November 04, 2021 10:40 AM UTC

Mayor Mike Gets His Conservative Fiefdom

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Aurora Sentinel reports, and in the midst of plenty for Colorado Democrats to celebrate we would be remiss if we did not take note–one of the big winners Tuesday night, a product of undeniable organizing and fundraising success by partisan Republicans making no secret of their affiliation, was Republican Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, whose campaigning for a conservative slate of candidates for the Aurora City Council was so overt it required a court battle to legitimize:

Initial results show conservative members taking the lead in most Aurora City Council races. In the at-large race, both conservatives Dustin Zvonek and Danielle Jurinsky take the lead. There are two open seats, as council members Dave Gruber and Allison Hiltz opted not to run for a second term.

In Ward I, incumbent Crystal Murillo, a Democrat, has taken the lead over her two opponents, Bill Gondrez and Scott Liva.

In Ward II, candidates Steve Sundberg, a Republican bar and grill owner, is leading Democrat Bryan Lindstorm, an Aurora Public Schools teacher, by 967 votes. The winner of the seat will be the first person to represent the Ward since June, when former council member Nicole Johnston resigned her seat to move to Colorado Springs.

The results Tuesday are a big shift from 2019, when freshly-ousted congressman Coffman barely squeaked out a narrow win in the mayoral race and then faced a hostile majority on the City Council. With the near-complete victory of a conservative slate led by Coffman’s former congressional aide Dustin Zvonek, the resistance Coffman encountered on such issues as a camping ban for Aurora and policing in the wake of a raft of brutality cases against residents has been effectively nullified.

What does that mean? Well, it means from this moment, every unresolved social ill affecting Colorado’s largest and most diverse suburban city is now owned by Aurora’s brand-new Republican majority City Council and Mayor Mike Coffman. We’re going to find out if a conservative white majority City Council led by a conservative Republican can come up with workable policy prescriptions for a city on the front lines of basically every economic and cultural conflict that exists in today’s America.

As the old saying goes, the dog has caught the car. Now we’ll see if Mayor Mike’s majority has any idea what comes next.