We are now well into the first year of Mayor Michael Hancock’s final and desultory third term. Ugly high-density and poorly constructed apartment buildings are still going up everywhere, while parks and open space are destroyed and predatory bike lanes arise that severely impede the flow of traffic in the city, making some neighborhoods far less enjoyable and livable than just five years ago. The mayor continues to spend much of his time in Atlanta, where he can engage in his favorite pastime, chasing skirts, far from the scrutiny of the citizens he rules.
What is different in his Honor’s third term is the 13-member City Council that acts like an actual city council and not simply a rubber stamp Politburo for a tin pot dictator. Incredibly in the entire time in office as mayor he has not vetoed a single piece of legislation aside from his recent veto of a form of a pit bull ban, approved by the City Council by a 7 to 4 margin. It will take nine votes to overcome the veto. Even Governor Polis is opposed to the legislation. He shared a picture of him and his pit bull on social media.
We don’t particularly like City Council feeling the need to legislate various aspects of many people’s lives either, but that is not the point. In his first two terms, the city council members would not dare to pass anything that he did not approve of for fear of retribution. Perhaps the sudden signs of political courage are a result of Mr. Hancock being a lame duck mayor who can’t run for another term, unless, of course, he pulls a “Bloomberg” at the last minute.
But we think it is more of the makeup of the members of the present council. In 2015 the citizens of Denver elected four potential rebel new council members — Wayne New, Rafael Espinoza, Kevin Flynn and Paul Kashmann — who defeated the choices of the mayor and the high-density developers. The citizens hoped and expected the new members to fight the good fight but, in fact, nothing changed. Rafael Espinoza behind-the-scenes urged and virtually begged his fellow council members to once, just once, stand up to the mayor, but they simply would not.
The election last spring also brought in four new potential rebel council members — Chris Hines, Candi CDeBaca, Amanda Sandoval, and Amanda Sawyer — who most council observers expected to be co-opted just like the 2015 class. But they greatly underestimated Ms. CdeBaca. She had upset Albus Brooks who was not only the close friend and political ally of the mayor’s, but the favorite to be the next mayor of Denver. A radical, she wasted no time in informing the mayor that there was a new sheriff in town and she was not going to be one more poodle council member.
Amanda Sawyer crushed another close ally of the mayor, Mary Beth Susman, in District 5 in the 2019 election. She was viewed by some as not having the grit of Ms. CdeBaca and perhaps far too dependent on her political sisters from Emerge, a program that trains Democrat women for local political office, and which helped her get elected in 2019.
But by and large Sawyer has demonstrated that she is made of the right stuff. One of the problems with the prior councils is they let the mayor’s staff and appointees push them around. The mayor’s men and women had little or no respect for what they viewed as weak and cowardly elected officials on the City Council.
Employees from Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) were regularly showing up late for meetings, leaving early and failing to provide information about projects. After nine months of this type of conduct Councilwoman Sawyer had enough of it. She went to Human Resources and the Mayor’s Office to complain that this conduct was putting her constituents in danger. When they laughed her off, she further indicated that she would vote against any and all DOTI projects until the situation was remedied.
The mayor was shocked. He was simply treating City Council members in the same manner he always had. He quickly went to sycophantic Denver media to trash her, which they did. The DOTI Executive Director Eulois Cleckley told the press that the whole matter “really boils down to a personality conflict.” That is to say that Ms. Sawyer is very difficult to work with, which would surprise anyone who knows her. Cleckley went on to declare, “I was a little disappointed. Having tactics like this that potentially can delay our services or projects. It actually hurts our ability to do what’s right for the city and county of Denver.”
Ms. Sawyer said she felt she was being attacked essentially for being a whistleblower. She declared “that this has turned into a campaign to smear me so that this changes the conversation, and that’s not fair.” She is of course right. Sawyer backed down about the voting part, but she had placed a marker about how she expected to be treated on behalf of her constituents.
Next time she needs to bring along a few of her fellow council members who need to let the mayor’s personnel know that Council members are the elected officials and not them. We await that day which we hope will occur in the very near future.
— Editorial Board