Michael Hancock rode a compelling biography, likeable demeanor and solid record as city councilman to victory Tuesday in a curiously anticlimactic conclusion to the Denver mayor’s race.
Was it the mail-in ballot that sucked excitement from the campaign in the final weeks? Or was it the lack of serious differences between Hancock and Chris Romer, or their failure to stake out captivating themes?
Our guess: probably all of the above. For that matter, voters seem mostly satisfied with the way the city has been run. Maybe many just never saw a reason to get passionately engaged.
Still, Hancock deserves the heart- felt good wishes of all Denverites for running a thoroughly upbeat, professional campaign. Having come in second by a narrow margin in the first round, he capitalized on growing momentum to clinch an impressive victory just weeks later. And while Romer is an extremely bright and talented man, his political skills were no match for Hancock’s.
For the new mayor, the real work now begins — especially because he follows a tough act in John Hickenlooper. Can Hancock leverage today’s goodwill to build the coalitions he’ll need to tackle Denver’s immediate budget shortfall and then address the city’s widening structural gap between revenues and expenditures?
Although Denverites may be satisfied for the most part with city services, the status quo is not sustainable. Officials must restructure programs or find additional revenues — or, more likely, do both.
Hancock knows this, even if he has failed to provide a detailed vision for how he’ll achieve such budgetary feats. Vaguely declaring “every department, every operation the city has, has to be on the table for review,” as he did in his meeting with The Denver Post’s editorial board earlier this year, only goes so far.
Fortunately, the two-term councilman is well-liked and respected, with few enemies who will work to block his success. And the city workforce knows him to be its friend. If he must be the bearer of bad news, no one can accuse him of a hidden agenda.
Both candidates devoted a surprising amount of time touting their vision for Denver schools even though the mayor’s authority in that sphere is all but nonexistent. And yet the rhetoric on education served a purpose: It underlined Hancock’s support for controversial reforms that have divided the district’s board. This could be important in helping elect new board members committed to staying the course.
Finally, we think it’s worth noting that in a contest between a black candidate and a white candidate, race never made so much as an indirect appearance. Denver’s ethnic relations are hardly perfect, but the history of the past quarter-century suggests that when it comes to who runs city hall, voters don’t obsess about candidates’ backgrounds. “We are all Denver,” the new mayor insists — and who would contradict him in the face of his victory?
