine candidates; he collected a measly 1.29% of the vote despite receiving $156,000 in FEF money.

Running for office is easy. Running an effective campaign is hard. Handing out taxpayer money to unprepared or unserious candidates turned out to be a waste of money and time. Perhaps voter turnout would have been better in Denver had there not been so many names on the ballot — or if some of those names could have elevated a different subject other than just talking about homelessness like everyone else.

Yemi Mobolade

That’s a name you’re going to want to Google. A Nigerian immigrant and a Small Business Development Administrator for the City of Colorado Springs, Yemi Mobolade shocked political observers by easily winning the top spot in the runoff election for Mayor in Colorado Springs (May 16). Mobolade finished with nearly 29% of the vote, well ahead of second-place finisher Wayne Williams (20%) and Sallie Clark (18%). Mobolade’s spot in the runoff is set, but things are getting uncomfortably close between Williams and Clark as final ballots are counted.

Wisconsin Democrats Net Huge Win

This was probably the most closely-watched race in the country this spring, and Democrats delivered a resounding victory. Janet Protasiewicz defeated Dan Kelly by a 10-point margin, giving progressives a majority control on the hyper-partisan State Supreme Court for the first time in 15 years. This victory could lead to significant changes in a state that has favored Democrats for years but has suffered through a shamelessly gerrymandered legislature favoring Republicans. It might also foretell trouble for Republicans in 2024, since winning the Presidency will be a LOT more complicated if Wisconsin is leaning toward Democrats.

Behind abortion the most significant effect of the WI result https://t.co/K06DTJvHTc

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) April 5, 2023

Progressive Chicago

Brandon Johnson, a former public school teacher and union organizer, outlasted conservative Democrat Paul Vallas to become the next Mayor of Chicago. No Republican was going to become Mayor in a Democratic stronghold such as Chicago, but it is a not-insignificant outcome for the most progressive of the final contenders to end up winning the job in the third largest city in America.

Republicans Are Sad

On the same day that Democrats and progressive candidates were racking up big wins across the country, former Republican President Donald Trump was trying to process the fact that he now faces 34 felony counts in New York related to his efforts to pay hush money to a porn star.

Initial polling data seems to indicate that Trump’s indictment is giving him a boost among Republican voters — a very, very ominous sign for a Republican Party that should want nothing to do with Trump in a General Election. Instead, the GOP embrace of the first former President to be indicted for a crime in American history puts Republicans in an impossible position of trying to be the party of “law and order”…but not for everybody.