Over half of Pueblo’s current city councilors are running for mayor.
Councilor Lori Winner, who ran for mayor in 2018 and is not seeking an additional term for her at-large seat on council, is introducing an ordinance Monday that could prohibit that in future years.
If city council opts to place the ordinance on the November ballot and a majority of Pueblo voters approve amending the city charter, elected city officials would be required to resign from their position in order to run for another local, state or federal office.
The ordinance has a tight timeline to pass through council and amendments will be necessary at Monday’s city council meeting to meet election deadlines in Colorado law.
Why Winner wants to introduce the ordinance
Winner was not on city council when she ran for mayor in 2018 — but three city councilors were actively seeking to run Pueblo’s city government at the time.
Two of those councilors, Dennis Flores and Larry Atencio, are also currently on city council and are running for mayor again. Council President Heather Graham and Councilor Regina Maestri, both of whom were first elected to council in 2021, are also running this year.
Winner told the Chieftain that having multiple councilors running for mayor heightens the political atmosphere in council chambers.
The current group of city councilors are “distracted part-timers,” Winner said.
“They’re trying to oversee this multifaceted city government and it doesn’t work,” Winner said. “You need to either have a city manager that’s keeping the cohesive team together, or you need all these politicians to settle down and work with the mayor — and the mayor needs to be willing to work with them as well and not be a bully.”
Pueblo city councilors are only compensated for some part-time work. Councilor Vicente Martinez Ortega sponsored an ordinance earlier this year to boost council pay for the first time in over two decades, but it was defeated in a 3-3 vote in April.
What would really be a great fix, Winner said, is if city and county government merged and a total of seven county-wide officials were elected and paid for full-time work.
The Chieftain reported in 2018 that Winner supported the idea of a resign-to-run law, but she was not on council at the time. Winner could have run for an additional term in 2017 for an at-large seat, but she opted not to because she was campaigning for the 2A ballot question that raised sales taxes to fund public safety measures.
Winner also opposed the recent extension of the public safety sales tax in November 2022, partially because she felt the city wasn’t spending the money effectively.
Why Winner’s ordinance will face opposition
Flores told the Chieftain that he’s planning on voting against Winner’s ordinance. He opposed the idea in 2018 and still does.
“You don’t want to dissuade good people from running if that’s their passion and they shouldn’t lose their existing seat,” Flores said.
Flores said it’s “unusual” to have so many people on council running for mayor at the same time, “but it doesn’t mean that people can’t do both jobs effectively.”
He said that he puts a concerted effort into separating campaigning and his work as a city councilor, but the conversations he has with constituents while campaigning help inform his work on city council.
Graham told the Chieftain that Winner’s ordinance is rushed and she doesn’t think that it makes sense. She noted that having experience in some city offices makes people more informed and qualified for other governmental positions.
Although the ordinance wouldn’t be effective until after this election cycle, Graham said that city government wouldn’t be able to function if four councilors would have been forced to resign because there wouldn’t be a quorum.
Even though over half of councilors are running for mayor — Graham was the first to file with the city clerk’s office last year and the other councilors filed in recent months — Graham said that council has already been political for years.
She said that she makes a concerted effort to not mention her mayoral campaign during council commentary, but noted that other councilors are free to discuss whatever they want.
Winner said that she’s introducing the ordinance at this time because she was previously occupied with working on the charter amendment to abolish the mayor’s office and have a city manager again. That amendment ultimately failed. She said that a resign-to-run rule would make aspiring or current “career politicians” reconsider running for mayor because they would have to think about it more before committing to the race.
“If they were to resign to run, and they lost — which they will — it’s basically political suicide because they would have to wait for another city council position to be open, or they’d have to wait four years for the mayor position to be open again,” Winner said.
Mayor Nick Gradisar, who’s seeking an additional term as Pueblo’s first mayor in recent memory, told the Chieftain that it’s “pretty weird” there’s four councilors running against him this year.
He said that the resign-to-run concept “isn’t a bad idea” but said the ordinance is being introduced at the last minute and doubts that enough councilors will support it.
How the ordinance would have to pass
Most ordinances Pueblo City Council considers require two readings at publicly-noticed meetings. The first reading of ordinances is usually included in the consent agenda, but councilors can pull individual items to discuss.
The resign-to-run ordinance is scheduled for a first reading on Monday’s city council agenda.
Recently confirmed city attorney George Hypolite referred questions to city spokesperson Haley Sue Robinson, who said that council could vote to pull the ordinance from the consent agenda and amend it to be an “emergency” ordinance, but that’s the only way the ordinance would be able to make this year’s ballot.
The next regular city council meeting is scheduled for Sept. 11, but the deadline for Colorado county clerks to finalize ballot content is Sept. 8.
If a majority of councilors refer it to the ballot and city voters approve it in November, the measure would not be effective until January 2024.
A few other states have resign-to-run laws
Five U.S. states and several cities have laws that require public officials not seeking re-election to resign from their current positions if they want to run for another office.
Colorado Springs does not require candidates for mayor to resign before running, according to city spokesperson Vanessa Zink. However, the Colorado Springs city charter states that someone running for office needs to vacate their office after running for election, regardless of if they win the new office or not.
Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Texas and Florida require elected officials to resign from office before seeking most other positions. Florida’s Republican-run legislature recently passed a new law changing the requirement that carved out a loophole for Gov. Ron DeSantis to seek the Republican nomination for president.
Anna Lynn Winfrey covers politics for the Pueblo Chieftain. She can be reached at awinfrey@gannett.com or on Twitter, @annalynnfrey. Please support local news at subscribe.chieftain.com.
