May 04, 2011 08:33 PM UTC

Romer v. Hancock for Denver Mayor

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• by: Colorado Pols

(Cross-posted at Colorado Pols)

The field is set for the Denver Mayoral runoff, with the two longtime favorites in the race ready for the sprint to the June 7th winner-take-all election. It’s former state Sen. Chris Romer squaring off against former Denver City Council President Michael Hancock for all of Denver’s marbles.

The unofficial results show Romer taking the top spot with 28.49% of the vote, compared to 27.07% for Hancock (for a total difference of about 1,600 votes). But the most important person in this race may very well be the man who came in third, James Mejia, who grabbed 25.74% of the vote but ended up about 1,500 votes shy of second place. Mejia may hold the key to the Mayor’s office; if he endorses Hancock or Romer — and works hard to convince his supporters to do the same — that support could make the difference in June.

Romer may be able to still win the runoff without Mejia’s support, thanks to his fundraising ability and his tremendous advantage in name ID. But Mejia’s support is absolutely critical for Hancock, who will no doubt get absolutely hammered for his asinine City Council vote in March to approve a pay raise for Denver elected officials. Romer hadn’t used the issue in his early commercials, because as the frontrunner he didn’t need to attack any of the other candidates in order to make the runoff. But there’s no way that Romer won’t be unloading on Hancock over the pay raise vote, and Hancock doesn’t have a good answer in response. Unless Hancock can form something of an “anti-Romer” coalition, the key to which is Mejia’s support, we don’t see how he’ll be able to get out from underneath that one boneheaded vote.

We’re finally down to the final two in the race for what many politicos (including us here at Colorado Pols) consider to be the marquee elected position in Colorado. What say you, Polsters? Click below to vote…

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