DENVER — Two moderate candidates, Mike Johnston and Kelly Brough, are on the cusp of facing each other in a runoff election to name Denver’s next mayor.
In the latest round of results from the 2023 municipal election, Johnston had 24.5% of the vote, tops among the 16 candidates who appeared on the mayoral ballot. Brough meanwhile claimed 20% to come in second place.
With just over 2,400 ballots left to be counted, Johnston, a former state senator and past failed gubernatorial and Senate candidate, has claimed 41,926 votes. Brough, the former head of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and chief of staff to then-Mayor John Hickenlooper, has 34,375, according to the latest tabulation released by the city’s elections division at 2 p.m.
One candidate needed to be picked on more than 50% of all ballots cast to win the office outright. Instead, Johnston and Brough are now headed to a runoff election as the race’s top two vote-getters. The runoff will be decided via a second round of voting that concludes on June 6, naming the city’s first new mayor in 12 years.
A handful of military and overseas ballots may still be returned before the deadline for those voters next week but Johnston and Brough’s margins appear safe based on the outstanding vote. The results of the first round won’t become official until they are certified on April 20, the elections division emphasized.
Brough held on to beat out the much more progressive Lisa Calderón to make the runoff, according to unofficial results. The professor and criminal justice reform advocate, who was endorsed by the Denver chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, had just 14.4% of the vote when the first batch of results was released at 7 p.m. Tuesday but surged as ballots turned in on Election Day itself were tabulated. As of the latest release, Calderón had 18.2% support. Her 31,164 votes are still 3,211 shy of Brough’s second-place total.
Johnston was in first place when initial results were released and his share of returns remained steady throughout the counting process.
By Wednesday, the former state senator was already talking about ways his campaign could attract voters who backed other candidates to his camp to win a majority in June.
“You have 14 candidates who built really great coalitions of support who are now looking for a new candidate, and we’re working really hard to get support from all those people and those neighborhoods and those groups,” he said.
He felt that his focus on providing detailed plans to tackle the city’s biggest problems, especially its housing shortage, helped propel him into the runoff.
“I think Denverites really resonated with our sense of optimism and hope and change,” he said.
Reached on Tuesday night with results still in doubt, Brough said she was “thrilled and frankly honored to have so many people supporting us and our vision for the city.”
She believes that her experience working in the Hickenlooper adminstration and running the city’s human resources department convinced many voters she is ready to lead. Her personal struggles, including losing her husband to suicide after he struggled with addiction, leaving her as a single mother to two daughters, also resonated with the Denverites she talked to, she felt.
“Truthfully my goal was just making sure people know me,” she said, adding that if she does make the runoff she plans to keep meeting with people in their homes and at coffee shops as she did in the first phase of her campaign
Johnston vs. Brough does profile as a race between two candidates with a lot of similarities. Both are well-established in Denver political circles even if Brough had never run for office before.
Both have suggested standing up more sanctioned, short-term housing solutions for people living homeless on the city’s streets, Brough in the form of designated campsites with Johnston via “micro-communities” of tiny homes. Neither has endorsed repealing the city’s camping ban meaning sweeps of encampments could still happen. Brough’s position stands out against Johnston’s in that she has said her administration would arrest people as a last resort if they refuse to move to city-offered campsites or reject services like drug treatment programs.
Brough was the race’s top fundraiser with $1.4 million including $750,000 from the taxpayer-supported Fair Elections Fund, the most a mayoral candidate could collect through the program. Johnston was second with $1.3 million including $613,539 in Fair Elections Fund dollars.
Johnston has by far the largest independent expenditure committee backing him, with more than $2.2 million in spending recorded as of Election Day. The committee backing Brough, meanwhile, has spent just shy of a million dollars. Those committees aren’t allowed to coordinate with candidates but are also not subject to campaign finance limits.
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