Dick Wadhams
The City of Denver will finally elect a new mayor in June after the office has been vacant for the past 12 years.
Or at least that would a reasonable conclusion if one has been listening to the tone and substance of this campaign for mayor.
The “missing man” in the innumerable debates and forums with 17 candidates held before the April 4 general election and, now, in the June 6 runoff between the two survivors, Mike Johnston and Kelly Brough, has been the 12-year incumbent, outgoing Mayor Michael Hancock. His policies are the backdrop for this election.
Mayor Hancock has been rarely invoked, if ever, as every one of the candidates throughout this campaign has described in sobering detail the decline of Denver in terms of increased crime, homelessness and drug abuse. Though none of the candidates have overtly attacked Mayor Hancock for Denver’s decline, neither have they gone out of their way to embrace him or his policies.
And though endorsements by previous mayors and mayoral candidates have been flying in this race, the silence has been deafening by the two finalists on whether they would seek an endorsement from the current mayor. You almost get the sense they both hope the other one would get it. It was probably a relief to both candidates when Mayor Hancock announced he would not endorse any candidate as his successor.
Perhaps they should be asked in a future forum if they want the endorsement of Mayor Hancock. I suspect their fervor for endorsements would suddenly diminish.
Mayor Hancock is certainly not solely responsible for Denver’s decline. The COVID pandemic and resulting economic downturn were historic events that would have challenged any mayor.
But just like when President George W. Bush was held accountable for the economic meltdown of 2008 and President Donald Trump was held accountable for the response to the COVID pandemic and economic decline of 2020 — as each of them should have been — Mayor Hancock cannot duck the fact he was running the City of Denver during an extraordinary period of increasing crime, homelessness and illegal drug abuse that started well before COVID ever hit.
Nor is Mayor Hancock the first mayor to preside over an increase in homelessness. At least he did not declare with great fanfare he would eliminate homelessness in 10 years as former mayor and now-U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper did with his lavishly funded “Denver’s Road Home” project in 2005.
Denver’s homelessness not only increased, serious questions were raised by fiscal watchdogs about how millions of dollars were unaccountably spent for the failed program. Perhaps that is why Hickenlooper never mentioned “Denver’s Road Home” during his 2020 Senate campaign.
Denver voters had already expressed doubt about Mayor Hancock when he survived a tough campaign for a third term in 2019 after he had been reelected with 80% in 2015. Several challengers surfaced ranging from respected former Denver state legislator Penfield Tate to Democratic Socialist leader Lisa Calderon. When Denver businesswoman and political neophyte Jamie Giellis emerged as his opponent in the run-off, the Hancock campaign raised subtle questions about whether Giellis harbored racist views before winning a 56-44 victory.
The Hancock administration has several respected, talented individuals who have valiantly worked to try to hold the city together during these past several years. I know they take umbrage with characterizations of Denver as a city in decline even though that has been the underlying theme of this entire mayoral campaign by the candidates themselves.
But it does beg these questions: Is Denver better off than it was four years ago? Or eight years ago? Or 12 years ago?
Dick Wadhams is a Republican political consultant and a former Colorado Republican state chairman.
