Colorado Springs Mayor-elect Yemi Mobolade, an independent and political newcomer who will step into the mayor’s office next month, has maintained over 18 months on the campaign trail and following his decisive runoff election victory that he is neither a Republican nor a Democrat.

Though the city’s elections are nonpartisan, Mobolade continues to dispute the idea he is a “progressive” or “Democratic-aligned” candidate, despite those claims made by media, political-action committees, his Republican opponent Wayne Williams and others. Mobolade repeated last week that it is an identity “he never gave himself.”

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Voting records The Gazette obtained from the El Paso County clerk and recorder show Mobolade is among the 48.47% of unaffiliated voters in El Paso County. That’s compared to 31.17% of county voters who are registered Republicans and 18.22% who are registered Democrats, county clerk’s data as of May 15 show.

Mobolade, who earned 57.5% of the runoff vote to Williams’ 42.5%, according to final unofficial results from the city clerk as of Wednesday afternoon, will be the first mayor not affiliated with the Republican Party since the city began electing mayors 45 years ago. His victory represents a seismic political surprise in Colorado Springs, long known as a conservative stronghold.

After results were announced on election night, reporters, political-action committees and others across social media described Mobolade as a “progressive” and as a “Democratic-aligned independent candidate.” His name began trending alongside posts referencing the mayoral race in Jacksonville, Fla., where Democrat Donna Deegan beat out her Republican opponent Daniel Davis with just over 52% of the vote to become that city’s first female mayor.

Deegan’s victory was the first win for Democrats in Jacksonville since 2015, when Republican Lenny Curry defeated Alvin Brown, the Democratic mayor, The Florida Times-Union reported.

“A West African immigrant and progressive, Yemi Mobolade, has been elected mayor of historically arch-conservative Colorado Springs,” Denver 9News anchor Kyle Clark posted in a tweet May 16 after election results were announced.

“In another major loss for Republicans, the Democratic-aligned independent candidate Yemi Mobolade has defeated Republican Wayne Williams in the Colorado Springs mayoral runoff election,” the liberal PAC MeidasTouch tweeted.

Mobolade maintained his politically independent affiliation this week and rejected those claims.

“I’m a mayor for all people – Republicans, Democrats, independents and everyone in between. Nobody gets to own me that way,” he said in a Thursday interview.

Mobolade said he believes the idea that he’s a progressive caught fire after his mayoral opponent Williams released at least one ad that posited the now mayor-elect as a more left-wing candidate in the race, accusing him of supporting socialism. In contrast, Williams’ ad presented himself as the conservative candidate who would put public safety, fiscal responsibility and affordability first.

“(Williams) pushed me as the progressive candidate. He gave me an identity I never asked for, and here we are. Both (the Republican and Democratic) parties are claiming me as such,” Mobolade said.

Williams previously defended the ad, saying it showed the differences in how he and Mobolade would approach various issues as mayor.

“(Mobolade has) certainly said different things when he speaks to some groups versus other groups,” Williams has said. 

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The claims in Williams’ ad refer to answers Mobolade gave during a mayoral forum hosted in March by the El Paso County Democratic Party as part of the group’s State of the County address. It was livestreamed and posted on various social media platforms.

In the video, Mobolade provided brief answers to five yes or no questions on various topics, including whether he believed taxpayer money should be used “to provide more equitable outcomes for disenfranchised communities” and if “every worker, regardless of the type of workplace, has the right to organize and collectively bargain.”

He answered yes to those questions. Williams’ ad criticized Mobolade’s responses, respectively, as “(sounding) exactly like socialism” and “costing taxpayers more money for fewer services. Possibly overturning the failed initiative the voters just defeated.”

In 2019, Colorado Springs voters overwhelmingly defeated a proposed initiative that would have given the city’s firefighters collective bargaining privileges.

After Williams’ ad went live, Mobolade told The Gazette he does not propose collective bargaining for all city employees, but he does support the “constitutional right” of the city’s law enforcement officers and firefighters to organize.

He previously said he answered the way he did on “equitable outcomes” because he believes the government’s role is to promote equality.

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Vance Brown, the co-founder and executive director of business development support company Exponential Impact, who donated almost $41,000 to Mobolade’s campaign, previously said Mobolade’s values are “Christian values.”

“He’s an evangelical Christian, a small-business leader who has helped hundreds of small businesses. How in the world is that socialism?” said Brown, who described himself as a conservative Republican.

Endorsements Mobolade won from local stalwart Republicans like former El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder and former Colorado Springs Councilwoman and El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark further foiled Williams’ claims that he was a dangerous liberal. Clark was a close third, just behind Williams, in the general mayoral election.

The El Paso County Democratic Party’s webpage identifies Mobolade as one of four mayoral and City Council candidates who have attended a candidate forum the group hosted and have “been evaluated as having progressive values.”

Posts on the group’s Facebook page after the runoff election, including one made May 16, have said his win is “just the beginning” to a “bluer, brighter and more progressive El Paso County,” and described his election as the group’s “victory lap.”

Mobolade also rejected those claims.

“I’m happy that they feel a sense of pride around me, but I am not a progressive candidate,” he said Thursday.

El Paso County Democratic Party Chairwoman Mischa Smith said the local party has not labeled Mobolade as a progressive or a Democrat.

“We’ve never called him a progressive. We are not claiming him. That being said, people are still saying Colorado Springs can’t be progressive, that progressive people can’t win here and we are a Republican stronghold,” she said.

But in recent years, voter sentiment in the city and El Paso County has shifted away from the right. Local Democrats “wanted a step in another direction,” Smith said.

Since April 2021, the last time the city held a municipal election, El Paso County has seen the number of unaffiliated voters increase by 29,746, from 199,233 up to 228,979, according to data provided on the El Paso County clerk and recorder and Colorado secretary of state websites.

In the same period, the number of registered Republicans and Democrats in the county fell – Republicans by more than 12,500, from 159,776 in 2021 to 147,253 as of May 15; and Democrats by more than 7,100, from 93,241 in 2021 to 86,066 as of May 15, data show.

At the end of April 2019, the last time the city elected a mayor, there were 154,152 unaffiliated voters in El Paso County; 156,631 Republicans; and 84,455 Democrats, data show.

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“Other people are reading tea leaves and we’re reading the scoreboard,” Smith said. “This is a victory. We as a community are pushing back against Republican values and saying we want something that we have not had, and that’s progressive values.”

Mobolade said his goal was not to move the city one way or the other on the political scale.

“I’m not trying to get Colorado Springs from conservative to progressive or from progressive to conservative. That’s not the work I’m doing … and frankly, it’s frustrating, because one of the reasons I ran is to disrupt that kind of politics,” he said.

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The questions El Paso County Democrats asked Mobolade at the March forum evaluated progressive values, Smith said. They also included questions on topics like collective bargaining and a recent, failed proposal by the Pueblo City Council that could have restricted access to abortion medication within its city limits.

“It was things like that people wanted to hear (Mobolade’s) opinion on that we evaluated as progressive values,” she said.

Brown previously said the topics the mayor-elect addressed most during the campaign – like public safety, housing affordability and availability, roads and water infrastructure and homelessness – were all nonpartisan topics.

“These are issues that we all care about equally,” he said. “Do we all not want safety? Yes. That’s not partisan. Do we all not want to figure out the water issues? Do we all not want to solve this homeless problem? Is that progressive? I don’t think so,” he said.

The Colorado Springs City Clerk’s Office expects to certify results by May 26. Mobolade will be sworn in as the city’s 42nd mayor on June 6.