Mike Johnston and Kelly Brough Will Meet in Denver Mayoral Runoff

With fewer than 2,400 votes left to be counted, Mike Johnston has the clear lead in the mayor's race, with Kelly Brough in second place; the two will meet in a runoff on June 6. As of 2 p.m. April 6, just under 172,000 votes had been tallied, and there are 524,250 registered voters in the city.

In the most recent release from the Denver Elections Division, Johnston has 24.45 percent of the vote, while Brough had 20.04 percent. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two vote-getters move to the runoff. Although Lisa Calderón, who ran for mayor in 2019, has been gathering speed as the count continues, she's now at 18.17 percent, and unlikely to bump Brough.

Andy Rougeot, the only registered Republican, has collected 11.55 percent of the vote; he's conceded. Leslie Herod, a well-known state representative, is in fifth place with 10.69 percent. No other candidate has crossed the 10 percent barrier.

Johnston and Brough had the largest war chests in this campaign, with $3.5 million and $2.4 million in funding, respectively; much of it had been poured into independent expenditure committees.

Throughout his campaign, Johnston focused heavily on housing and homelessness, two of the major problems facing the Mile High City, and promised to end homelessness in his first term as mayor. In debates and forums, the former Colorado state senator offered specifics on how he would build ten to twenty micro-communities of tiny homes and converted motel rooms to get people now living on the street into transitional housing.

Brough, on the other hand, pitched Denver voters on the combination of her executive experience — as chief of staff for former mayor John Hickenlooper and president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce — and the empathy she's gained through a difficult life journey. Brough's father was killed when she was just an infant, and she lost her husband to suicide after his struggle with addiction.

Both candidates have largely avoided negative rhetoric throughout the campaign season. That would likely change in a runoff, and even if they didn't start slinging mud at each other, both are supported by independent expenditure committees that could do the dirty work.

The race to replace the term-limited Mayor Michael Hancock as Denver's chief executive had seventeen candidates on the ballot, although Kwame Spearman dropped out before the actual election. Many of these candidates cited the existence of the Fair Elections Fund, a new public campaign finance mechanism, as a key reason that they chose to run.

All told, the Denver mayoral candidates collected nearly $10.7 million in contributions in the runup to election day, and Johnston was in the lead when the first results were announced at 7 p.m. April 4. The Denver Elections Division is continuing to update the count here; another release is slated for 2 p.m. April 7.

This story has been updated with the 2 p.m. April 6 vote counts.