Rapidly growing Denver to pick new mayor amid mounting big-city problems

Denver will choose its next mayor Tuesday in a runoff election between two moderate candidates seeking to lead a rapidly growing city faced with out-of-control housing costs and increased homelessness.

The city has become the tech and business hub of the Mountain West but now faces problems similar to those in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Kelly Brough, the former president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, faces Mike Johnston, a former state senator. Johnston and Brough were the top two vote-getters in a 16-way race in April, sending the race to Tuesday's runoff.

Johnson was ahead of Brough by about 8,000 votes according to unofficial early returns Tuesday evening after polls closed, according to the city Office of the Clerk and Recorder.

The job of Denver mayor has launched careers, notably that of John Hickenlooper, a Democrat who went on to become Colorado’s governor and is now a U.S. senator. Another Democratic mayor, Frederico Peña, went on to become U.S. Energy Secretary under former President Bill Clinton.

A tech and aerospace hub, the Denver metro area’s population has almost doubled over the past three decades, reaching 3 million. Fears that rapidly growing Denver is lurching toward a fate like other major cities defined the race.

Candidates debated whether to enforce a ban on growing homeless encampments, further fund the police, impose rent control and allow what are often called “safe injection sites” — where people may use drugs under supervision to prevent overdoses.

Johnston, who got slightly more votes than Brough in the April election, has said voters want the next mayor to do a good job of taking multiple approaches to problems.

“We do have the same problems that San Francisco and Seattle face,” he said in April. “If we get that wrong, you end up like a lot of other big cities where no middle class people can live."

Brough campaigned on her knowledge of Denver and experience as a CEO. Besides leading the Denver chamber of commerce, she has been chief strategy officer for Metropolitan State University of Denver and was Hickenlooper's chief of staff for three years when he was mayor.

Current Mayor Michael Hancock has run the city since 2011 and is term-limited. Legacies of his administration include the ban aimed at curtailing homelessness.

Denver's homelessness rate has grown by over 12% over the past two years. Whether to enforce the ban divided candidates in the April election but Johnston and Brough both have said they would enforce it.

The future mayor will also inherit a city experiencing a rise in gentrification, the highest crime rate in decades, and a surge in opioid overdoses that reached 473 deaths in 2021.