When Mike Coffman won the Aurora mayor’s office in 2019, he did so by a hair — and netted just shy of 36% of the vote in a crowded race to lead Colorado’s third-largest city.
In the Nov. 7 election, voters in the state’s most racially and ethnically diverse city will decide whether to give the former Republican congressman a second term as mayor. He’s got a battle on his hands, facing outspoken first-term City Councilman Juan Marcano, a progressive Democrat, as his leading challenger in a three-way race.
While Aurora’s elections are officially nonpartisan, Marcano and a bloc of Democratic council candidates who are vying for five other seats on the ballot are hoping to restore the council’s leftward lean. In 2021, Coffman-supported candidates swung the majority on the 11-member council — which includes the mayor — in conservatives’ favor, after two cycles that had seen liberal gains.
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The election’s outcome, and the resulting balance of power, likely will affect Aurora’s approach to a growing homelessness problem and responses to concerns over policing and public safety. The suburban city also is contending with rising housing costs and neighborhoods’ efforts to stem gentrification as redevelopment prices lower-income families out of areas that used to be affordable.
Coffman, 68, said that when he first ran for city office, voters were more concerned with what he saw as traditional suburban issues: quality of life, economic growth and transportation. But this election is different — and he doesn’t see Aurora going back.
“In the last four years, the issues have become much more urban,” he said. “It’s really about race, poverty and crime in this city.”
For Marcano, 37, the election will decide whether it’s time to lead Aurora in a different direction and ensure that city leaders address the problems facing communities that the city has underinvested in or neglected.
“They’re asking for (higher) wages,” he said. “They’re asking for rent control. They’re asking for more affordable housing, and they vibe with the root-causes-of-crime approach” to public safety.
The top campaigns have reported a combined $304,330 in contributions — about $214,708 to Coffman’s campaign and $89,623 to Marcano’s, according to the latest finance reports.
The third candidate in the race, Jeff Sanford, 58, is a program analyst for a federal agency. He hasn’t raised any money and has run a limited campaign.
Sanford said he decided to run after discussions about a potential ballot measure that attracted significant attention earlier this year: Should Aurora adopt a strong-mayor form of government, similar to Denver’s?
As it turns out, voters won’t decide that question yet. Coffman financially backed the campaign that had hoped to put that question to voters, but it missed the deadline to make the 2023 ballot. That measure may be part of a future election, but for now, the winner of the mayor’s race will still sit on the council and take part in votes — serving in a full-time capacity while much of the administrative power lies in the office of the city manager.
Aurora’s growing population is approaching 394,000, according to census estimates, and it is the largest Colorado city with municipal contests in the fall election. Its ethnic makeup is 44% non-Hispanic white, 29% Hispanic or Latino, nearly 17% Black and nearly 7% Asian.
Different backgrounds, visions for Aurora
The candidates bring different backgrounds and visions for the city.
Coffman, raised in Aurora, was born into a military family and is a veteran of the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps, and he has a long history in Colorado politics. He ran for mayor after losing a reelection bid for a sixth term in the U.S. House in 2018 to now-U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat.
Coffman also has served in the state legislature and as state treasurer and secretary of state. He founded a property management company in Aurora and worked as a partner for 17 years. He is divorced.
He said he’s running for mayor again to continue the work he started during his first term on crime, homelessness and housing affordability. Often he’s taken a tough-on-crime approach, and he spearheaded the city’s camping ban.
Marcano, born in Puerto Rico, said his “solidly middle-class” parents moved the family to the southern U.S. mainland before settling in Houston when he was about 10. Marcano and his wife moved to Colorado in 2007 and have lived in Aurora for nearly nine years. Marcano has a professional background in architectural and construction design.
Voters elected Marcano in 2019 as the Ward IV City Council member, representing a district that currently straddles Interstate 225 south of East Mississippi Avenue.
He’s been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America for several years. But he split with the organization this month, citing his disagreement with a recent statement by the Denver DSA chapter that expressed “unequivocal” support for Palestinians and their “right to resist,” stating that the “negative blowback of apartheid should come as no shock …”
Marcano wrote in a response letter that the statements of some DSA chapters, including Denver’s, “flirt with or actively attempt to condone the war crimes committed by Hamas.”
Marcano says he’s running for mayor to better represent the interests of the community, particularly as someone who speaks the same language, Spanish, as much of the city’s immigrant population. He’s also a renter and said that gives him an understanding of high housing costs.
Sanford, an Aurora resident for more than three decades, has served in the U.S. Air Force and has worked in the public and private sectors. He has no prior political experience. Though affiliated as a Democrat, he says he has no strong political allegiance.
He’s not fundraising, he said, because he doesn’t believe elections should be bought. He also isn’t spending time knocking on voters’ doors or seeking endorsements. He said that if elected, he would create a citywide masterplan that’s all-encompassing, delving into the city’s vision, its finances, city infrastructure and plans for the environment and sustainability. He also supports making Aurora its own county and said his overarching goals would address issues such as homelessness — a problem of housing affordability, he says — and public safety.
He sees Marcano and Coffman as sitting on opposite extremes.
“We need decisive leadership right now to change the course that the city’s going forward with for (the city’s) reputation and future growth,” Sanford said. “If we don’t, we’re going to be stagnated.”
Party leanings bring differences in approach
The Aurora election has not gone unnoticed by both the state GOP and Democratic parties, with party-aligned groups spending money on voter outreach and mailers as they attempt to influence the city’s political direction.
Party leanings have resulted in starkly different approaches on several issues in Aurora. Coffman and his council allies have taken a harder line on homelessness, an issue where the mayor got involved personally in a way that spurred backlash from progressives.
In 2021, he earned media attention after it was revealed that he posed as “Homeless Mike,” a homeless veteran, and slept in encampments and shelters for a week in Denver and Aurora. Based on his experience, he attributed people’s decision to live outside as a lifestyle choice largely made due to drug use. Some critics called it an ill-informed performative exercise.
In 2022, after the council’s makeup changed, Coffman led the successful effort to pass an urban camping ban, which had failed under the previous council.
If reelected, Coffman said, his plans include creating a campus for people who are homeless, modeled after one in Colorado Springs, with three categories of housing: a low-barrier shelter, housing for people who are getting services for mental and behavioral health problems, and transitional housing for people who just need a little assistance as they continue to work.
The end goal is getting people employed.
“We have to get them off the street. We have to get them into treatment. We have to get things stabilized,” Coffman said. “So my approach is to … have all the services in place before I become more aggressive in terms of getting them off the street in a punitive way.”
Marcano wants to repeal Aurora’s camping ban, which he says has proved ineffective. He believes in a housing-first model, like that implemented by Houston — an approach that prioritizes getting people off the street and into stable housing without first requiring them to get addiction or mental health treatment. People who are homeless also would receive case management and other supportive services, with the housing interspersed throughout the city.
“What that looks like is instead of getting swept to the other side of I-225, or from Iliff and Peoria out to the Cherry Creek Reservoir, you get swept into housing with wraparound services,” Marcano said.
Public safety in focus
Public safety has become another politically fraught issue in Aurora. A few months before Coffman was elected, 23-year-old Elijah McClain, a Black man, died after a violent arrest during which he was injected with ketamine. The 2020 racial justice protests reignited calls for accountability for McClain’s death, resulting in changes in state law and criminal charges against the city’s police officers and paramedics.
A 14-month investigation by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office found a pattern of racially biased policing, requiring court-ordered reforms. Chief Vanessa Wilson was hired in 2020 during a tumultuous time for the department, and she was fired in 2022 in a controversial move that split the City Council’s conservatives, who pushed for a change in leadership, and progressives. Art Acevedo is now serving as interim chief.
As policing in the city faces scrutiny, Aurora voters also have been concerned by rising crime rates in recent years.
Both Marcano and Coffman are optimistic about the department’s direction, though Marcano has criticized the new chief’s initial public comments about the fatal shooting of 14-year-old Jor’Dell Richardson in June. But the candidates differ on larger questions about public safety.
Marcano’s plans revolve around prevention. “Several chiefs that we’ve had have said, ‘You cannot police your way out of a lot of these problems,’ ” he said. “It’s important to hold people accountable (for crime), but it’s more important to stop them from doing the wrong thing to begin with.”
He says his focus would be to address root causes, whether they’re related to public safety or economic conditions. He wants the council to put more money toward community investments, which he said progressive members haven’t been able to do because they don’t have the votes. Those include social supports for residents and putting more money toward affordable housing to reduce poverty.
It’s these types of goals that led Arnie Schultz, who met Marcano through the Colorado People’s Alliance, to back Marcano again after supporting his 2019 council run.
“He knows the city. He knows the people,” Shultz said. “He wants to serve the underserved. He wants to improve living conditions through housing, through higher wages (and) getting the unhoused housed.”
Coffman thinks the city should invest in some youth violence prevention and diversion programs. But he still believes in incarceration, he said, “because everybody has the right to live without fear of being the victim of a crime.”
The mayor’s yard signs are clear, with “Tough on crime” spelled out above his name. He’s been a proponent of increasing criminal penalties and he plans to work with other area mayors and state lawmakers to seek potential solutions for crime.
Coffman says he believes his values align with those of Aurora’s residents. Bob Adams, a Black veteran who’s supported Coffman since he was in Congress, said Coffman is the right person to lead the city.
“He’s been tough on crime and I like what he’s done with homelessness,” Adams said. “I would love to see more (of that).”
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