Incumbent Mike Coffman had a significant lead in the race for Aurora mayor in the first round of election results posted at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
City Council member Juan Marcano is challenging Coffman for the seat, and in the early results, Coffman, who is running for a second term, had 56.61% of the vote to Marcano’s 36.35%, leading by more than 8,100 votes.
The third candidate in the race, Jeff Sanford, who ran a limited campaign for the seat, had received 7.04% of the vote.
Although the citywide races are nonpartisan, the candidates for mayor and City Council could take Aurora in vastly different directions, depending on who voters ultimately elect.
Coffman, a Republican and former U.S. congressman, was elected to his first term leading the left-leaning city in 2019. In 2021, the City Council majority also flipped to conservative leadership. While Coffman and others running for local seats hope to see that trend continue, Marcano, a Democrat, and other progressive candidates are pushing to change that.
The election’s outcome, and the resulting balance of power, likely will affect Aurora’s approach to a growing homelessness problem and responses to concerns over policing and public safety. The suburban city also is contending with rising housing costs and neighborhoods’ efforts to stem gentrification as redevelopment prices lower-income families out of areas that used to be affordable.
Coffman, 68, said during the campaign that Aurora voters are interested in decreasing crime rates and reducing homelessness, and he hopes to continue some of the work he started to address those issues in the last four years. He’s often taken a tough-on-crime approach, and he spearheaded the city’s homeless camping ban.
Though Marcano doesn’t disagree about the issues facing the city, his approach to solutions is different. The 37-year-old Democrat has said he wants to address the root causes of rising crime and homelessness, including providing more resources to communities that have been neglected.
It’s still unclear whether the race for mayor will be as close as it was in 2019, when Coffman narrowly defeated Omar Montgomery — but he couldn’t declare victory until nine days after Election Day following vote tallies and ballot-curing.
Some of the City Council races that year also finished as close as the mayor’s race, including in Marcano’s race for Ward IV, which he won by 230 votes.
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