Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced his reelection campaign on Tuesday and despite claims the city is all for his agenda, a recent poll shows his popularity is slipping.
With the upcoming mayoral election, Mike Johnston has launched his campaign with the theme “change drives hope.” He is focusing on tackling bigger issues such as homelessness and housing.
The idea behind this theme, according to Johnston during a speech, is people want to see something change and they work at improving it. That issue gets better and communities know they are right to hope for what is next to come. People can see they can deliver change.
Johnston also argued that he helped deliver on earlier promises of reductions in crime, street homelessness, and a downtown turnaround. “We’ve seen auto theft down 70%. We saw one of our lowest years of murder last year in Denver’s recorded history. That is because Denver got to work,” he says.
Johnston’s campaign for the April 2027 election kicked off on Tuesday, where he was completing visits around the city with the hopes of defining himself as he faces a large number of competitors and a drop in his approval ratings.
Among Johnston’s challengers are Councilmember Shontel Lewis, third-time candidate Lisa Calderón, second-time candidates Aurelio Martinez and Robert Treta, repeat candidate Kenneth Simpson, as well as Graylon Millen Cole, Samantha Nazish, Xander Thomas, and Durango Dank.
When it comes to what the people of Denver think of Johnston, the numbers show he is slipping in popularity. During his first term, Johnston focused on reducing homelessness in the streets. His administration removed encampments from the city center and relocated thousands of people into hotel shelters, tiny-home villages, and other places.
Despite his efforts to reduce homelessness in the city, people are still sleeping outside in the downtown area. Recent federal policy changes have made it increasingly more difficult for Johnston’s administration to move unhoused individuals from short-term lodging into stable housing. Later on in his term, he faced a budget crisis from the years of growing city spending and responded with 171 city layoffs.
In a recent bipartisan poll, Johnston’s popularity is slowly declining. Kevin Ingham, the principal of the polling firm Aspect Strategic, has the numbers. Ingham states that 39% view the mayor positively while 50% view him negatively. “That’s almost a mirror image of where he stood the first time we asked in June of 2024, and it’s a negative shift from where he was last year when voters were evenly divided,” Ingham adds.
However, 49% were optimistic about the direction the city is going, comparable to recent surveys of the past years. Johnston said on Tuesday that the polling “captured a very good story” of where the country and city are.
Mayor Mike Johnston’s campaign also pointed to the “Denver Jobs Agenda,” a plan backed by $100 million in funding with various other pubic and private programs. It hits another aspect voters are concerned about: the stagnant and shrinking job markets in Colorado and Denver.
