When Andy Rougeot landed at Denver International Airport in 2013 after a deployment in Afghanistan, the view of the city and the mountains beyond made him emotional as he drove down Peña Boulevard.
“This is after some service abroad, I’m excited to go see my girlfriend — now wife, and just being in near tears at the beauty of the city we live in,” he said of that memory. “It’s a special place.”
A lot has happened since then. Rougeot’s time in the U.S. Army ended. He’s earned a master of business administration degree from Harvard. He married his wife and the couple has welcomed two daughters. And now he is running for Denver mayor in the most crowded race in modern memory.
In Rougeot’s view, the city leadership has failed over the past several years to address crises around crime, homelessness and housing affordability. They are problems he is promising to help fix via much stricter enforcement of the city’s camping ban and a drive to hire 400 more police officers.
Explaining what motivated him to run, Rougeot shared a story of taking one of his daughters to a playground near the family’s home in the Highland neighborhood only to find a man using the park as a bathroom. Another experience that shapes his view of where Denver is and what it needs in its next leader came on Christmas Eve when he says someone tried to pry open the backdoor of his neighbors’ home while they were inside.
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“You think about how that will stick in that family’s memory every Christmas Eve from then on,” he said. “That’s not a feeling for any family to have in our city.”
Rougeot is a political neophyte. He never had political ambitions before this race, he said. He most recently owned and operated a commercial maintenance business focused on fixing gates at self-storage facilities.
He is direct when asked what he hopes to achieve in office if elected over his 16 opponents on the April 4 ballot.
“My metrics will be very clear. I will be a successful mayor by reducing homelessness, by reducing crime (and) reducing the cost of housing in this city,” Rougeot said. “It’s something where the voters can hold me accountable. All or many of the other candidates who are running will make sort of mealy-mouthed promises that can’t actually be measured.”
Rougeot wore a tan Carhartt work jacket and lightweight military-style boots to his interview for this profile. His military service and work in a blue-collar industry contrasts with some of many of his mayoral opponents, some of whom have years of political experience at the state and local level.
Rougeot is also a candidate with considerable financial means as evidenced by the fact he is essentially self-funding his campaign. As of the end of January, he had given his own candidate committee $750,000. That’s enough to make him the second-best funded candidate even though he opted not to participate in the Fair Elections Fund, the voter-approved program that provides public financing to qualifying candidates.
“I am not taking taxpayer dollars to spend on my political ambitions,” Rougeot said. He has called the Fair Elections Fund a subsidy for the political consultant class in Denver.
One other thing makes Rougeot unique in the broad field. In a deeply liberal city, he is a registered Republican. Denver municipal races are nonpartisan and Rougeot doesn’t feel his political affiliation will matter when it comes to what he is offering voters.
“When I talk to people in Denver, people are fed up with how our city is,” he said, adding that voters tell him they are open to a candidate of any background so long as that person can actually make the city safer and more affordable. “I think this is an election between the people that made those promises for however long and failed to deliver versus someone who credibly can fight for our future on these issues.”
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