For the first time in a dozen years, Denver residents can count on a new boss at city hall after this spring's election.
Early, unofficial returns posted Tuesday night after polls closed showed former state Sen. Mike Johnston and former Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce CEO Kelly Brough leading the field of 16 candidates vying for the chance to take over from term-limited Mayor Michael Hancock, who was first elected in 2011, the last time an incumbent wasn't asking voters for another term.
Since neither candidate surpassed 50% of the vote, the race goes to a June 6 run-off between the top two finishers, with mail ballots set to go out to voters in six weeks.
With a little over 23,000 more ballots be tallied, Johnston led with 24.51%, followed by Brough at 20.64%, with the next-closest finisher, criminal justice advocate and organizer Lisa Calderón with 17.37%.
Mike Johnston, Kelly Brough headed toward runoff in Denver mayor race
It was a near certainty that the race would head to a June run-off, with 17 candidates qualifying for the ballot and most of them receiving funding under the city's new public campaign financing system. Days after ballots went out, one of the candidates, Tattered Cover co-owner and CEO Kwame Spearman, withdrew and threw his support behind Brough.
While the sprawling field narrowed somewhat to the roughy half dozen candidates who have either held office, run citywide in previous elections or were among the fundraising leaders, that still left an array of choices on an already crowded ballot, possibly pushing voters to postpone their decisions until the last possible minute.
Denver voters cast just over 175,000 ballots for a 38% turnout rate, roughly on par with recent mayoral elections, the city's elections division reported late Tuesday. Nearly 80,000 of the ballots received — around 44% of the total — were cast on election day, with almost 55,000 of those arriving in the final two hours before polls closed.
Election officials said they planned to continue processing those ballots on Wednesday and begin posting more results at 2 p.m.
Late Tuesday, Calderón's share of the vote was inching up while Brough's was falling slightly. Calderón insisted she would catch up, since her supporters were more likely to be among the late surge of ballots cast on election day. But unless the mix of remaining votes changes, Brough appears destined to go head-to-head with Johnston.
Denver records highest single day total of cast ballots, still lower than 2019 turnout
Expect the final round to be more focused — and more expensive — as the two remaining candidates clash on their visions for a city ready for a change.
If early results hold, the two candidates who brought in by far the most money for their campaigns and for outside spending efforts supporting them also turned out the most votes.
By nearly every measure, Johnston and Brough saw more dollars flow into their coffers and spent on their behalf, and it wasn't close.
Johnston reported raising $686,789 in donations and collected an additional $613,539 in matching funds from the city's inaugural Fair Elections Fund program, while Brough took in $677,410 in donations and got the maximum $750,000 in matching funds. The only other candidate who approached their campaign bankrolls was self-funder Andy Rougeot, a first-time candidate and the only Republican in the race, who raised more than $900,000 but didn't participate in the public financing option.
But it was in outside spending by independent expenditure outfits where the two front-runners stood head-and-shoulders above the rest, with Johnston's backers spending more than $2.2 million and Brough's supporters chipping in nearly $1 million. The next-closest recipient of outside spending was state Rep. Leslie Herod, who enjoyed around $170,000 in third-party spending.
The disparities in outside spending showed, as ads supporting Johnston and Brough blanketed the airwaves and streaming platforms in the closing days of the election, bolstering ads the two candidates had been running for weeks.
Mike Johnston surges ahead in Denver mayor's money race with outside support
Both Johnston and Brough claim widespread support from small-dollar donors. Brough reported donations of $50 or less — the amount that triggered matching funds — from 1,736 individual donors, while Johnston received that level of contributions from 1,478 donors.
The profile of the outside funders for each differs widely, however, with Brough's supporters including some of the city's most prominent developers and Johnston's backers including high-profile billionaires from around the country.
Both candidates in the nonpartisan election are Democrats, running in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, where Joe Biden beat Donald Trump with nearly 80% of the vote in 2020, for the Democrat's strongest performance in any Colorado county. But election watchers say there's plenty of shading between the two on hot-button issues and plenty of distinctions for voters to consider.
It's Brough's first campaign, though she considered running for mayor in previous cycles.
"This is the first time I've run for office," she told supporters on election night. "We didn't have a foundation or a base. People said there's no way you can get this thing off the ground — and your support changed everything. It reinforced my belief that we can address some of the greatest challenges we have faced in our city, because we're coming together to do it, and this campaign has proved it."
It's the third time Johnston has run for office since facing he faced term limits in the northeast Denver state Senate district he represented from 2009-2017.
Johnston came in third in the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary, behind then-U.S. Rep. Jared Polis and former State Treasurer Cary Kennedy, and he was among more than a dozen Democrats hoping to take on Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner in 2020 but withdrew after former Gov. John Hickenlooper — also a former two-term Denver mayor — jumped in the primary. Polis and Hickenlooper each went on to win the general election.
"I'm always focused on ideas — what are the ideas that you care about?" Johnston told Colorado Politics late Tuesday. "And on record, you know, I think both of those matter what have you done in the past and what do you plan to do in the future? Those are the things that will always be important to me and I think are important to voters. I don't care about personal differences or personal animosity — that doesn't exist for me. My only focus is on what have I done that has shown I have a track record to get these things done, and what do I plan to do in the future? I think our record and results and plans are going to be what matters the most to Denver voters."
Calderón finished in third place in the first round of Denver's last mayoral election, behind Hancock and urban planner Jamie Giellis.
The incumbent office-holders among the crop of mayoral candidates all finished further back in the pack: Herod, coming in fifth place with about 9.5% of the vote, followed by state Sen. Chris Hansen with just over 5% and at-large Councilwoman Debbie Ortega with about 4.5%.
Only one of the remaining nine candidates who trailed Ortega broke 1%, with community organizer Ean Thomas Tafoya finishing just that mark.
Denver mayoral candidates court voters in final days of election
Both of the candidates likely headed to a run off spent the weeks before ballots were due criss-crossing the city, meeting voters in neighborhood gathering places.
Brough told The Denver Gazette she was feeling good about the election moments before the first results posted.
"My goal was to make sure voters knew who I was and what my plans were," she said, adding that she "felt a lot of love" from voters as the campaign neared the finish line.
Brough's "Coffee with Kelly" meetings each drew dozens of voters as election day approached, she said.
Johnston visited brewpubs and coffee shops as part of what his campaign called a "3D" tour — standing for drafts, donuts and doors — in all 78 of Denver's neighborhoods in the 10 days before ballots were due.
"I think people seeing Mike out in their communities, being able to talk to him face to face, got us where we are today," Johnston's communications director Jordan Fuja told Colorado Politics late Tuesday. "Mike has a broad base of support — it's a lot of people who are ready for a mayor who can actually fix the tough problems and bring a lot of people together."
Denver Gazette reporter Alex Edwards contributed to this story.
