14 February 2011

Who Should Be Denver's Next Mayor?

Among the candidates running for Mayor in Denver, which will have a non-partisan election in May, followed by a runoff between the top two candidates if no one candidate gets a majority in the first round are:

City Council President Michael Hancock,
Councilwoman At Large Carol Boigon,
Denver Pre-School Program Director James Mejia
Councilman At Large Doug Linkhart,
State Senator Chris Romer (who stepped down to run for the post), and
almost a dozen other candidates with no serious chance of winning.

The election that ultimate put Mayor John Hickenlooper featured strong ethnically driven voting in the first round with Latinos mostly favoring the leading Latino candidate, African-Americans mostly favoring the leading African-American candidate, and whites mostly favoring the leading white candidate.

A similar outcome with Hancock capturing the African-American vote, Mejia capturing the Latino vote, and Romer probably emerging as the leading white candidate, seems possible this time around, although perhaps this time around the voting will be less ethnically driven, particularly in light of the fact that Denver Republicans seem to be converging around support for Hancock, in the absence of any actual Republican candidates in the race in an overwhelmingly Democratic jurisdiction.

I have some familiarity with, or have done some preliminary research on each of the top five candidates at this point, but would very much welcome input from readers and campaigns on the virtues of one candidate over any other in the comments.

2 comments:

Michael Malak said...

Everything seems to be running smoothly except for police brutality. Have any of the candidates mentioned the issue and how they would handle it?

Andrew Oh-Willeke said...

Police brutality was discussed at a recent Mayoral candidate forum.

"Hancock said "the scales of justice swing both ways" but that cops deserve their day in court to give their say. Boigon condemned the death of Marvin Booker, and said that the interim safety manager (who replaced Ron Perea after the scandal that erupted surrounding a video of Michael DeHerrera being brutally beaten by Denver police in 2009) deserved praise for helping to restore some of the trust that was lost in the wake of the release of tapes showing officers using excessive force."