Diverse candidates vying for city’s top post
Welcome to Aurora’s milliondollar mayoral race.
Well, $973,110 race, to be exact. That’s how much the candidates vying to fill Aurora’s top political post have raised as of the most recent reporting deadline last week.
With nearly two months to go before the Nov. 5 election, the mayor’s race in Colorado’s third-largest city is sure to eclipse the million-dollar mark by the next campaign finance filing date, in October.
Comfortably on top of the fundraising heap is Mike Coffman, the five-term U.S. representative who was defeated in his re-election bid for the 6th Congressional District by Democrat Jason Crow last November. Coffman has amassed $509,000 since he entered the race in January — more than twice that of his closest rival on the money list, former Aurora Councilman Ryan Frazier at $210,000.
“We have to outwork him — that’s the long and short of it,” said Frazier, who runs his own management consulting firm and served on City Council from 2003 to 2011. “Coffman has a lot of money, but money is not going to win the race. It’s grit, hard work and determination that are going to win this race.”
Frazier spoke by phone as he walked an Aurora neighborhood near Anschutz Medical Campus on a recent morning.
“I try to personally knock on doors every morning and every evening,” he said.
It will take a lot of door-knocking by all candidates for mayor
in this fast-growing city east of Denver, which is steadily approaching a population of 400,000. It also ranks as one of the state’s most diverse, with one of every five residents foreignborn. That diversity is reflected in part in the makeup of this year’s mayoral field, with two African-Americans and two women among the five candidates on the ballot.
Keeping Aurora a welcoming community is important to candidate Omar Montgomery, an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado Denver and president of Aurora’s NAACP chapter. That starts with how development plays out in the city, which has vast acreage on its eastern and southern boundary in which to expand.
“I want development to benefit not just the developers but the good of the entire city,” Montgomery said. “We want to make sure our development is environmentally friendly. We want to make sure we are not pricing people out of our communities.”
The pace of development has become a hot-button issue across the Denver metro area, as an increasing population has pushed home prices higher and exacerbated traffic congestion.
Coffman said keeping Aurora’s roads flowing smoothly is a critical first step to keeping development a positive aspect of the city’s story rather than a negative one.
“If the city does not get in front of the traffic issue, we’ll see the same anti-growth initiatives that we saw in Lakewood,” he said.
Aurora is primed for development, largely due to its plentiful vacant land. In fact, several large residential projects — including 12,500home Aurora Highlands south of Denver International Airport — are either under construction or in the pipeline. Earlier this year, government officials approved the issuance of $22.5 million in bonds for transportation improvements to the 20,000-acre “aerotropolis” south of DIA, most of which sits in Aurora. Plans include new interchanges on E-470 and Interstate 70 and a major north-south thoroughfare to rival Peña Boulevard. Candidate Marsha Berzins, an Aurora councilwoman for the past decade, is opposed to any housing construction limits in the city, saying the move would only push prices up for renters and homeowners.
“I don’t want to see our rental prices go any higher than they already have,” she said.
But Berzins said that doesn’t mean developers will be able to run roughshod over the city if she becomes mayor. “We have a
tough planning department,” she said.
Renie Peterson, who served on the council for 12 years ending in 2017, said “water is going to be a concern for everyone” as new homes and businesses come into Aurora.
“As we develop in the future, do we have the water in place?” she said. Peterson said her candidacy has been complicated by a fall she took at the state Capitol building six months ago. She has been trying to heal from the incident, which broke her ankle and required a plate and screws to reset it. She has yet to launch a campaign website and has raised just more than $10,000.
But Peterson said she’s in it to win it and pointed out that no other candidate has an understanding of the city budget like she does, having sat on the city’s budget committee for a dozen years. The race for Aurora mayor effectively started after then-Mayor Steve Hogan died in May 2018. Councilman Bob Legare was appointed as Hogan’s successor the following month but made it clear that he wouldn’t defend the seat this November.
In addition to the five candidates whose names will appear on the ballot, the mayor’s race has one write-in candidate, Tiffany Grays, who describes herself as a “pro se litigator, socialist and change agent.” She attempted to make the ballot and is suing the city after the Aurora clerk’s office determined that she only had 96 verified signatures of the 100 required, according to the Aurora Sentinel.