Colorado Springs voters surprised the local political and development establishments by electing an independent as their new mayor. Yemi Mobolade will be sworn in to succeed Mayor John Suthers on June 6.

Colorado Springs elections are non-partisan, but Mobolade is the first non-Republican to be elected as mayor since Colorado Springs first began electing citywide mayors in 1979, more than 40 years ago.

What was striking was the margin of victory in this election. Mobolade beat Republican Wayne Williams, who many thought was the early front runner, by 16%. Most of us had expected a much closer race. This wasn’t close.

Voter turnout was high for a local municipal election, coming in at about 40%.

Here is what we believe happened: 

1. Team Mobolade ran an uncommonly savvy campaign. Even the defeated Wayne Williams congratulated his opponent for running an “excellent campaign.” Mobolade mobilized supporters in this nonpartisan election from across the political spectrum yet concentrated on attracting support from businesses and entrepreneurs.

This was an insurgency, not from the left or right, but from the middle.  Mobolade spoke to middle-class voter concerns: safety, housing costs, taxes, traffic and too much rapid growth and maybe not enough water.    

2. Wayne Williams miscalculated on at least a couple of occasions. He failed to understand that being labeled the “establishment” candidate had some liabilities. It meant Williams stood for the status quo and for more housing development when many people, especially younger people, were sensing the need for at least some change. His top-down campaign should have quickly pivoted to a more broad-based campaign with appeals to a variety of non-establishment groups. It did not do that. 

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The April 4 preliminary election was a major factor in the May 16 runoff between the top two finishers – Mobolade and Williams. The Williams campaign engaged in a high-risk strategy of negative campaigning against his chief Republican rival in the preliminary: Sallie Clark.

We do not know who started it, but the Williams versus Clark preliminary election tiff escalated into a nasty, unseemly smear campaign carried out on TV and with political postcards. The immediate reaction was to drive up the negatives for both the Williams and Clark campaigns.

That drove a further wedge between rival grassroots Republican groups. Team Williams never recovered from this miscalculation. 

Wayne Williams rightly noted on election night that the corrosive divisions in the local El Paso County Republican party hurt his campaign. We cannot win, he lamented, if we are this divided. 

Williams also correctly noted Colorado Springs was changing and was less a conservative stronghold than it was just 20-years ago. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, actually carried the city of Colorado Springs in the 2022 governor’s race. 

Williams’s supporters tried lamely, and in vain, to portray Yemi Mobolade as a liberal, a radical, or even as a socialist. This failed in large part because Mobolade has a proven establishment record as a Chamber of Commerce staffer, as a Suthers administration aide on small business, and as a proud small businessman touting the much-cherished American Dream.

Also Mobolade had networked impressively among local churches, non-profit organizations and entrepreneurial leaders.    

3. There are some multi-variable divisions in the local Republican Party that played a role in this campaign.

Wayne Williams was widely admired by moderate Republicans in Colorado for his strong stand against former Republican President Donald Trump’s attempt to discredit the election process with claims Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election against Democrat Joe Biden.

It thus can be assumed Williams’s criticism of election denying cost him the support of pro-Trump Republicans, which could have been as much as one-third of Colorado Springs Republican voters.

A further point: the Republican Party has been doing very poorly in Colorado lately, particularly after the attempt by far-right Trump supporters to invade the U.S. Capitol and undo the presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021.

Things got worse for the Colorado GOP in the 2022 general election, when the Democrats retained control of every major statewide elected office and won large majorities in both houses of the state legislature in Denver.

It seems in the last few years in Colorado elections, anything associated with the words “Republican Party” is a big loser. We think some of that hurt Wayne Williams as well.

The defeat of Wayne Williams for mayor of Colorado’s second largest city – Colorado Springs – has statewide political implications. If Williams had won and become the incumbent mayor, we think moderate Republicans statewide would have tried to recruit him to run for governor in 2026.

Mobolade’s impressive victory quickly ended those moderate Republican dreams.

4. Endorsements matter. The Wayne Williams campaign definitely benefited early on from key endorsements from the popular incumbent mayor (John Suthers), from the Gazette editorial board, and from one of the major housing developers in the region. The Sallie Clark campaign also benefited from support from an impressive number of civic activists.

But the Mobolade campaign responded with various endorsements of their own. His campaign clearly benefited when two of the most prominent mayoral candidates, both of whom had lost in the preliminary race, turned their backs on Williams and endorsed Mobolade.

They were City Council President Tom Strand and former County Commissioner Sallie Clark,

Mobolade also won widespread attention from a surprising endorsement by former El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder.

Incumbency, currently being in elected office, helps to win elections. Wayne Williams seemed like an incumbent, mainly because of his long record of service in elected office and the endorsement from incumbent Mayor John Suthers. But incumbency does not always help – and it did not this time.

In a larger context, it is useful to note Mobolade’s election in Colorado Springs is likely to be matched by moderate former State Sen. Mike Johnston’s likely election as mayor of Denver in the next few weeks. They will join the talented and moderate Fort Collins Mayor Jeni James Arndt, who has been popular and effective. This trio of moderate and younger mayors along the Front Range of Colorado will bring needed energy to our region. And we would expect them to work together.

5. There’s one problem for Mobolade. The City Council has been supported by all the same groups that backed Wayne Williams for mayor. The Council thus will serve as something of a check on Mobolade’s loftier ambitions for the city.

You cannot beat the 2023 mayoral election in Colorado Springs for excitement and a thrilling story. A little-known immigrant from Nigeria moves to town and, by reaching out to a wide variety of groups in the city, becomes the mayor. People in Colorado Springs are going to remember this mayoral election for many years to come.

Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy write about Colorado and national politics.