Five Takeaways from 9News’s Second Mayoral Debate

Five takeaways:

Mike Johnston Is a Target

Fresh off an endorsement from the Denver Post‘s editorial board, Mike Johnston is now a target of other candidates, as became evident during the portion of the debate when each candidate got to pose a question to another candidate. Several directed their queries to Johnston, hoping to create a gotcha moment. Trinidad Rodriguez, for example, asked Johnston how many tiny homes he plans to build and where he would put them; when Rodriguez complained that Johnston hadn’t answered the question, Clark cut both off. But Johnston wasn’t off the heat seat yet: Thomas Wolf asked him about the “coastal billionaires” who were pouring money into an independent expenditure committee supporting his campaign; Chris Hansen asked a similar question. And then Terrance Roberts, who’d once shared an office with Johnston, asked his past associate about letting Blood gang members move into the building where they’d both worked.

While Johnston was able to fend off criticisms and flip his answers into positive responses, it’s clear that other candidates now consider him competition.

The Holly Has a Moment

The interaction between Roberts and Johnston was fascinating for anyone who’s read The Holly by Julian Rubinstein, or watched the documentary of the same name now streaming online. The book follows Roberts as he moves from being a leader of the Bloods to prison to his work as an anti-gang activist — who then shoots another gang member at a 2013 peace rally. Roberts was ultimately acquitted of attempted murder; eight years later, he’s running for mayor. “Me and Mike, we do go really far back. And we did open our office in the Holly,” said Roberts, who was seated next to Johnston.

When it was finally Johnston’s turn to ask a question, he turned to Roberts, and offered a straightforward query as to how he would lessen youth violence in Denver.

“Attacking poverty with our public safety dollars,” Roberts suggested.

Leslie Herod Takes Credit for STAR

Responding to Republican candidate Andy Rougeot‘s question about her alleged past support of defunding the police, state Representative Leslie Herod responded, “I did not speak about divestment of the police. In fact, I talked about how we created STAR in the summer of 2020.”

STAR is the Support Team Assisted Response Program that pairs a paramedic and a behavioral health clinician and sends the duo out to crisis calls that don’t merit a police response. The City of Denver launched the program in June 2020, coincidentally right as protesters were demonstrating in the streets following the murder of George Floyd. The program had been set to launch in April, but was delayed by the pandemic.

“I worked with Chief Pazen on that measure and so many community activists and organizers,” Herod said of STAR.

According to Paul Pazen, who retired from the Denver Police Department in October, Herod’s response was “a little bit of a stretch.” He credits Herod with championing Caring 4 Denver, a ballot measure approved by voters in 2018 that funds mental health services; money from that tax increase helps support STAR. While Pazen acknowledges that Herod joined him on a trip to Eugene, Oregon, to study that city’s crisis intervention program, he says that the DPD had met with community members and advocates for months to craft STAR.

“As somebody that did personally attend every one of the planning meetings there, we can say that Caring 4 Denver participated in those meetings, but we didn’t see anybody from Leslie’s office or herself at these planning meetings where these difficult decisions and steps and perspectives were needed in order to do this,” Pazen says.

Herod’s campaign stands by what she said during the debate, that “she was instrumental in the creation of STAR.”

Internment Camps Make an Appearance

When Roy asked Rodriguez about his plan to institutionalize much of Denver’s homeless population, including as many as 1,000 people, and hold them for months against their will in what Rodriguez is calling a “field hospital,” she noted that Joe Salazar, a former state lawmaker, had called that facility an “internment camp.”

In response, Rodriguez cited a Colorado law that allows the government to intervene when someone is a danger to themselves or others. “I respectfully disagree…this is not an internment camp,” he said. “This is a place where we can provide the standard of care for healing for people who are suffering and dying on our streets today.”

Later in the debate, candidate Al Gardner again brought up Rodriguez’s plan. “When I listen down the line, Trinidad’s idea, we talk about internment, essentially. The country has tried that before and it didn’t work out well,” he pointed out.

Rodriguez’s response: “That’s not my plan…I take severe offense to the idea that people who are experiencing actual health crises and are of danger to themselves and others are like Japanese people. …Taking these concepts and throwing them around without even knowing why you got into this race, Al, is just completely inappropriate.”

He then demanded that Gardner apologize to the “Japanese Americans who were interned.”

Debate Over Who Was Allowed in the Debate

By reducing the number of participants, this debate increased the opportunity for discussion — but it also engendered discussion off the stage. 9News had used polling data to select which candidates were included — inviting anyone who’d registered at least 2 percent support in a station-commissioned survey (no one polled at higher than 5 percent) — and that left two candidates running solid campaigns, Ean Tafoya and Kwame Spearman, on the outside looking in.

There was also controversy over the makeup of its first debate on February 16, which included thirteen candidates (among them Tafoya and Spearman) and excluded Andy Rougeot because he is not participating in the Fair Elections Fund. The only Republican candidate was included in this debate, though, because he’s polling at 2 percent.

9News has one more debate scheduled for May 16, when the two mayoral candidates who get the most votes in the April 4 election and make the runoff will both be invited.