The six people running for mayor in Denver’s 2019 election were fascinating in their differences, from a former Black Panther to the two-term incumbent. I profiled each one, including interviews at their homes. Readers reported that the pieces provided critical perspectives for their decisions.
The first official words of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s re-election campaign were defiant.
“I know they didn’t expect a crowd like this for this mayor,” he declared, taking the stage for his launch party in January.
“But they don’t know me,” he said. “We’ve been on this journey together for a very long time.”
Hancock’s ascendant biography once enraptured the city. He got national attention after winning the mayorship in 2011, a man who had come from nothing to lead America’s next boomtown.
Eight years later, it’s a far different story.
In 2019, the mayor is dogged on every flank by challengers who have questioned his character and hammered his record. They cast him as an avatar of unbridled urbanization, the leader whose ambitions have spun out of control into rising rent and unrecognizable neighborhoods. And the entire election is shadowed by the revelation in 2018 that Hancock sent suggestive text messages to a city employee six years earlier.
A fast-talking man with a compact build who thrives on personal connections, Hancock has recognized the city’s shifting political terrain: Instead of economic success, he’s talking now about economic inclusion. He has statistics and bullet points — some prepared by his large campaign team and some thrown off the cuff — to answer every attack.
It comes in snappy jokes and cutting remarks. “We suck in Denver, huh?” he declared sarcastically after listening to his opponents’ critiques at one event. At another forum, Hancock accused rival Penfield Tate of courting the same corporate interests that are supposedly corrupting the city.
Now, after months of campaigning, Hancock was ready to let off some steam to a Denver Post reporter over a glass of red Turnbull wine.
Read Hancock’s full profile and the complete set at The Denver Post.
