On Monday, 420,000 ballots will hit the U.S. Postal Service — ballots marked with the names of 52 candidates who together have attended scores of forums and raised millions of dollars in a boisterous fight about Denver’s future. Denver Election Voter Guide Read all of The Denver Post’s election coverage — including candidate profiles, an overview of issues and candidate Q&As — in our 2019 Denver election voter guide. The mailing of ballots is the final step before voting begins in city elections, which culminate with Election Day on May 7. Ballots should arrive over the first few days of the week. Here is what you will see on them. The Denver mayor’s race. Incumbent Michael Hancock faces five challengers on the ballot as he tries for a third and final term: Lisa Calderón, Stephan “Seku” Evans, Jamie Giellis, Kalyn Rose Heffernan and Penfield Tate. The mayor is the city’s chief executive; he or she sets the budget, appoints department leaders and holds veto power over the Denver City Council. A district-level council race. Nine of the 11 district council members are seeking re-election, and most face challengers. Councilman Paul Lopez can’t run again because of term limits, while Councilman Rafael Espinoza has chosen not to run again. That means there will be at least two new council members. The council makes the city’s laws, approves or rejects contracts, makes decisions about land use and more. The at-large council race. Two “at-large” council seats cover the whole city. Each voter can choose two candidates, and the top vote-getters will take the seats. Incumbents Robin Kniech and Debbie Ortega are seeking re-election against multiple challengers. The city auditor’s race. Incumbent Timothy O’Brien is running unopposed. The auditor polices the finances and performance of city government and its contractors. The city clerk’s race. Debra Johnson, the current clerk, is retiring, and three candidates are running to replace her. The clerk and recorder oversees elections and city records, including marriage licenses All terms are four years. Voters also will decide the fate of two ballot questions: Initiative 300 would overturn the city’s camping ban, allowing people to use tents and other survival gear in public spaces, among other changes. Initiative 301 would decriminalize possession of psychedelic mushrooms in Denver. The Denver Post has published questionnaires from candidates and additional elections information on our online voter guide: http://dpo.st/voterguide. There also might be a second vote for some positions. In races where no candidate gets a majority, the city will hold a runoff vote between the top two candidates on June 4. (That doesn’t apply for the at-large race.) Voters can return their ballots through the mail with 70 cents of postage or take them to one of 28 drop sites across the city, which don’t require postage. The ballots will be a single sheet printed on both sides. Voters who prefer to vote in person or need a replacement ballot can visit one of seven vote centers. Locations are available at DenverVotes.org under the “Where to Vote” page. Any Denver resident who is a U.S. citizen over 18 may vote once registered. Residents can register online until April 29 through GoVoteColorado.com, or at a driver’s license facility or by mail. They can register up to or on Election Day at voter service and polling centers in Denver. There are numerous acceptable forms of ID, including student ID, passports, driver’s licenses and employee identification cards.<doc-sep>This is one in a series of Denver Post profiles on the candidates for mayor in Denver’s May 7 election. The first official words of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s re-election campaign were defiant. “I know they didn’t expect a crowd like this for this mayor,” he declared, taking the stage for his launch party in January. “But they don’t know me,” he said. “We’ve been on this journey together for a very long time.” Hancock’s ascendant biography once enraptured the city. He got national attention after winning the mayorship in 2011, a man who had come from nothing to lead America’s next boomtown. RELATED: A plan for Denver in 2040 is the controversial heart of the 2019 elections Eight years later, it’s a far different story. In 2019, the mayor is dogged on every flank by challengers who have questioned his character and hammered his record. They cast him as an avatar of unbridled urbanization, the leader whose ambitions have spun out of control into rising rent and unrecognizable neighborhoods. And the entire election is shadowed by the revelation in 2018 that Hancock sent suggestive text messages to a city employee six years earlier. A fast-talking man with a compact build who thrives on personal connections, Hancock has recognized the city’s shifting political terrain: Instead of economic success, he’s talking now about economic inclusion. He has statistics and bullet points — some prepared by his large campaign team and some thrown off the cuff — to answer every attack. But, on occasion, the frustration shows. It comes in snappy jokes and cutting remarks. “We suck in Denver, huh?” he declared sarcastically after listening to his opponents’ critiques at one event. At another forum, Hancock accused rival Penfield Tate of courting the same corporate interests that are supposedly corrupting the city. Now, after months of campaigning, Hancock was ready to let off some steam to a Denver Post reporter over a glass of red Turnbull wine. “I’m a pugnacious guy,” he explained toward the end of a 90-minute interview at his home in Green Valley Ranch, the suburban neighborhood at the edge of northeast Denver “I don’t think you grow up in a family of 10 and not be a little pugnacious,” he said, relaxing in a mauve button-up. “You learn to defend yourself. I don’t like injustice; I don’t like discrimination. Unfortunately, a lot of what they’re saying is unfactual.” Challenging the challengers The mayor responded to his challengers one by one, starting with Tate, someone he once “considered a friend.” Now, he said, “I sense the desperation and willingness to do anything.” He pointed to Tate’s call for a construction moratorium, and his goal to get homeless people off Denver’s streets in a matter of months: “Jesus of Nazareth wants to talk to you if you can solve homelessness in 100 days.” Challenger Jamie Giellis, who once worked closely with the administration, is being pushed as a candidate by the Zeppelin family of developers, Hancock said. The Zeppelins have targeted the administration since the city stopped cutting them loans, the mayor explained. “Kyle (Zeppelin) has had it out for me, from Day One,” Hancock said. “He told me in my office, ‘I’m going to find someone to take you out.’ ” Zeppelin denied making the statement and said he was critical of the city long before the funding dispute. And then there is Lisa Calderón. “You won’t find a person who’s smarter than Lisa Calderón, but she has an extremely inflated view of herself and her ability to affect change,” Hancock said. “She’s not really about change, she’s about the drama.” And they’re all aiming for Michael Hancock, who has never lost an election in 16 years of local governing. A reintroduction Hancock has spent most of his 49 years in Denver. So, after two terms on Denver City Council and two as mayor, he was surprised to hear his campaign staff’s advice this year. “It was a little weird for me to listen to my team saying, ‘You’ve got to introduce yourself,’ ” he said. Polling showed that people recognized the name, but knew little about the man. That’s why this year, the campaign has returned to one of Hancock’s most effective assets — his story. In his first 2019 television ad, his daughter Janae says this: “Sometimes, I ask my dad how he did it. He was 6 years old when his father left. Ten kids and a cold house, then homeless in a motel room. He went to six elementary schools in the third grade. And he’ll smile, and he’ll tell me how blessed he is,” she explains, closely mirroring his 2011 mayoral ad. Hancock’s early days were spent in constant movement between homes in Montbello, Five Points and finally Whittier. He was the youngest of the 10 siblings, though his twin sister, Michele, is only a few minutes older. “Everybody has a particular role in the family. The baby, the practical joker, always the one who was going to crack people up — the one that would bring people together for whatever reason,” is how Hancock described his role. At age 15, he told a local news anchor: “I would like to first go for City Council, and then I really see myself as being the first black mayor of Denver.” After attending Hastings College in Nebraska, he took jobs at the Denver Housing Authority and the nonprofit Urban League, won election to City Council in 2003 and then ran for mayor in 2011. He also took on responsibility within his family that belied his young age: He seemed to carry “the whole family on his shoulders,” as Michele Hancock put it in 2011, including through the terrible loss of a brother, Robert, to AIDS in 1996 and an older sister, Karen, to a domestic murder-suicide in 2002. Hancock would raise Karen’s children as his own. Hancock’s evolution Hancock’s campaign slogan is the same in 2019 as it was in 2011: “We are all Denver.” But his message has changed with the city. And to understand the change, you have to understand Denver’s recent history.<doc-sep>DENVER (CBS4) – Denver voters will go to the polls on May 7 to elect a new mayor and city council as well as to decide two initiatives. Michael Hancock is running for his third term but faces a crowded field. In order to win outright, a candidate must receive 50%+1 of the results. If no candidate meets that threshhold, there will be a runoff election between the top two candidates on June 4. Here’s a brief look at the six candidates in the order voters will find them on their ballots. (The order is determined by a random drawing.) Penfield Tate Tate is a Colorado native and an attorney with a long history of public service. He is a former state representative and senator. Tate previously ran for mayor in 2003, losing in the election eventually won by John Hickenlooper. Tate promises to make Denver carbon neutral by 2030 and wants to create a cabinet-level Department of Transportation to address the city’s congestion. https://www.tatefordenver.com/ Michael Hancock Incumbent Hancock is the two term mayor of the city. He was first elected in 2011. Hancock grew up in Denver, the youngest of ten children, raised by a single mother. Hancock has focused on investments in affordable housing and transportation as well as adding jobs during his terms. He promises to continue his commitment he began in 2011, saying “We are all Denver, and no one will be left behind.” https://hancockfordenver.com/ Kalyn Rose Heffernan Heffernan may be the most flamboyant of the candidates, self-described as the first queer, disabled artist running for the mayor’s office. She was born and raised in the metro area and has spent her life advocating for what she calls “marginalized, vulnerable communities.” “Make More Art” tops her campaign platform as she contends it allows us to “be our best selves.” http://www.kalyn4mayor.com Jamie Giellis Giellis is an Iowa transplant but politics are in her blood, her father was the mayor of her small hometown. She is the founder of an consulting firm that works with cities and neighborhoods on various projects. Giellis is the president of the RiNo Arts District. Giellis platform includes tackling homelessness, a transit network and helping small businesses. https://www.jamiefordenver.com/ Stephan “Seku” Evans Evans gathered enough petitions to be included on the ballot but does not have an official campaign site. Lisa Calderon Calderon is on the faculty of Regis University, teaching Criminal Justice and Sociology courses. She says her experience as a biracial woman means she knows what it feels like not to have her voice heard. Calderon says it is time to set a new direction for Denver by making it more affordable, more accountable and more humane. She has promised to create an independent agency free of the mayor’s office to build a system of checks and balances for the city. https://lisa4denvermayor.org/<doc-sep>This is one in a series of Denver Post profiles on the candidates for mayor in Denver’s May 7 election. Lisa Calderón’s house is classic Denver: painted red brick, intricate details on the wooden porch beams and yellow shingles beneath the peaked roof. For her, it is a symbol of everything that’s been lost in this city. “When you grow up poor — both my parents were teenagers — you’re already born into debt,” she explained as she settled into her living room, which she has painted a luminous turquoise. “You never really catch up to accumulate wealth. But it was drilled into us: Whatever you do, buy a home.” She bought into the Cole neighborhood in 2005, before its gentrification really accelerated, but she nearly lost the five-bedroom Victorian in the recession. Today she shares it with her adult daughter and two other women — a sign, she said, of just how hard it is for regular people to stay afloat in booming Denver. “What I feel like I’m emblematic of is a lot of the struggle of the middle class,” she said. Today, the home is a respite and a gathering place for her political campaign to upset the city’s power structure. All five of the mayoral challengers have sharply criticized Mayor Michael Hancock, but it’s Calderón, 51, who has clashed most dramatically with him over the years, including in federal court. And while her campaign has the least money among the four major candidates, she has built a deep network of supporters through decades of community work. The daughter of an African-American father and a Latina mother, she positions herself as the second wave of minority leadership in Denver. While Federico Peña and Wellington Webb led a revival of the city and put black and Latino people into city offices, Calderón says that she will bring a new mission: protecting communities from a system of power and development that she views as predatory. “We’re not the wealthy people who are downtown in the shiny towers living,” she said. “We are in gentrifying neighborhoods where we are struggling to stay.” Early life in “three worlds” Calderón is a tea drinker and an avid cyclist who prefers bright colors. She greets acquaintances with hugs — but never hesitates to issue a scathing critique of the city’s power players. This is Calderón’s first run for office, but she has been a constant presence at city hall and neighborhood meetings for most of her life. In her youth, life centered on her grandfather’s cinder-block house at 25th Avenue and Grove Street in northwest Denver, in the neighborhood they used to call the Northside. Her mother was one of 11 children, and she had Calderón at age 17. Calderón traces a dedication to work and attainment through her lineage. Her maternal great-grandparents and grandparents were migrant farm workers, but her grandmother’s work as a mechanic in World War II later gave them a “sense of freedom,” with a career and a paycheck. Calderón was born in 1968, a month before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, she notes. As a child of young, mixed-race parents, she fell into Denver’s race divides. “For a 17-year-old Mexican-American girl to have a little black baby — people would look at her, and look at me,” she said. She describes a life among “three worlds” — her black family, her Latino family and her white Catholic school. A shy kid, she spent her time reading and trying to understand why people treated her differently. Her mother, meanwhile, introduced her to the Chicano movement that was focused in Denver at the time. “I had my little 4-year-old fist in the air,” she told an audience at a campaign party, recalling a 1970s boycott of grapes led in part by Cesar Chavez. Later, Calderón would herself attend college as a young, single mother, graduating from what was then called Metropolitan State College. Briefly a high school dropout, she now holds a master’s degree in liberal studies from the University of Denver, a law degree from CU Boulder and a doctorate in education from CU Denver. She teaches at Regis University. Role in the city Lisa Calderón has constantly challenged Denver’s political class. At age 22, she was making headlines as she led protests for racial justice at Metropolitan State. Calderón, then the president of the Black Student Alliance, said she had been awakened two years earlier by the murder of a young student named Cameron Smith, a victim of misdirected gang violence. “After that, I was really angry because I felt that his potential was taken away from him and I still had my potential,” the young Calderón told the Rocky Mountain News. By then, she already had been labeled a “radical and a militant” — descriptions that she rejected. As an adult, she became a voice for criminal justice reform, especially in the area of domestic violence, which she had experienced. For years she was the legal and social policy director for SafeHouse in Boulder, a service provider for victims of domestic abuse. Later, when killings by police officers rocked Denver, she convened the victims’ mothers for action. She has called for more black leaders and structural changes for law enforcement. And, in recent years, she was a prominent part of the coalition that coalesced against Hancock around the expansion of Interstate 70 — a symbol, to her, of the neglect of north Denver. “We obviously lost that battle, but we ended up getting a $600,000 settlement with folks here in Globeville, Elyria-Swansea,” she said at a mayoral forum in Globeville. “In my administration, we will prioritize those neighborhoods, those communities that have been neglected by this administration and even past administrations.” Over the years, Calderón has developed a split reputation: To her opponents, she can seem “pointed, or direct,” or even “formidable,” according to longtime friend and colleague Cathy Phelps. But to others, she is a community convener with endless empathy.<doc-sep>
This is one in a series of Denver Post profiles on the candidates for mayor in Denver’s May 7 election. More than 100 people crammed themselves into the back room of a South Broadway storefront on a November evening. The venue was just the right size, barely containing the buzzing crowd. Soon the city’s newest mayoral challenger took the stage, to cheers, in a royal blue dress. “It’s time for a new generation of leadership in Denver,” Jamie Giellis said. “It’s time.” This was an irreversible moment: Giellis was launching an aggressive political campaign against incumbent Mayor Michael Hancock, whose administration she had worked alongside for years. Over the last decade, the 42-year-old had carved out an enviable niche in Denver. She was a leader who never faced election. She shaped the development of Denver’s fastest-changing neighborhoods, but she wasn’t a developer. Instead, she played a private-public role that’s becoming more common in American cities. In the coming months, she would campaign on the idea that development had run amok in Denver, including in the places where she built her reputation. Hancock’s “administration has damaged the fabric of our neighborhoods, excluding the voice of the people as the city’s grown,” she declared in her speech. “You know, you hit a point sometimes when you feel like you’ve done all you can do in one place,” Giellis explained afterward, straining to be heard over pounding club music. “I guess it felt like if I was really going to be able to impact change, I had to make the leap.” Out in the audience were the people who would immediately launch her campaign to the top tier of a crowded field. There was Kyle Zeppelin, the rebellious developer whose family has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Giellis’ cause; former City Auditor Dennis Gallagher; and Fiona Dixon Arnold, former director of Colorado’s economic development office. “I see so many things in this woman,” Arnold said of Giellis in a speech, “that I think give us a fighting chance to take our city back.” Now, with Election Day fast approaching, Giellis is the best-funded challenger in the field. She has proposed dramatic changes to the city’s development process, grabbing attention as she tries to differentiate herself from Hancock and the other candidates. But in the low-information world of local politics, there’s no sign of whether this gamble will pay off. Small town Two months into the campaign, Giellis sat for an interview at her home in Platt Park. The elongated living room was only half decorated — the contractors had just finished an expansion of the 1911 building, and blue painter’s tape still marked the walls. The neighborhood has become an in-demand spot in Denver, with a mix of older homes along an old streetcar commercial strip. Giellis lives here with her husband, Chris Giellis, along with her 8-year-old stepson and their dog. And, with a full-fledged mayoral campaign, there hasn’t been much time to hang pictures. “I’m probably a workaholic, for sure, and I definitely have a hard time turning off and saying no,” said Giellis, who stares intently during conversation. “I don’t like to fail, and I don’t like to give up. So I’m pretty stubborn that way.” It’s a work ethic that she traces to her roots in Leland, Iowa, population 300 and shrinking, where the “shy kid” played every sport and performed in musicals the marching band. Expectations weighed heavy on her. Her father was “extraordinarily tough” — there was no questioning the 6 a.m. chores. He was also the mayor. And her mother was a council member. And their family, the Ambrosons, had settled the town a century earlier. “I was the sixth generation of my family born in that town,” Giellis said, “and the last generation to be born there.” Today, she’s an “urban therapist to cities,” as she put it in a TEDx talk. So, how did that happen? She traces it to a high school semester in a midsize Finnish city. “Travel is the cure to kind of a closed mind,” she said. She worked as a television journalist after graduating from the University of Iowa, but quickly jumped to the world of communications — and then the public-private sector. Giellis at age 26 took over as executive director of the Cedar Rapids Downtown District. It was the kind of “improvement district” that has spread across the country in recent decades, a trend that Giellis would ride to success.