Mail ballots will go out May 15 for Denver’s June 6 mayoral runoff between candidates Kelly Brough and Mike Johnston. Each candidate met with The Gazette’s editorial board on April 25 to discuss the top issues. We present our questions and their answers below to help voters make an more informed decision.

Gazette to Kelly Brough: Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb has endorsed you. Name a policy in which you two see eye to eye and a policy on which the two of you disagree.

Brough: Where we agree is we can do significantly better to address unhoused issues in our city and get people to safer locations. And he strongly supports the urgency of addressing that issue, using safe outdoor spaces as a temporary solution, but then also working as a region. And I would say that’s where we have strong alignment. … There may be times when you have to use the force of law to be able to address this issue. And I would say that’s where we spent time talking about it, making sure that we’re feeling comfortable with my judgment and how we’ll have to exercise that going forward.

Gazette to Mike Johnston: State Rep. Leslie Herod has endorsed you. Name a policy on which you two see eye to eye and a policy on which the two of you disagree.

Johnston: She has supported safe injection sites. I’ve said I think they’re not the right step for Denver. That’s one on which we disagree. I think one on which we agree is how we think we can approach the challenges on homelessness by making sure we get people access to services that include housing, mental health support, addiction treatment, and getting them into micro-communities where we can put people in tiny homes to help them get back on their feet and back to work.

Gazette: According to the latest data from the Denver medical examiner, 244 people in the city died from fentanyl overdoses in 2022; 240 died the year before from fentanyl overdoses. The 2022 total is far higher than homicides and traffic fatalities combined for that year. Already in 2023, the Denver medical examiner has reported 66 fatal overdoses. Would you support making possession of any amount of fentanyl a felony, eliminating the current one-gram threshold that was enacted by the Legislature last year so that law enforcement has a way of getting pushers off the streets? And what more needs to be done in Denver to fight the fentanyl fight?

Brough: I talked with a doctor who works in this space, and one of the things that really stuck with me that he said was, using fentanyl is not a question of if you’ll die. It’s a question of when you will die. And to me, your statistics really highlight exactly what he said. That’s the urgency of recognizing the poison that this is. I do think we have to discuss further how we make sure people are dealing it, but also (for people) who are addicted …that we’re taking every step we can. So, I would be open to these conversations, yes.

Gazette: What more needs to be done in general?

Brough: I think you know my story. My husband struggled with an addiction. His was a legal substance. It was alcohol. And as a city, as a nation, we have very serious addiction issues. But Colorado stands out in terms of our addiction challenges. And I feel like we have to start to address what are the real drivers of addiction. Why are we (in Colorado) a standout still, and what steps do we have to take? …I suspect there will always be the opportunity to get these kinds of drugs and they’re only getting worse and more serious. What is driving people to them? One thing I will tell you is (the role of) … becoming unhoused is pretty clear. It will help if you didn’t have an addiction when you lost your home and had to live on our streets, but the likelihood that you may have one afterward is much higher. And for reasons I can understand, like, you’ve got to stay awake all night to protect yourself or your family or your belongings. So I do think one thing would be focusing on keeping people housed instead of people becoming unhoused and the trauma and the increased risk of addiction that it presents.

Johnston: There are two parts. One is that I think the first step is to make sure we are actually ticketing people (for) possession or distribution of fentanyl and that we are trying to get them into treatment. I’ve supported standing up a drug court and/or a mental health court that would identify people who have those needs and then could place them into a modified county jail.

That should include one pod dedicated to inpatient mental health and one pod dedicated to inpatient addiction treatment. So people who are committing crimes but have real addiction needs will get access to longer-term treatment that actually is likely to get them healthy. And I do support that.

Possession of fentanyl should be a felony. I think that is one of the reasons why drug court worked in the past, not because we want to put people into prison, but because we want to use that as a strategy to help them get access to treatment, which is what I think drug court has done successfully in the past. … The way you have people show up for drug court is, you know, once they are charged, they have the choice to either be able to enter drug court or if they refuse to go to drug court, then they get placed into a correctional facility.

If you then fail to show up for drug court at any point, then your probation is revoked and then you’re back to a sentence. And so, drug court operates on that strategy, which is the incentive is if you can successfully get outpatient treatment and you show up to all your meetings and you show up clean, you don’t have to go into a facility. If you don’t, then that privilege is lost.

Gazette: When it comes to the crime fight, both you and your opponent agree on rebuilding the Denver Police Department’s ranks. How would you do that?

Brough: A couple of weeks ago, I attended the academy graduation. Thirty-six officers pledging to serve our city. I will say this: I think it might be good for all of us to be reminded of how grateful we are when people take that pledge and make that commitment to serve our city. Honestly, I was a little emotional sitting there watching them go through the ceremony. But the other thing that stood out to me is when you talk to officers who’ve recently joined, frankly, any police department, one thing they all seem to have in common is it was an existing officer who encouraged them to apply, who asked him to consider serving that they’re almost always it’s someone in their life. So, one of the things I would do is I would speak with our 1,460 officers. And I would ask them, what would it take for you to begin recruiting the people in your life and asking them to consider a life of service with us in the Denver Police Department? And what could I do as mayor that would, you know, allow you to do that and help us start recruiting officers again and deputy sheriffs because we need both …It’s mentorship and it’s also someone who’s doing the service, seeing something in someone else that they believe would fit that service, right? That value, the ethic, they’d be good at it.

Johnston: I do believe that we need to get more officers back on the streets and more first responders because what we know is a lot of times officers are being sent many, many times a day to calls that officers don’t need to go to. They are mental health crises. They are overdoses or addiction needs. And we should send mental health workers or paramedics or EMTs to those, not officers.

There are two key ways I’ll focus on rebuilding the force. One is being a really public, high-profile leader at the city level to call people to service to say this is a critically important job. We need people from all backgrounds and all neighborhoods to do it, and we will support you in the right training, the right development and the right kind of job that can help you be successful in this. That’s step one.

Step two is we have to accelerate our process for hiring. Right now, we have a civil service process that can take six or seven months for someone just to get approved for a preliminary offer to enter the academy. Our surrounding districts do that in 60 days. And so if you’re someone looking at who wants to be an officer, you might interview here and at and another neighboring city or another city outside of Colorado.

And they give you an offer in 60 days and we tell you you have to wait for five more months and we lose too many good candidates that way. So we have to both be able to really focus on more recruiting and also add a better, more efficient onboarding and hiring process so we don’t lose good candidates.

Gazette: What do you see as the biggest difference between yourself and your opponent regarding law enforcement and the crime fight and your stance on those respective issues?

Brough: My whole career has been one of having to do the work, implement a solution, find a plan to go forward, execute through teams. I think that results in being very honest about what you think is possible, building very realistic plans.

And so for me, I would say, you know, my experience is in this space. I not only have a degree in criminal justice, I applied to be a police officer in my career. I’ve worked with officers as chief of staff, as head of HR and as a legislative analyst. I’ve drafted laws. I’ve negotiated union contracts. I mean, I understand the combination of the culture, and I have people close to me who make sure I understand the community. And I think it results in very realistic strategies to actually get it done.

Johnston: I’ve come out with very clear plans on what I would do — clear that I would put more officers on the street as part of the solution; clear that I would change the way that our jail system works to make sure we have more options for treatment and for mental health needs. … What is the overlap between (the city’s) issues around homelessness and … around crime so we know whom we can provide with services and get them support; who needs to come through the criminal justice system and have a really clear and coherent way to do that. That will allow officers and DAs and judges and sheriffs to all work in alignment and deliver on a very different scenario of public safety than we have right now.

Gazette: Has the justice reform movement gone too far in reducing penalties for criminals and in curbing cops?

Brough: I think the nation is answering that. Yes. That said, I also think we were given a false choice with this reform movement. The choice that the only way to have fair policing is to have no policing. I don’t believe that. I’m setting out to bring in an administration that can prove that we can hold our officers accountable and ourselves accountable for our actions. And we can and we need to support our officers in doing it. And, so, I guess what I would say is I think it was a false choice we were given.

Johnston: Well, I think there are places where we know crime is on the increase. And part of those reasons, I think, are because of we don’t have adequate accountability for some of those consequences for some of those crimes. And I think there are places still where decriminalization has been effective for things like marijuana possession. That was obviously the right step. And so I think what we know is when we’re focusing on violent crimes or serious property crimes, there ought to be real accountability for that. I think that doesn’t support the idea that auto theft should be a misdemeanor charge. I think that if you steal a car of any value, that should still be a felony. So there are places where I think we do want to have more accountability on crime.

And I think there are places where we also just want more capacity to respond. Right now, the reason why we see so much crime that we can’t respond to is we don’t have actually enough officers to be able to do that response. And so if you get your car stolen and call and no one responds, it’s not because people don’t care. It’s because they don’t have the capacity to respond. And so I think that has also hurt our enforcement. So I think it’s a combination of good policy first and good enforcement backed by a full staffing.

Gazette: Is Denver’s current district attorney too soft on crime, as some suggest?

Brough: If you talk to an officer, they’ll tell you maybe it’s the district attorney. If you talk to someone in the district attorney’s office, maybe they’ll tell you it’s the law or the officer didn’t write the ticket up well enough for them to prosecute. If you talk to a judge, they may have a different answer. If you talk to a legislator, they’ll have a different answer. … I think for me, again, I go back to that practical (consideration of) let’s stop trying to figure out whom to blame, and let’s start figuring out how to solve it.

So I suggest we meet, frankly, in the beginning, weekly to say what happened in our city. We all have taken an oath to keep our city safe. And I would bring together the district attorney, the manager of safety, the police chief, myself, the president of city council, maybe the presiding judge would join us and we could talk about what makes the city safe and is there something each of us needs to do better to deliver on our commitment to make this a safe city? And we take responsibility to do it, and we start working together to get the job done.

Johnston: I don’t think that’s the key challenge we’re facing. I think it’s a matter of alignment between the mayor’s office, the police department, the district attorney’s, the judges and the sheriffs. I think there’s not current alignment or agreement on what to prosecute, how to prosecute it, and how to make sure we can keep the city safe…You (could) have an officer who tickets someone and brings them in for a case that won’t be charged, or a DA that will try a case that a judge won’t sentence, or DA that will bring a case in which a judge will release someone on a bond. And so, what you don’t have is a clear sense of, here’s the big problem we’re trying to solve in this city. Here’s the role we all are going to play in solving it.

Gazette: Former Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen has said it was a mistake to let convicted felons possess firearms and to expose police to personal civil liability for their actions on the job. Do you agree with those two points?

Brough: I don’t have as much insight into the felon issue or data and firearms. I think we have a major firearm problem in our city. So I could understand why somebody would also say additional ownership is probably not helping us.

With regard to the second part though, my concern with this is, listen, if an officer violates someone’s constitutional rights, you should hold us accountable. You should hold me as mayor accountable. If I violate the law in the execution of my duties, I am personally liable. And I believe all public officials should be, including our officers.

That said, I do have a concern about the change. You’ll be shocked to hear lawyers still disagree, but there is some disagreement about the risk an officer may face in terms of personal liability when the city might have a policy or the city might settle a suit, not because we believe we’re at fault, but because it’s efficient. And if you’ve been in these roles, that is true. Sometimes you settle lawsuits not because you believe we did anything wrong, but because it’s more efficient than spending the resources to continue to fight it. In those instances, I am concerned and want to be really clear that our officers should be protected in those situations.

Johnston: I agree with the first one that I don’t believe convicted felons should have access to firearms. I don’t agree on the second one that I don’t think that civil liability is the challenge we’re facing in our officer recruitment right now. I think it is not feeling like there is the morale and support from the mayor and the city to do the work that needs to be done and that we’ve been able to recruit broad enough and deep enough to be able to respond to the increasing levels of crime that exist. So I think those are the biggest challenges I see and what it takes to recruit and keep officers. I don’t find that the good officers are afraid of being held accountable for the work that they do, just like any employee is. So, I don’t think that is the key problem. But I do think that we should be much more cautious about letting felons have access to firearms.

Gazette: Will you enforce the city’s camping ban differently than is now the practice under the current administration? And if so, how?

Brough: I would not move people around our city, but instead move people to safer locations. And once we have those safer locations, enough locations for everyone to go, this is where I would not allow the option to move down the street or down the block, but that you go to a safer location. This has to do with safety and, frankly, saving lives.

That said, I am well aware the city has a number of requirements the courts have put in place from notice requirements to warning requirements to citations, and then I’ll follow the law.

But I also want to be really clear that I think we are (currently) erring on the side of leaving people to fend for themselves on our streets versus erring on the side of getting people to safer locations. (A safer location) could be a temporary outdoor site. It could be a shelter bed that we have available that, you know, works for you. If you’re a woman, it’s for a woman. It could be at Denver Cares if you’re intoxicated or high and need to get to a safer location. It could be a mental health hold.

But it also could be that we have to take you in because you’re refusing to come in amid freezing weather. And we take you into our jail to keep you safe, but not processing you through our criminal justice system and incarcerating you, but instead really being clear (that) you have to go to a safer location. You can’t camp throughout the city without support.

Johnston: I’ve said I will enforce (the camping ban) because there are times where we have public safety risks. I was talking to the city where there was a situation where there was an encampment that had so much propane that was potentially close to an open flame that it would have been enough to, you know, explode half a city block. And so there are real health and safety risks we have to be attentive to.

What’s different is, I think the reason the current camping ban is not working in implementation is because when you move someone right now, they have no place else to go and so they end up just relocating on the next block, which means you’re not fulfilling the purpose. I think the focus needs to be really on providing housing and getting people access to housing and housing that can be built quickly and can be built affordably.

And that’s why I’ve focused on these micro communities where you can put up tiny homes that you can build in five or six days and only cost $25,000 a unit, but do provide safety, stability, protection from the elements. Access to showers and kitchens and what people need to be able to get back up on their feet and get into a job. And so I think that is the first priority, is getting people access to housing and then getting them services there so that …we have a place to offer someone to go when we’re asking them to move.

Gazette: The Common Sense Institute has estimated that two thirds of $1 billion in public and private nonprofit funding will be spent this year on homeless services in the Denver metro area. Would your plan on homelessness require even more money — or to spend current revenue more wisely or differently?

Brough: The latter. Denver has (at least) $240 million. That said, that includes ARPA money, federal dollars, one-time dollars. I’ve been trying to dig through that budget and understand it. I believe about $100 million is one-time money. So when it’s spent, it’s gone and it’s done.

I’m really focused on how can we use those resources more effectively. And cities around the nation that are having some success have really turned to prevention because it’s so much less expensive. So, this is things like partnering with landlords that if you’re just evicting someone and the sole reason is really payment of rent, often for very small amounts of money, we can keep people housed versus the $50,000 per person per year when you’re unhoused that it costs cities.

I saw in Charlotte, N.C., a strategy that actually rehoused people who are unhoused today in existing apartments. And how they did it is the private sector underwrote the risk of rehousing someone. They found 90% of the people they rehoused with the private sector basically saying we’ll pay their rent if they can’t pay their rent. Ninety percent signed a second year’s lease and it costs less than $1,000 per person per year. And so, I feel like I’m not prepared to say we need more resources at all. I feel like we have to really carefully examine where we’re spending and what we’re doing.

Johnston: This does not require more money. We actually have the resources we need to fund this, in part because of what the city has already and what the passage of Proposition 123 provides. So, all of the programs I’ve laid out (in my plan) for homelessness are already paid for from existing city and state revenue and do not require any increases in taxes. It’s actually true for all of my programs across my policy platforms. All of them are paid for by current revenue. I’m the only candidate who’s come out and shown exactly what a budget is for each of these programs, how much they cost and where these dollars come from, and how we do it without increasing taxes. So that is answer one. Answer two is, I do think there are ways to spend the money far more efficiently, and then we can find savings among the dollars that we have now, including right now. It is a very inefficient way to provide services to people. Even if you do want to provide services like mental health or addiction support, if you never know where that person is going to be night to night, if you’re chasing them from corner to corner or tent to tent, it’s very hard to get any continuity of service. The benefit of our micro communities is that you have someone with a physical address, a location with around-the-clock staffing, you know exactly where to reach them to provide that job training support. So they’re actually getting multiple days the training, getting the job interview, getting placed and getting back on their feet.

Gazette: Given growing disenchantment with Denver’s school board, what role will you play as mayor in school board races this coming fall? Do you believe the current board needs to be flipped?

Brough: Now, safety issues have been brought to the forefront, but frankly, throughout this campaign, starting last fall…I haven’t met anyone in the city of Denver who believes our current board is high performing and focused on the mission and keeping our kids safe. So not only would I get involved in those three seats, but I would put my full political will and power behind the three candidates that we believe could restore confidence in Denver Public Schools and begin to turn around both keeping our kids safe and also delivering the education that our kids deserve.

Johnston: I do not think the current board has done a successful job of either serving the community or keeping kids safe. And I think there are a lot of parents who feel strongly about that. So I do think there will need to be changes at the school board. And I have said I will advocate for candidates that I think are strong, experienced leaders who can help guide the city in the right direction and would be prepared to advocate against those who I think are not.

Gazette: Should the city pay for metal detectors and other screening to help insulate Denver schools?

Brough: I was advocating with our current school board, as early as January, to have school resource officers brought back into the schools who were asking for them. I feel like there’s no reason you couldn’t honor that. I would say the same here. You know, allowing parents and students and our teachers to talk about what they need to keep their schools safe. I would support that strongly.

Even this issue of school resource officers, the question has come up: “What if DPS can’t afford it?” The most fundamental responsibility of government is to keep its residents safe. I take that seriously. Together, we’ll figure out how to get it done, what we need to get done so our kids can safely go to school.

Johnston: Yeah, I think I’m open to the city picking up the costs. We need to. To help provide public safety in the schools and having a partnership with Denver to do that. And I think that schools and school communities should really be the leaders in deciding what they think they want their security to look like.

When we talked last time, I think I was the first person to come out and say that if teachers and students and parents want school resource officers, they should have the right to do that. And even though parents said loudly they did want that, the school board twice refused to do that until after the third shooting. … I think schools should be able to make that decision themselves about whether they think they want SROs or whether they want metal detectors or what they think the right security precautions are. I know each school is different, and as a former principal, there are some of those tools I would have used and some I wouldn’t have needed. And so, I think that’s for parents and teachers and students and school leaders to decide.

Gazette: Starting on January 1st of 2024, gas furnaces and water heaters will not be allowed in new commercial and multifamily construction. The next year, the city no longer will issue permits for certain types of gas, heating and cooling systems for existing commercial and multifamily buildings. And after 2027, the city will no longer issue permits for any gas, heating and cooling equipment and commercial buildings. It has raised an outcry among commercial and multifamily property owners, as you are aware. Do you support these greenhouse gas mitigation mandates, regardless of their cost to the private sector?

Brough: I’m sensitive to two things. One, climate change is real and we have action to take as a community, both our businesses and our residences. That said, I’m sensitive to the costs on both. And I think we have to be highly sensitive. … And so, I’d be looking at how do we accomplish the goals we need to accomplish without putting that burden on organizations that maybe can’t withstand it.

And I think about our smallest businesses in that regard. I also would be very interested in some of the federal legislation and funding that’s been passed in this space. We have, you know, frankly, New Deal kind of money that the federal government has put out that we would have eligibility for. I’d focus on trying to also see how much of that we could bring home so we could have the impact we want to have on our climate without burdening our residents or our businesses to a degree that could affect their ability to stay in business or to live here.

Johnston: I do support greenhouse gas emission steps and I do think there’s ways to do them that are common sense and are effective. We know the quality of air in Denver.

We’re now one of the seven worst cities in America for air quality. We know emissions play a huge part in that, and we have people who can’t go outside in the summertime and go on a hike right now in Denver because the air quality is too low. And I think for this city to have that terrible of air quality is not a sustainable solution.

So I do think we have to make our choices. I think that includes both how we electrify buildings and residences and how we do more on electric vehicles. That means how we go to cleaner fossil fuels away from the ones that we have. And yet also we know that we want to be able to make sure to keep the city affordable for people to live in and to work in.

We also know that right now, natural gas has been one of the causes of massive increases in people’s utility bills. We can get more stable, more affordable electricity for a lot of families out of electric power rather than gas power. … So, I think we want to do both. We want to focus on making Denver greener, and we want to make sure that we don’t increase costs too much at the same time.

Gazette: Do you support Gov. Jared Polis’ affordable housing plan, which is in flux but, as introduced in the Legislature, would have overridden local planning and zoning rules with statewide land use priorities?

Brough: The primary role of the Denver City Council is land use and zoning. So, this is really their job. So, probably the first thing I’d do is consult with the Denver City Council to get a sense of how they’re looking at sort of their primary function being, you know, changed.

The city of Denver is in opposition. My assumption is the council and the mayor came together to come out with that position. I’d get clear with my council as well. That said, I also want to highlight something else, and that is I get why we’re having this conversation. We’re having a hard time building what we need to build. We do have to build more densely. I think where we build it really matters.

I, of course, think we should be building it where we’ve made investments around our light rail stations and our major bus routes so that we are creating a denser city where you can still get around. So, those are challenging. I was chair of Habitat for Humanity last year and I’ve been on their board for years and it’s tough to find a neighborhood that doesn’t oppose building more housing density or affordability. And, so, this is a serious conversation. Even if we say we don’t want the state to tell us, we still have to come to terms with, as a city, the fact that we have to develop differently than we’re developing today.

Johnston: Yeah, I’ve been to the Legislature enough to know that when bills are changing dramatically every single day, you don’t weigh in on them until you see what the final version is going to look like. I’ll tell you what I think about land use, zoning and planning and what we want to do in Denver.

I want to aggressively move to build more affordable housing in Denver, and that means adding more density in Denver. It also means likely adding density along the transit corridors where we know it belongs the most. That includes places like Colorado Boulevard and Colfax and next to light rail and public transit.

We will do that. We will look at some upzoning in certain neighborhoods to make that possible. I also think there are risks with potentially upzoning across the board, which is you have some places where that will lead to gentrification.

You have some places where that will lead to building units that aren’t at the prices you need or for the people you need them for. If you take a single family home in Hilltop and turn it into a quad-plex, it means you’ll just have four units at $1 million each instead of one unit at $4 million. I don’t think that’s going to solve an affordability problem.

So I’ll see what the final version looks like before I opine. But my priority is to make sure we can have the tools we need to build affordable housing here in Denver. And I think we can do that with or without the state’s intervention.

Gazette: Did Denver’s Fair Election Fund, which debuted this spring and in which you participated, achieve its goal? The top two vote getters in the mayoral election were also the top two fundraisers. So, what purpose did the policy actually serve? And did outside spending by independent groups further undermine the fund’s premise of getting special-interest money out of politics.

Brough: Yeah, I’ll be honest. I don’t know what the full goals were of the Fair Election Fund. You know, I participated in it. I’m following the rules. And frankly, because 98% of my funding comes from right here, you know, that turns out I benefited from that fund. Even if people didn’t expect someone like me to benefit from it. And so, I’m the only one who pulled down the maximum match you could have. But I have some concerns. You know, I’ve never run before.

So, I was surprised to find out that I could, with a piece of paper, become a candidate, become eligible for the Fair Elections Fund, and actually receive a check before I was ever on a ballot. I think that’s a problem. I think there’s things that we should change if the voters believe we should keep it so we ensure that it really is. You first have to be on the ballot before you might qualify for a payment.

And then, of course, I worry about increasing outside funding, independent expenditures. What I don’t like about it is even if you’re trying to help me, you can present me in a manner that is like, I wouldn’t say that about myself, or that’s not how I’d represent that issue. I prefer to be held accountable to what I say about myself.

Johnston: I think there were successful parts … we were proud that we raised more donations from Denver residents than maybe anybody else in the race. And a lot of those people were people who could make $50 contributions and that $50 was matched and that made that be a powerful leverage for us.

There were some things that didn’t work. I think that shutting down the fund early meant that the last two months of the race there was no access to matching funds. I think if the matching funds aren’t in place, then it doesn’t make sense to have the limits be lower. And so you either want to keep the matching funds up and running or you’ve got to change the limits. And so or you have to be able to look at, you know, does someone who can give for round one of the general election also give for the runoff?

But I think the basic idea of elevating the impact of everyday voters to be voters and to be volunteers and to be donors was powerful and effective. It allowed us to run a really grassroots campaign where we were in people’s living rooms — 150 meet-and-greets in living rooms across the city.

And whether you were a teacher or a nurse or a firefighter or a business owner, you were someone who could make a meaningful contribution. And I think that was effective in leveling the playing field for donors.

Gazette: Why should voters select you and not your opponent as Denver’s next mayor?

Brough: I’d highlight three things. …One, my family has been through a lot. And the reason I think this is relevant is I think the things my family has struggled through are many of the issues that Denver residents are struggling with today. And I think you’ve got to understand a problem to start to figure out how to address it and support people. But even more, those experiences have built values in me that I think will serve these residents well, like compassion. A belief in the resiliency of the human spirit because I’ve lived it and my confidence that there is a better future for Denver and I can help get us there.

The second thing would be my professional experience. You know, I’ve not run for office before, but I have run the city, and I know how to do it. And it’s a complex, large organization. I see this as being the CEO of the city. Having that executive experience my whole life has been about delivering results, supporting team building and supporting teams. And I think that’s exactly what we need in Denver. And I don’t think we have time for a learning curve. The issues are urgent and they need someone who can start work immediately.

And I can. Maybe the third one is even better. You know, I’m not running for another office. Every single decision I make will be about how I can make this city work for its residents, its businesses. Every decision will be about making this city work again and what I call restoring its promise. The promise I saw as I raised my girls here. I will never make decisions about my political future. And I think the next mayor has some tough decisions ahead. …I said three, but the fourth would be I’m a woman. You asked for the differences!

Johnston: I both have a bold vision for what’s possible in the city and have a track record of taking on really hard problems and delivering really historic results and bringing together unlikely coalitions to do that.

I did that when we brought together 260 organizations from all political backgrounds to support our affordable housing measure for the first time in Colorado history to pass. That did it when we brought together groups as diverse as tobacco companies and health care industry and preschool advocates to pass universal preschool in 2020. When we brought together people of all backgrounds to support repealing the Gallagher Amendment to make sure we weren’t crushing small businesses or hurting our fire and ambulance districts.

And I did it when I helped take on getting our high school students access to college. And we were able to turn a high school around from a 50% dropout rate to getting 100% of our kids admitted to college and to graduate from high school that were seniors. So I think people are looking for who do they really believe can tackle these very difficult problems — who has the vision to do it, can build the team to do it and can be relentless about staying at it until we succeed.

And I think my track record shows and my specific plans for how to get them done show that I’m the right candidate to do that.