I interviewed the Colorado Springs mayoral candidates. Here’s what I learned.
Decoding what politicians say can be hard.
Between interviews with 11 out of the 12 candidates for mayor — sorry, Lawrence Martinez — many agree on what they believe are the top issues currently facing Colorado Springs: public safety, affordable housing, and addressing homelessness.
Some mayoral hopefuls vying to replace outgoing Mayor John Suthers cite their unique experiences as public officials or business owners when asked why they’re running: we’ve got many seasoned politicians ranging from local, statewide, to federal levels of service.
We also have our political newcomers participating as community-involved leaders (Yemi Mobolade and Lawrence Martinez), those with axes against government to grind (Jim Miller, John Tiegen, and Andrew Dalby), one who threw his hat in on a whim (Kallan Reece), and one frequently spotted in a cowboy hat (Christopher Mitchell).
It’s a wide field, and it could narrow to a run-off election between two of these dozen.
During my interviews, I was able to “vibe-check” each candidate and get a sense of why they’re running. Within the past week, all 12 candidates also had a chance to make their case to voters at public forums, and they’ll continue to do so.
This is my first time covering a municipal election, so bear with me. I also want to say that I’m impressed and encouraged that so many of the people hoping to lead the 39th largest city in the country took time out of their schedules to speak with a college student writing a newsletter about this important election. I met some in person over coffee and spoke to others on the phone. The order in which candidates appear corresponds to the order that I interviewed them.
Now, onto what they said..
Out of 12 mayoral candidates, Clark, a self-described “military wife,” stands out as the sole woman vying for the position this cycle. But, “I don’t think it’s about being a woman,” she told me in a phone interview. “It's because I'm someone with experience to do the job.”
Clark touts herself as the only candidate “with experience at all levels of government — local, state, and national,” according to her website. Former President Donald Trump appointed Clark as the State Director of the United States Department of Agriculture and Rural Development for Colorado. She has been a Republican El Paso County Commissioner and a city council member.
She’s also been a small business owner for more than 36 years and runs the Holden House Bed and Breakfast in Old Colorado City. “I know what it means to write a paycheck,” she says. “I know what it means to balance a budget, pay taxes, and retain employees.”
If elected, she says she’ll have a “30-day, 60-day, and 90-day plan with a transition team,” including a “360 review” of all city departments that assess “the budget, resources, and priorities” of the city. When talking to constituents, she says she most frequently hears about “crime, affordable housing, and homelessness.”
She says she believes Suthers has done a “great job,” but adds she sees “some systemic social issues that are coming forward, that that can be improved upon. And I'm not here to criticize anyone who's come before because it's a tough job. All I'm saying is, in my mind, I think we always look for improvements.”
Clark has notably received the second-largest contributions this election cycle, with a total of $100,000 from the O’Neil Group.
This current city council member is rounding out his eight years of public service by bidding for at least four more, this time as mayor. Strand was elected an at-large member of council in 2015, re-elected in 2019, and took over as council president when Richard Skorman left the post in 2021.
“I'm in a position to make the biggest difference going forward in the next four years,” he told me over the phone. In addition to being on city council, he’s a retired Air Force officer, and he served as president and vice-president of District 11’s board of education. “I don't think there are any other candidates out there that have had that kind of experience, that’s current” he said.
Strand describes outgoing mayor Suthers as “terrific” and commended him for strengthening the relationship between the mayor and council, saying he wants to continue that bond. Asked what he might want to do differently, he says he’ll be “more engaged with the police and fire department” as well as with the city’s homelessness issue.
“I know five council members out of the nine going forward in April,” he said. “I know their priorities and how they think, so I think that would be a big benefit going forward in terms of new issues or projects.”
Some might describe Wayne Williams as the current “frontrunner” of this election, given his endorsement by Suthers, his backing from the conservative Phil Anschutz-owned Colorado Springs Gazette’s editorial board, and impressive war chest. For the past four years, Williams has sat on city council as an at-large member. Instead of running for re-election, he’s going for the top job.
“I want to continue the progress that we've made in the last four or eight years here in Colorado Springs, including emphasizing public safety, taking care of transportation and infrastructure,” Williams told me over the phone.
Asked what he believes sets him apart from the other 11 candidates, he said: “I'm the only one that has elected executive experience of this group. I have run offices and run them well, both as Clerk and Recorder, and as Secretary of State.”
Williams also served as a County Commissioner from 2003 to 2011, and has run a small business, Law Offices of Wayne Williams, since 1998. His wife currently serves on the County Commission.
As for his opinion on the legacy of the outgoing mayor who supports him, Williams says he’s “done a very good job,” praising the city’s economic growth, downtown revitalization, and collaboration among the mayor and city council under Suthers.
“The next mayor of Colorado Springs will face different challenges than we have in the last eight years, " Williams said. “We will continue to need to adjust to changing circumstances. John and I have similar philosophies in terms of trying to ensure we deliver critical public services and do them well.”
Williams has notably received the largest municipal election campaign contribution — a $250,000 push from Colorado Springs Forward PAC.
In last week's debate, Williams took repeated heat from current County Commissioner Longinos Gonzales over that donation.
Gonzales also called out Williams for spending government money on himself, saying, “I don’t want somebody, unfortunately, like Wayne Williams, who used Secretary of State taxpayer funds to pay for a $450 expensive hat for his personal use, $375 tuxedo pants for his personal use, and $699 custom boots, which he might be wearing tonight.”
Williams replied: “When you want to attack someone rather than talk about your own record, I think that says something.”
Current County Commissioner Longinos Gonzales is a retired Air Force officer, former teacher, and businessman. He taught as an associate professor in Southern California and taught in Harrison School District 2.
“I believe I have the broadest background that really represents our community,” he said in our interview. “Here locally there are 100,000 veterans in El Paso County, the majority of them in Colorado Springs. I think it benefits our community that their next mayor could be a veteran.”
Gonzales, who keeps a star-spangled cross pinned to his blazer, says public safety would be his top priority, followed by roads and infrastructure. He says he wants to decrease law enforcement response times.
Gonzales says he thinks Suthers has done well for the economy and growth. But, “I think some areas of the city have benefited to a higher level than others,” he says, adding,“that's the one thing I'd say I saw down living in the South. Some of those improvements didn't quite reach our area to the same level as others.”
In debates and on his website, Gonzales repeatedly hammers on stopping what he calls “the tax increase proposals the city continues to pursue every other year.”
Kallan Reece, 32, is unmistakable sporting a mullet and a young face when standing next to other mayoral candidates on a stage. A local comedian, Reece says he’s running in part to bring attention to the election April 4. “Not a lot of people know that there’s an election even going on,” he said.
I’m with you, Reece. This is me trying to hype it up.
Reece wants awareness about the election but importantly by young voters, he said in a phone interview. “I want them to get out and vote,” he said, “because that's your voice.”
Reece decided to run for mayor while watching TV. An ad came on that said if you've lived in Colorado Springs for a year and you're 30 or older and registered to vote and can wrangle 100 signatures to get on the ballot, you can run for mayor, Reece recounted. “I was just like ‘there's an election going on?’”
“It's a pretty low criteria, but I meet it,” he said. “So I went ahead and got the signatures and decided to run for mayor.”
If elected, he will “be shocked,” he joked at a mayoral forum hosted by Habitat for Humanity on Tuesday, Feb. 28. “But I hope the housing crisis will not look any worse.” Reece considers affordable housing to be one of the biggest issues facing Colorado Springs.
This self-funding owner of an RV and boat storage lot pitches himself as a “rock-ribbed Reagan Republican.” He describes himself on his website as “anti-corruption” and believes “the government is best that governs least.” The three functions he deems worthy of city guidance are “public safety, public works, and public parks.”
In an interview, Dalby said he’s sick of career politicians and political elites. “I don’t want to be mayor. I’m willing to be mayor,” he told me. He’s so willing to be mayor that he put in $375,000 of his own money to his campaign.
“I am the political newcomer who has the education, experience, and expertise to be able to actually manage a city this size and to solve the problems that we have,” Dalby said.
Dalby seems confident that his self-financed campaign will propel him to a successful election outcome, and he has pointed voters to who is funding certain candidates (namely developer funding for Sallie Clark and Wayne Williams), saying “money is the mother’s milk of politics.”
“The fact of the matter is, the next mayor is going to be either Yemi or myself,” Dalby said at the end of a forum. Time will tell, Dalby.
Militia founder isn’t typically what you see on the resume of contenders for mayor. But it’s Colorado Springs in 2023, so we have one in the mix. The reason Tiegen says he decided to put his hat in the ring for mayor were regulations borne out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, “how they were using the health department pretty much as a police force,” he said.
“Our country is running us, versus us running our country,” he said about COVID regulations over the phone.
Tiegen is skeptical of career politicians and wants to know what sort of “backdoor deals” are going down among our local elected leaders.
Tiegen served as a Marine from 1995 to 1999, according to an article in the Colorado Springs Indy, now renamed Sixty35 Media. Amidst protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Tiegen led a “militia group” to “protect property from antifa looters,” The Indy reported in 2020, “and that he had made comments that seemed to indicate his support for ‘gunning down protesters.’”
Running as a self-described “unapologetic Christian constitutional conservative pro-life second-amendment-loving American,” Glenn hammers one point home when talking about why he wants to be mayor: making Colorado Springs “the safest city in the nation.” He describes public safety as “neglected” in past years.
“I am going to make sure that we're looking at our budget and we're rallying everybody to be growing in the same direction with that particular purpose,” Glenn told me.
How does he plan to do that? In a recent mayoral forum Glenn said, “I’m a Black man that actually loves the police.” He plans on being actively involved in officer recruitment, pushing jail time for municipal violations, and reversing qualified immunity.
Glenn grew up in Colorado Springs, attending Penrose Elementary, Sabin Junior High, and Doherty High School, according to his website. He served on city council from 2003 to 2011 and as County Commissioner as a Republican from 2011 to 2018. He’s a lawyer and a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, and received the Republican nomination for the U.S. senate in Colorado in 2016 to run unsuccessfully against Michael Bennet.
Glenn vouches for maximal deregulation, saying he does not support seeking federal and state funds “to be able to try to promote affordable housing.”
A self-described “political independent,” Mobolade stands out as a candidate with the most donations from across the city, with hundreds of individual supporters chipping in less than $150 to his campaign.
A West African immigrant and U.S. citizen, Mobolade moved to the Springs 12 years ago first as a pastor “to start a new kind of church that was going to impact the city,” he says.
Upon moving to the Springs he founded COSILoveYou, “a city gospel movement in Colorado Springs,” according to its website. Its mission is to “unite and ignite the local church to love the city.”
Although a political newcomer, he has been involved in public works as the city’s small business development administrator and vice president of business retention and expansion for the Colorado Springs Chamber & Economic Development Corporation.
He co-founded Good Neighbors Meeting House, The Wild Goose Meeting House, and Niche Consulting. (he is likely to face questions about how he operated some of them.)
Mobolade dubs himself a “triple strength” candidate, with experience in private, nonprofit, and civic sectors. “We're all going to make promises about what we're going to do,” he said over the phone. “But the how I'm going to do [it] is what sets me apart from the rest of the field.”
“We need a different kind of leadership to help move our city forward,” he added. “The same leaders here, it's not the same leadership that's gonna take us to that next step.”
A political newcomer who also served in the Marines and runs a vending machine business, Miller says the “main reason” he is running for mayor is because “four pedophiles” moved in next door to where he lives and “nobody seems to care” about how far away they can live from those around them.
“I don’t like politics or politicians,” he said during an interview at a coffee shop downtown. “It’s become a polluted industry when it was supposed to be a bunch of representatives for the people,” likening it to jury duty.
As for the man he seeks to replace, Miller says he doesn’t like the tax increases Suthers championed during his administration and the way he “prioritized” the new U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum.
As a Springs resident, he says he feels overworked and overtaxed. During a recent mayoral forum hosted by Habitat for Humanity he got some of the most audible feedback with his straight-talking stature.
Another political newcomer, Mitchell says he is running for mayor because he thinks Colorado Springs is “regressing” from its image as the City of Champions.
An engineer by trade, he says he will bring the kind of skills to government that he uses in industry, like project management and critical thinking.
He is opposed to high-density urban initiatives and he wants to pursue growth through what he calls “graduated growth planning.”
Mitchell called Suthers a “steady hand” for the city, but he would like to bring what he called more “cohesiveness” to the way the city manages its departments. He has a slogan he likes to repeat: He wants to be “a mayor for the residents.”
Aside from policy, if you want a city leader who is working on their fitness, Mitchell is the guy for you. Check out his shirtless-cowboy-hat pics on his website.
Running his third bid for mayor in eight years, Martinez, a Navajo who served more than 15 years on the El Pomar Foundation's Elevating Leadership Development program and is on its Native American Advisory Council.
He was the hardest candidate in the race to schedule and interview with.
Therefore, what follows comes from other media reports and his comments at public forums. The Gazette reported that if elected, he said he wants to build more affordable housing units, particularly on the city's southeast side and that the city could incentivize developers by implementing more tax-free zones, "especially in lower-income areas.” Martinez “wants to create a campus on the city's east side with a dedicated bus line where homeless people can receive medical, educational and housing services that aim to lift them out of homelessness,” the paper also reported.
When it comes to affordable housing, “what we need to do is we need to take a look where to infill in certain parts of town with apartments that people can afford,” he said at a recent forum. “If a developer can build a forty-million-dollar apartment complex downtown they should be able to build affordable housing.”
The CC City Election Reporting Project is a student-faculty collaboration by Colorado College senior Amelia Allen. Colorado College Journalism Institute Co-director Corey Hutchins, is advising the project. This newsletter seeks to provide reporting about the April 4, 2023 city election in a way that is relevant to the campus and broader Springs community.
📬 Enter your email address to subscribe and get the newsletter in your inbox each time it comes out. You can reach me with questions, feedback, or news tips by email at ameliasallen8 [at] gmail [dot] com.