01 November 2005

Denver Election 2005: Early Winners.

I'll be up late watching the results for Referenda C and D (overwhelmingly supported in Denver), for which I spent about thirteen hours today campaigning, and the Denver At-Large School Board election, which will be won either by Brad Buchanan and Jill Conrad, who have together captured 88% of the votes at this early hour. Issue 100, the marijuana issue, is also surprisingly close.

The remaining issues and candidate races don't look close. Issue 1A (a new lodger's tax to pay for tourism), issue 1B (debrucing in Denver, i.e. eliminating TABOR spending, but not tax increase caps), issue 1C (housecleaning charter amendments), and issue 3C (a tax increase for a merit based pay system in the school district) all have comfortable leads. Incumbent Michelle Moss, in School Director District #2, Jeanne S. Kaplan, in School Director District #3, and Kevin Patterson, in School Director District #4, will all win by overwhelming margins of victory against token or non-existent opposition.

Referred Issue 5A concerning a tax increase for Green Valley's metro district, basically, Denver's "copville" is going down to an overwhelming defeat, which is also not too surprising, has there has been almost no visible campaign in the media to justify the increase.

The big picture is that Denver voters are willing to pay taxes to get services, while the state at large has a very large minority of the population that reflexively opposes any revenue increasing measure, no matter how dire the consequences.

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