Lisa Calderón, whose progressive campaign for Denver mayor brought her within 3,134 votes of advancing in April’s general election, has endorsed Mike Johnston in the runoff stage of the race that concludes on June 6.
Calderón announced her support for Johnston on Tuesday morning outside the La Alma Recreation Center in west Denver’s historic La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood, a pocket of the city with deep ties to the Chicano Movement. Ballots for the runoff are being mailed to voters this week.
Her support came with plenty of caveats as she seeks assurances that people of color will play a prominent role in the administration of whoever wins. Johnston was not invited to attend the event though Calderón said he has committed to meet with her coalition again on June 7 if he wins.
“I hope progressives will understand this is a harm reduction strategy. Either way, one of these two people will be elected, so how can we work with someone who is most open to change? Who will be most open to hearing our voices?” Calderón said before announcing her choice. “This is about the future versus the past, and that our ideas actually can potentially take root and flourish in a Johnston administration.”
The Afro-Latina professor, activist and nonprofit leader just a few weeks ago declined to comment on if she planned to endorse Johnston or Kelly Brough, the former head of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, in the runoff. The two mayoral finalists have run significantly more moderate campaigns than Calderón whose campaign planks included providing sanitation stations for homeless encampments and reforming the Denver police department as opposed to growing its ranks.
Johnston came in first in the general election with 24.5% of the vote, Brough second with 20% and Calderón third with 18.2%. In her concession statement, Calderón was critical of the top finishers, both of whom benefit from significant outside spending.
On Tuesday, Calderón said that Denver voters may not have ended up with two centrist candidates backed by well-monied interests if the city had a ranked-choice voting system. That system allows voters to select multiple candidates in order of preference, naming a winner based on subsequent rounds of counting if no single candidate gets a majority of first-place votes.
Calderón plans to push for that reform in future city elections. In the meantime, she emphasized that progressive voters voted for progressive candidates in the mayor’s race. Even if those candidates ended up splitting the votes needed to win outright, progressives have real power to drive policy in the next administration.
“We have a rising voice that cannot be denied,” she said.
The Johnston campaign has collected endorsements from a number of candidates who ran to his left including State Rep. Leslie Herod, who came in fifth in the general election with 10.7% of the vote, as well as other mayoral hopefuls Ean Thomas Tafoya, Terrance Roberts, Al Gardner and Jim Walsh.
Brough meanwhile is being backed by more centrist former candidates including state Sen. Chris Hansen and investment banker Thomas Wolf. Former Tattered Cover Book Store CEO Kwame Spearman dropped out before Election Day and endorsed Brough because he said she was the candidate most likely to help small business owners.
As Calderón outlined on Tuesday, she arrived at her decision to endorse in the race after coalition meetings and interviews with both candidates and with extensive input from Latino leaders. She emphasized that Latinos have been underrepresented in city appointee and leadership positions.
Both candidates were asked to address 79 policy demands that combined made up what Calderón called the Latino mayoral agenda scorecard. Johnston committed to 74 of the demands and Brough committed to 66. Among the points Johnston signed off on that Brough did not fully commit to was restructuring the city’s public safety department to be more accountable to the public.
The coalition dinged Johnston for not fully committing to taxing landlords for unoccupied luxury apartments and for not fully committing to working productively with the Denver teachers’ unions to repair what the coalition views as the harm done by the teacher performance reform bill he championed when in the legislature, according to the scorecard.
Olivia Almaguer was among the Calderón supporters who were part of the discussions around which candidate to endorse. She said at first no one in the room raised their hands in support of either Brough or Johnston. But Johnston’s commitments to more of the scorecard priorities pushed him past her in the end.
“It just sounds like he was more willing to make a change, which is something that we need,” Almaguer said.
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