4/4 Primary Preview Part II
Denver, LA, KCMO, STL
Well, sorry, we tried. We tried to keep the length manageable. Unfortunately, there are sixteen candidates for Denver mayor, so you see how that could be a problem.
Denver
Mayor
Lisa Calderón vs. Trinidad Rodriguez vs. Aurelio Martinez vs. Thomas Wolf vs. Al Gardner vs. Terrance Roberts vs. Renate Behrens vs. Chris Hansen vs. Mike Johnston vs. James Walsh vs. Ean Thomas Tafoya vs. Andy Rougeot vs. Leslie Herod vs. Robert Treta vs. Deborah "Debbie" Ortega vs. Kelly Brough
The mayor’s office is powerful in Denver—you’d think that more candidates would have run.
Yes, that was a joke, but more importantly it was also us stalling, because oh god have you seen that candidate list? Two of these people are going to go to the runoff, there is no recent high-quality polling to help us figure out which two, and even if there were, it might not help because this field is so fractured that if two candidates broke 20% we’d be shocked.
Okay, let’s start with [neck crack] Kelly Brough. Brough is the top fundraiser, possibly because she used to be the CEO of Denver’s Chamber of Commerce, and has some support from the previous generation of Denver’s establishment, possibly because she worked in the Hickenlooper administration (the mayoral one, not the gubernatorial one.) Also, she’s dating the go-to lobbyist for developers in the city. Is she any good? No, of course not, why would you ask that question? She’s a center-right business ghoul in the Bloomberg vein. She supports land acknowledgements and also “recognizing our authority” to get rid of homeless people. She opposes adding new bike lanes and also rent control. Her commitment to “building a police culture around national best practices, transparency and accountability” is three bullet points away from her desire to get qualified immunity for police officers back. She’s worse than substanceless—she’s full of terrible, terrible ideas for recommitting to the status quo or making it worse, and platitudes to sell them with. She also might be the next mayor.
Next, state Sen. Mike Johnston, the “wait, there was a third candidate?” of the 2018 gubernatorial primary. Propped up by Bloomberg, he got 24% of the vote, and everyone promptly forgot about him, which is the correct response to encountering Mike Johnston. Johnston is a great candidate for people who like Kelly Brough but wish her policy documents were longer. If you’re looking for more cops, enforcing more crimes, with longer sentences, Mike Johnston is for you, because “citizens who are following the law need to feel like Denver still belongs to them.” Wow, fuck him. Also, he might win, because he’s raised $3.5 million and the Denver Post endorsed him.
City Councilor Debbie Ortega is, after 36 years, making the jump to mayor. First elected to the Council in 1987, she left in 2003 to lose the race for Auditor, but returned in 2011. Oretega says that she’s running for mayor because Denver needs to chart a new course, which brings up the natural question of what course Denver is currently on, if not hers? Ortega is a status-quo kind of candidate, which we normally would say with more venom, but given how most of the candidates are running to replace the status quo with something worse, things could be worse, and in a runoff with her in it, very likely will be. Still, she’s endorsed by the FOP, so, ew.
How about state Rep. Chris Hansen? How about no? Hansen has been pretty good in the legislature, which makes his decision to run for mayor on the Brough/Johnston platform confusing, especially since they’re at least getting millions in outside spending, while all he’s got is accidental name recognition from people thinking of the Dateline guy.
After walking through that field of beige, we appreciate that Andy Rougeot, a Harvard Business School-educated small1 business owner is at least willing to own being a frothing-at-the-mouth reactionary instead of hiding a mess of cruel policies under layers of aesthetic liberal dressing. On his website’s front page: “Andy will Fight for Denver’s Future by cracking down on crime, enforcing the camping ban, and increasing affordable housing”. He’s an Actual Republican, but the diet version is more en vogue these days in Denver, which is why he’s had to resort to $850,000 of self-funding with daddy’s money.
Okay, enough ranting about all the candidates who totally suck. Onto the candidates who only kind of suck, like state Rep. Leslie Herod. Herod ‘23: Denver demonstrably could do worse! Herod doesn’t want to endlessly throw money at cops, and sort of wants to start a social housing program in Denver. You also have to admire her for being asked the question “Sweeps or no sweeps? You can add some nuance here, but you must answer ‘I would continue the sweeps’ or ‘I would end the sweeps,’” and then writing an entire paragraph in response where she does not say either phrase or acknowledge either position. That means her position on homelessness is probably bad, but at least she’s not trying to appeal to voters who want that position, which somehow counts for something in a field like this. Herod making the runoff is somehow one of the better outcomes of tonight.
The best outcome would be a runoff with Lisa Calderón. Sure, she isn’t really of the left, and has raised very little money, but, boy, [gestures at the rest of this write-up] huh? Calderón is a nonprofit executive and criminal justice professor who ran for mayor in 2019, and got 18% of the vote, enough for third place. Running to end homeless sweeps, build social housing, “decenter cars” and similar medium-scale progressive ideas, Calderón was endorsed by DSA and WFP in what was clearly a coordinated “oh shit the runoff could be terrible” moment, but has failed to entice any unions. That is generally not a good sign for a progressive candidate, but that’s not enough alone to prevent her from making the runoff with the threshold this low.
How are there still 10 candidates left? It’s time for a speed round. Thomas Wolf is big on being “an independent, not beholden to parties” which makes his decision to run for mayor as Andy Rougeot all the stranger. Trinidad Rodriguez is a moderate who wants a school with elected positions, but that gives the mayor control anyway. He’s endorsed by Helen Thorpe, journalist and ex-wife of John Hickenlooper. Aurelio Martinez is demonstrating his commitment to fiscal responsibility by clearly not hiring a graphic designer for his all-purpose fearmongering campaign; everything from “unsightliness” to “non-resident activity” plagues Denver in his telling. Robert Treta is running because he wants to build 7,000 16-by-16 modular cubicle dwellings to solve homelessness, and also do something about electric vehicles. Al Gardner is decent on issues of urbanism, so that’s something. Renate Behrens is an elderly German immigrant running for mayor because she “needs this job because she doesn't get Social Security,” according to a Westword profile. She wants to build new houses on parking lots and “Install obstacles to make the traffic slow, so people avoid using their cars”. She’s our favorite. Terrance Roberts is a criminal justice reform activist running a populist campaign that never seemed to take off. Ean Thomas Tafoya is a human rights advocate running on a leftist platform who sometimes goes by “Mr. Denver” in media appearances. And Jim Walsh runs “an all-volunteer social justice community theater that uses the stage to preserve and amplify stories of struggle from working class communities,” which is neat.
Auditor
Timothy M. O'Brien (i) vs. Erik Clarke
Timothy O’Brien is an unobjectionable incumbent in a fairly low-profile, non-ideological office, mostly concerned with auditing city agencies and prosecuting wage theft. By all accounts (seriously, he’s recommended by both Denver DSA and the Denver GOP) he does the job well. The auditor’s office also operates the city’s labor and employment agency, Denver Labor, making it even more relevant than usual that organized labor really likes O’Brien. What puts O’Brien in danger, then, is the fact that he’s been outspent $138,000 to $18,000 thus far by Erik Clarke, a professional auditor (which was also O’Brien’s profession prior to entering politics.) Clarke has a lot of politicians backing him and a nice platform, but O’Brien seems…completely fine?
City Council At-Large [Top 2]
Travis Leiker vs. Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez vs. Penfield Tate III vs. Sarah Parady vs. Jeff Walker vs. Marty Zimmerman vs. Will Chan vs. Dominic Diaz vs. Tim Hoffman
Almost every candidate for the two at-large city council seats is putting together a serious campaign. Thankfully, we only said almost. Civil servant Dominic Diaz and former Regional Transportation District board member Jeff Walker fell behind a while ago, mercifully lowering the number of candidates to keep track of.
Labor and employment attorney Sarah Parady and state Rep. Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez are the clear progressive favorites; the pair are second and third in the money race, respectively, and both have the support of a broad coalition of organized labor and progressive groups. Parady also has the endorsement of Denver DSA. Both favor rent control, increased funding for social services, and an end to homeless sweeps; Parady’s platform goes further, while Gonzales-Gutierrez relies more on her legislative record (which is quite good; she’s not prone to tough-on-crime posturing votes like many of her colleagues, and she was a prime sponsor of a 2021 law which chipped away at Colorado’s stringent statewide ban on any form of local rent control by allowing localities to require affordable units in new construction or redevelopment, just as two examples.)
Parady and Gonzales-Gutierrez are second and third in the money race—first in the money race is Travis Leiker. Leiker is a thoroughly vague, bland, platitudinous moderate Democrat; when it comes to individual endorsers, it’s a who’s-who of disappointing Denver Democrats, but when it comes to organizational endorsers, it’s a who’s-who of red flags. We said organized labor was behind Parady and Gonzales-Gutierrez, and that’s true—both have the support of the Denver Area Labor Federation and a long list of individual unions. But Leiker has the right flank of organized labor backing him: firefighters, a couple of building trades unions—and the police union. Uh-oh. Right there with the police union are a bunch of business groups, representing realtors, contractors, business owners, and so forth. Also in the deliberately-vague-but-clearly-centrist lane is ex-prosecutor Tim Hoffman, a graduate of the Gavin Newsom School of Hairstyling whose website absolutely will not shut up about how he is a prosecutor. What is missing from his website, though, is his recommendation from the Denver GOP. Marty Zimmerman also avoids mentioning his Denver GOP recommendation, but strikes much the same tone as Hoffman and Leiker. Penfield Tate III, the son of Boulder’s first Black mayor Penfield Tate Jr., is a little better than the Leiker-Hoffman-Zimmerman trio, but not anywhere near as good as Parady or Gonzales-Gutierrez. Finally, nonprofit worker Will Chan is a lot closer to Parady and Gonzales-Gutierrez, but he’s not quite there still doesn't rank as high; he sorely lacks institutional support, and he trails everyone but Diaz and Walker financially.
District 1 (Northwest Denver)
Amanda Sandoval (i) vs. Ava Truckey
City Council President Pro Tempore Amanda Sandoval is likely headed for another term. Her only opponent, Ava Truckey, is running somewhat to her left and adamantly wants to increase the city’s spending on social services rather than policing, but her platform is pretty vague and she’s not spending much.
District 2 (Southwest Denver)
Kevin Flynn (i) vs. Chris Herr vs. Tiffany Caudill
City Councilman Kevin Flynn is a standard liberal for the most part. He also wants to grow the size of the Denver PD and continue Denver’s policy of homeless encampment sweeps (which destabilize the lives of homeless people, destroying their belongings and uprooting what little they have, without helping them.) He also lists his own campaign treasurer as one of his many endorsements, which is just sad. Chris Herr is running a bit to his left, but the left lane firmly belongs to DSA/WFP endorsee Tiffany Caudill, who’s lapping him in fundraising and endorsements. As far as Denver goes, this is a relatively conservative district, containing some of the city’s most suburban, Republican-leaning precincts; it’s a tough target for the left. Flynn could very well win in the first round, even with two opponents making a runoff a possibility.
District 4 (Southeast Denver)
Tony Pigford vs. Diana Romero Campbell
Retiring councilwoman Kendra Black is one of the council’s more centrist or right-leaning members (for example, she was one of only three votes against decriminalizing jaywalking, even after being presented with data showing that the existing criminal ordinance was rarely enforced and very disproportionately enforced against Black pedestrians.) The fight for her southeast Denver seat is one of the most expensive district-based contests in the city, thanks to $143,000 in independent expenditures from backers of Diana Romero Campbell. About half of those independent expenditures have come from a mysterious committee called Servicios Sigue; the other half have been from the firefighters’ union, the police union, and various business groups. As you might expect of a candidate backed by a mysterious IE committee, business groups, and the police union, she’s not a progressive—in fact, she ran for school board in this area four years ago, and was the only candidate in a three-way race who didn’t run on a platform critical of the old board’s policies of charter schools and opposed to school closures. (Candidates who did run against the old board with the support of the teachers’ union swept all three board seats up in 2019 and completed their sweep of the board in 2021.) Community organizer and former Denver Public Schools employee Tony Pigford counts a broad coalition of supporters that includes leftist and progressive groups (DSA and WFP), a fair number of Denver politicians including former Mayor Wellington Webb, and most of organized labor; Romero Campbell does have some union support, but Pigford has much more. (Gee, we wonder why a charter school fan might be having trouble winning over unions?) This is a relatively suburban district currently held by a moderate, but Pigford is running a campaign strong enough to have Denver’s establishment scared.
District 5 (Montclair, Hilltop; eastern Denver)
Amanda Sawyer (i) vs. Michael Hughes
Amanda Sawyer is a purple-haired reactionary, which isn’t something you often see (outside of Denver.) Elected four years ago by self-funding her campaign and running on a platform of “apartments make me sad but I refuse to move to the suburbs,” she’s turned out to be like that on pretty much every issue. Her solution to homelessness is not housing, it’s cops. (Her solution to most things is cops.) Her non-cops solutions seem to amount to little more than community service (park cleanups and…lightbulb handouts? She’s seriously proud of handing out lightbulbs.) She also just seems…terrible on a personal level? When Ma Kaing, a Burmese refugee, was killed by stray gunfire outside her home in a working-class neighborhood in Sawyer’s district, Sawyer showed up at a meeting of grieving residents upset at rampant gun violence and flawed 911 dispatching causing delayed emergency response times—not to offer condolences, listen to concerns, or promise to do something. No, she showed up to scold a grieving community for not pitching in with those park cleanups she loves so much.
What the fuck.
Michael Hughes is a nonprofit guy running a vague, nonprofit-y campaign from the center. He’s pretty similar to Sawyer on a lot of things, but he’s not a fanatical NIMBY like her, and he’s also never shown up at a meeting about gun violence to scold a grieving community for not picking up litter in the park.
District 7 (South Denver)
Nick Campion vs. Flor Alvidrez vs. Adam Estroff vs. Arthur May vs. Guy Padgett
Well. This is certainly one of the most elections on the ballot today.
There’s not really a progressive favorite here. The candidate who comes closest is Nick Campion, who has some progressive endorsements and makes some gestures at housing affordability; he kind of ruins it by being a serial tech startup CEO with an MBA who lists endorsements on his website from “founders” (as in, people who made up some bullshit tech startup back when interest rates were zero and loans were free money.) It only gets worse from here. Next up is Adam Estroff, who stepped down from his post as head of YIMBY Denver to run for city council on a platform of building more housing…and also brutalizing the homeless. Then there’s Flor Alvidrez, an establishment-friendly moderate developer with more money than any of her opponents and a platform that waters down its good and bad components just the same. Arthur May is a vile anti-LGBTQ Christian nationalist. And Guy Padgett is the former mayor…of Casper, Wyoming.
District 8 (Park Hill, Central Park, Montbello; northeast Denver)
Christian Steward vs. Tyler Drum vs. Leslie Twarogowski vs. Shontel Lewis vs. Brad Revare
Former RTD Director Shontel Lewis is running a staunchly progressive campaign with an admirably detailed platform and the support of DSA and WFP. Her main opponent is Brad Revare, and quite frankly he annoys the shit out of us. Here’s a passage from his website for an idea of why:
“I served as Executive Director of a partnership with the City and County of Denver to upskill public employees in innovation and entrepreneurial thinking to provide better services to support the unhoused, increase composting rates, and other improvements.”
Hey? Hey, Brad? What does that fucking MEAN. What is “upskilling public employees in innovation and entrepreneurial thinking”? We’ll ignore, for a second, that what comes after it is also nonsense (are homelessness and composting related now? How does “entrepreneurial thinking” help city employees provide better public services? Does—oh, goddammit, never mind.) If anyone can explain what it means to “upskill public employees in innovation and entrepreneurial thinking” and furthermore explain how it is not an obvious fraud meant to get the city of Denver to pay consultants with taxpayer money to make PowerPoints full of inane corporate-speak buzzwords, our tip line is open. Honestly, reading this gave us hives. Maybe we’re being unfair and there’s some hidden substance there, though. Let’s see how he fares in a Q&A where an interviewer might try to get a real answer. Why did Brad run?
“I had the sense that the city wasn’t working for a lot of people in District 8 and they felt like their voices weren’t being heard,” Revare said. “I think everybody, regardless of your background or your socioeconomic status, should have the opportunity to thrive. One of the most important pieces of work that’s going to come with a new mayor and a new city council in 2023 is how do we advance equity so that so many different life outcomes are not dependent on your background or your zip code.”
Someone gave this man a thesaurus containing the word “equity” and now we all have to pay for it. Okay, how about when asked specifically about what he wants to do with a new mayoral administration and a new council?
“I want to bring that new mayor and those new department heads to District 8 to have a real conversation around what’s working,” Revare said. “For things that are not, let’s have an honest conversation and talk about what we can do over the next four years to address those issues. It’s really important that people, especially when we have new leadership, feel heard and they’re being visited and talked to. One of my most immediate hopes is to convene that and make sure people in District 8 feel like they are being heard by the new leadership in the city.”
Brad remains unmoved by mere mortal considerations like “answering the question.” Maybe policing can finally elicit a concrete opinion, though. If there’s anything centrist candidates for city council love to do, it’s talk about how many cops they want, with or without being asked. So, does Brad have any guiding principles for policing and public safety?
“Everybody deserves to feel safe in their neighborhood while also making sure we take a real community-oriented approach to public safety,” Revare said.
That isn’t a fucking answer, Brad. Fine. Screw the policing question. Let’s try something even more specific than a broad statement-of-principles question, like a question with a yes-or-no component and a clear topic.
Q: Should neighborhoods help absorb population growth through permissive zoning, or do you favor protections for single-family neighborhoods?
A: I believe neighborhoods should be able to better advocate for the positive changes they want to see around zoning, whether it’s more space for locally owned businesses you can walk to, affordable housing for seniors and families close to parks, transit, and grocery stores, or more unique community-generated ideas for spots that cater to the community’s needs.
AAAAAAAAAAAUGH.
Tyler Drum and Leslie Twarogowski are running respectable enough campaigns—Drum as a progressive, Twarogowski a vaguely liberal centrist like Revare. Christian Steward is a local community activist whose campaign is more low-tech, low-budget, and low-visibility than the others. It’s unlikely that any of them have a path to a runoff, however; the money, attention, and organization have all flowed to Lewis and Revare at the expense of the field.
District 9 (North Denver)
Candi CdeBaca (i) vs. Kwon Atlas vs. Darrell Watson
Candi CdeBaca is a socialist and all-around fantastic councilmember who unseated an incumbent in a very close 2019 election. Naturally, her existence infuriates the city's moderate business-allied establishment, and they’re backing Darrell Watson to get her out of there. Watson is a small business owner who has unsuccessfully run for council twice before, but he’s never had as much support as he does now after the moderate establishment decided to make him the anti-CdeBaca choice. There’s another moderate candidate in the race—to oppose CdeBaca, Denver’s establishment didn’t even have to back a candidate who once plead guilty to beating a kid he was watching, but they did anyway.
Watson’s top donor is a landlord association, and his endorsers include the Denver Metro Association of Realtors. While it can be hard to pin him down on some policy questions (whether to allow single-family zoning in Denver is “not an either-or question”, apparently), he’s openly calling for longer criminal sentences and sweeps of homeless encampments to support the camping ban (anything less would be “not compassionate”). Watson is almost boring in how closely he hews to the prototype of “the business candidate” that runs against a socialist every time one is elected to a city council. Watson, in addition to over $200,000 in campaign contributions, is benefitting from six figures of independent spending, mostly from anonymous conservative groups, about half of which is targeting CdeBaca.
Also running is Kwon Atlas, a former staffer to several high-profile Denver politicians. He has very little money and also fits in the moderate lane for this election.
District 10 (Capitol Hill; central Denver)
Chris Hinds (i) vs. Margie Morris vs. Shannon Hoffman vs. Noah Kaplan
Chris Hinds is the kind of politician who can last a long time in the dense inner core of a city: he’s progressive enough on most contentious issues to avoid constantly attracting the ire of the left, but never quite confrontational enough about his positions to piss off business interests enough for them to wade into what is clearly a very progressive district. For instance, Hinds was first elected on a wide-ranging and humane platform for working on the city’s homelessness problem…but rent control was not on the menu, apparently, and much of the good stuff was not something Hinds ever seemed to be fighting for publicly. Hinds has triangulated, essentially, and probably effectively. He faces a candidate running to his right, and another running to his left, but both, should they make the runoff, will face a challenge getting to 50% against him. If someone can do it, it’s probably Shannon Hoffman. Hoffman is an educator, and, as she reminds people, a renter, who is backed by most of the city’s progressive organizations including WFP and DSA. Hoffman is running strongly in support of social housing, and we wish we could leave it there, but it looks like we’re not going to be able to make it through the Denver contests without talking about that fucking golf course.
To compress what is both a deeply frustrating and insanely local issue: Denver is growing very quickly but only building new housing somewhat quickly, so prices are rising. A developer wants to develop on a big, privately-owned, defunct golf course in the city. They need the city to lift an easement mandating that land stay a golf course, and to convince the city to do that, the developers negotiated a legally-binding plan for their development where they pay some money, hand the city most of the golf course to turn into parks and hew to affordability standards for what they build. It’s on the ballot as Question 2O (not twenty, two-capital-o). The opposition comes from an uneasy coalition of homeowners who don’t like tall buildings, conservationists who don’t want to develop new land, and opposition from the left concerning the weak terms of affordability. Because the easement has to be lifted by ballot measure, any renegotiation is going to take at least a year. So it’s a tough question with painful trade-offs. We say all of this to point out that Hinds and Kaplan support 2O while Hoffman is adamant it should be kept undeveloped, and is campaigning on this; in other words, to point out a somewhat orthogonal issue that may be driving voting, both to and away from Hoffman.
Noah Kaplan is a journalist who is in some ways presenting himself as running to the left of Hinds but, when your plan for homelessness includes lines like “Law enforcement should be empowered to enforce laws” there’s not going to be a lot of confidence in you from the left. He wound up raising slightly more money than Hoffman, but there may not be an audience for him in what seems like a Hinds/Hoffman election. Margie Morris is running a campaign that’s all homeless fearmongering, all the time. She hasn’t raised much money, so if she does well it’s a bad sign about where Denver is headed.
Los Angeles
City Council District 6 (Van Nuys, Panorama City, Sun Valley)
Marisa Alcaraz vs. Rose Grigoryan vs. Isaac Kim vs. Imelda Padilla vs. Marco Santana vs. Antoinette Scully vs. Douglas Dagoberto Sierra
You’ve probably heard of the LA City Council’s racist leaked recordings, but here’s a one-sentence refresher: LA City Council President Nury Martinez got caught on tape saying a bunch of shockingly bigoted things about pretty much every racial and ethnic group under the sun, including comparing a two-year-old Black child to a monkey, and resigned after public outcry when the recordings became public. That’s why this special election is happening.
The race to serve out the remaining year of Martinez’s term is very crowded, and a runoff will most likely be needed, as it’s hard to see anyone getting a majority in the first round. A trio of candidates stand out as the likeliest winners: Marisa Alcaraz, Imelda Padilla, and Marco Santana. Alcaraz is the deputy chief of staff to District 9 Councilman Curren Price; like her boss, she tends towards the moderate side of Democratic politics, and wants to continue the city’s policy of homeless encampment sweeps (an exercise in cruel theater which is no substitute for actually housing the homeless.) Padilla is even less exciting, somehow: she’s worked for both Nury Martinez and Martinez’s pet nonprofit, Pacoima Beautiful, and she’s even more enthusiastic about encampment sweeps (and even less concerned with providing the sorts of social services that can actually help homeless people secure housing) than Alcaraz. Santana is a former staffer to several local elected officials who now works at a homeless services nonprofit; he has the endorsement of the LA Times, many local elected officials, and a bunch of local Democratic Party clubs. Refreshingly, he’s not in favor of encampment sweeps, and he wants to shift some of the city’s budget away from the LAPD into social services. Of the top three, he’s the only one who could be described as a progressive. Outside the top three, two more candidates earn that label—police abolitionist Antoinette Scully, who has a scattering of activist support, and small business owner Isaac Kim, who doesn’t. Journalist Rose Grigoryan and business consultant Douglas Dagoberto Sierra are running to the right of the field, especially Grigoryan.
Kansas City, MO
Kansas City will hold its general election on June 20. All offices, even two-candidate races, are on the primary ballot, with the top 2 advancing to June.
Mayor
Quinton Lucas (i) vs. Clay Chastain
Quinton Lucas is a relatively well-regarded liberal, but not progressive, big-city mayor who hasn’t caved to the more cops, tough-on-crime rhetoric of the moment. He’s far from perfect but has managed to stay popular even amidst the challenges of the last few years. He’s popular enough, in fact, that his only competition is light rail advocate Clay Chastain, known for his ballot measures to get Kansas City a light rail system. Chastain ran for mayor in 2019, getting less than 1% of the vote, and for Congress as a Republican (which is…odd for a public transit advocate) in 2020.
At-Large Council 1
Kevin O’Neill (i) vs. Ronda Smith vs. Pam Mason
Kevin O’Neill, the publisher of a labor newspaper, is a freshman on the Council who was elected without any competition. Somehow, despite being on the moderate side of the Council (though there aren’t hard factional politics in KC), and being perhaps the most consistent opponent of defunding the police on the body, he’s the top target for angry pro-cop reactionary backlash in this election. O’Neill is all but guaranteed to make the runoff, and will be joined by either Pam Mason, a conservative ex-Clay County Commissioner and Auditor who was bounced out of office in a 2014 Republican primary and is now on her third attempt to make it back to elected office, or similarly conservative nut Ronda Smith, who spends most of her web site railing against pandemic protections and police defunding, but does manage to include the bonkers sentence “I have served the community since 2005 in the Real Estate industry,” which we couldn’t not include. For what it’s worth, even the KC Association of Realtors is backing O’Neill.
At-Large Council 2
Lindsay French vs. Mickey Younghanz vs. Jenay Manley
This open at-large council seat, one of three up for election this year, is a deeply divided ideological battleground. On the left is tenant organizer Jenay Manley, whose grassroots campaign is mostly relying on small donors and volunteers. Backed by not only KC Tenants Power, a prominent tenants’ rights group in Kansas City, but also the local chapters of Sunrise, Our Revolution, and the SEIU, Manley’s campaign is an opportunity for the left to build power in Kansas City. On the right is Mickey Younghanz, a former Republican candidate for state senate who is running a campaign that mostly consists of warning voters about the scary Black woman he’s running against. Finally, stuck in the middle is Lindsay French, a “problem solver, and common-sense coalition builder,” running to “bridg[e] the gap between politics and community involvement”, and other such meaningless verbiage intended to hit a word count. Organized labor, as well as more conservative groups like the Realtors PAC and cop union are all betting on centrism in this election. However, with the left going for Manley, and conservative outlets friendlier to Younghanz, she could find herself squeezed out of the runoff.
At-Large Council 3
Brandon Ellington (i) vs. Melissa Patterson Hazley
The second beauty pageant contest pits progressive incumbent Brandon Ellington and his geocities-ass website against campaign consultant Melissa Patterson Hazley, also running as a progressive. The divide here is more about insider/outsider dynamics than ideology. Ellington is willing to make waves and upset people: he publicly confronted another state legislator in 2015 over the confederate flag, rallied for Bernie Sanders in 2016, and defeated a monied incumbent in 2019 for the office he holds now. In 2021, his confrontational approach earned him a 30 day suspended sentence after poking a political opponent in the chest, in a controversial prosecution. Patterson Hazley is backed by organized labor and business alike, and should be considered the establishment’s candidate in this race.
At-Large Council 4
Jess Blumbaugh vs. Justin Short vs. Crispin Rea vs. John DiCapo vs. Grace Cabrera
Having four beauty pageant primaries may be a little silly, but it’s worth it for elections like this one, where the field absolutely needs whittling down. Jess Blumbaugh, a United Way executive, might occupy a more progressive space in this field if she didn’t keep proposing things like importing California’s disastrous Prop 13 to Kansas City. The centrist business class of Kansas City likes Justin Short, a former cruise ship director. Prosecutor and Police Athletic League Director Crispin Rea is going for a smooth centrist kind of vibe. Small business owner John DiCapo has stereotypical small business owner politics, and also said the sentence “We have a plan called the DiCapo Plan to build a monorail from downtown along I-70 to the stadiums and back” in an interview, which we have no notes for. He is somehow endorsed by the Teamsters. Health insurance agent Grace Cabrera is the most conservative of the field—though if you were going just by her website, you’d have to piece that together from her bio being mostly about the horrors of Cuba, and not her issues page, which is still under construction as of election day.
At-Large Council 5
Michael Kelley vs. Darrell Curls vs. Theresa Cass Galvin
At-Large 5 is, like the mayoral contest, a beauty pageant primary, but, unlike that race, where the curiosity is if one candidate is even going to get to 10%, this one is a bit more interesting, telling us if there will be a competitive race in June. Retired union steward Darrell Curls is the establishment choice, and has way more money than walkability advocate Michael Kelley, but both are unknown quantities to most voters, and Kelley has been putting in the work of being a real candidate. Former Republican Jackson County Board member Theresa Cass Galvin must be hoping that name recognition and Republican bloc voting will get her into the runoff, because her actual campaigning has amounted to one or two rounds of mailers, and…nothing else as far as well can tell.
At-Large Council 6
Andrea Bough (i) vs. Jill Sasse vs. Mary Nestel
Andrea Bough is, like Kevin O’Neill, a moderate, freshman, at-large Councilmember who made it to the Council fairly easily and is now facing two opponents running to her right in her first reelection campaign. Jill Sasse is a retired school teacher focused on—what else—getting more cops, while the actual FOP has endorsed insurance agent Mary Nestel. One of them is going to a runoff with Bough, and it doesn’t matter which. Based on her fundraising advantage, expect it to be Nestel.
Council District 3 (East Side)
Melissa Robinson (i) vs. Sheri Hall
The final beauty pageant primary pits progressive incumbent Melissa Robinson against artist and publisher Sheri Purpose Hall, who hasn’t raised much money or received much press attention.
Council District 4 (Downtown)
Eric Bunch (i) vs. Henry Rizzo vs. Cristy Dastrup
After winning the closest election in the city in 2019, Eric Bunch, a liberal urbanist type who used to work for WalkBikeKC (also the employer of Michael Kelley, At-Large 5) has been pretty quiet and effective in office. There was a recall attempt by the local disgruntled reactionaries, but it didn’t even make the ballot. His former aide, Cristy Dastrup, is running against him, and does differ on a couple hot-button issues like building a new Royals stadium—she’s a no under all circumstances, while Bunch says it depends on the deal—but overall winds up coming off as wanting to govern similarly. That’s in contrast with Henry Rizzo, a Democratic state Rep. from 1986-2003 who did get a few years on the county board in the mid 2000s, but last won an election with actual opponents on the ballot in 1998. He also served a few months in prison for check kiting in 1991, but didn’t have to give up his seat. Rizzo, who cannot be photographed without looking like the grumpiest old white guy, lives up to his image and is presenting a moderate-to-conservative choice. Rizzo is still a Democrat, and even contributed to Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, but he’s a Democrat from another era, and conservatives in the city know it.
Council District 6 (Southwest KC)
Dan Tarwater vs. Michael Schuckman vs. Johnathan Duncan vs. Cecelia Carter vs. Tiffany Moore
Dan Tarwater recently ended a 28 year tenure on the Jackson County Board, and is now looking to make a lateral move to the city council. As his website says, he has the “Best Ideas”, but he doesn’t actually list those anywhere, and his endorsements are the building trades unions and cops. He doesn’t list them on his website, but the right-wing crazies like him too, perhaps because he’s anti-choice. Moving on to someone you’d actually want to see in office: Johnathan Duncan is a tenant organizer for KC Tenants, and the other major progressive opportunity of the cycle. He’s supported by the same cadre of groups backing Jenay Manley in At-Large 2: the SEIU, KC Tenants Power, Our Revolution, and the Sierra Club. City IT analyst Michael Schuckman is running on generally good ideas like transit development and climate action, but has little money. The same can be said of Cecelia Carter and Tiffany Moore, minus the bit about running on specific ideas.
St. Louis
Board of Aldermen
St. Louis is electing a revamped city council (board of aldermen, whatever) this year, with half as many members as the current 28-member Board of Aldermen and an entirely new district map. Despite that, many of the 14 new wards won’t see competitive races tonight; progressive incumbent Shane Cohn is unopposed in Ward 3, and the first-round vote under St. Louis’s unique approval voting system gives us a good idea of which other races are unlikely to be competitive—which is most of them. In every ward but Wards 1, 4, 9, and 14, one candidate received the approval of a majority of first-round voters while none of their opponents came close.
In Ward 1, progressive incumbent Anne Schweitzer narrowly led conservative challenger Tony Kirchner, who is backed by police unions and former Ald. Beth Murphy, a centrist who Schweitzer unseated in 2021 as part of now-Board President Megan Green’s Flip the Board campaign. Schweitzer got approval votes from 53% of the electorate, while Kirchner got 49.7%. In Ward 4, Alds. Joe Vaccaro, a moderate, and Bret Narayan, a progressive backed by Green, both got a majority: Vaccaro got 53% and Narayan got 52%. In Ward 9, challenger Michael Browning got 49.8% to progressive Ald. Tina “Sweet-T” Pihl’s 43.3% (fellow Ald. Mike Gras was eliminated with 42.9%). And in Ward 14, real estate agent Ebony Washington got 40% to progressive state Rep. Rasheen Aldridge’s 37%. Washington’s relatives in the Hubbard family (grandparents Penny and Rodney and aunt Tammika) are both prominent and notorious in St. Louis politics, Tammika having left the board of aldermen after losing an ugly reelection battle in 2021. In the closing days of the race, Washington is allegedly running a homophobic smear campaign against Aldridge, who is gay.
Look, who says an heir to a Sephora cosmetics fortune can’t be a small business owner? Andy is short for Andre in Rougeot’s case, a name he half-shares with his father: Sephora USA President & CEO Jean-André Rougeot.