A routine press release from Denver City Hall on Thursday spoke volumes about how deeply Denver’s freshman Mayor Mike Johnston seems to be in over his head.

The press statement’s headline read, “Denver Mayor Mike Johnston Announces Nomination for Denver Department of Public Health & Environment Leader.” The appointment of Karin McGowan to the post, it turns out, “fills the last remaining open cabinet position in Mayor Johnston’s Administration.”

That’s right; Johnston has rounded out his top staff — just a few weeks shy of a full year since he was elected as the city’s chief exec. Not exactly a milestone. More like an embarrassment.

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

Taking so long to name the top bureaucrat at the city’s health department hardly imperiled that agency’s day-to-day operations, of course — but it is emblematic of an administration that has idled, or fumbled, on far more pressing matters.

Rank-and-file Denver voters evidently share that impression, new polling results reveal.

A Magellan Strategies survey of 1,600 voters put Johnston under water, as noted in a Gazette news report earlier this week — with 50% disapproving of his performance and only 43% approving. Fewer respondents still — 35% — approved of the Denver City Council’s performance while 49% found the job they’ve done abysmal.

Ouch — all the more so, considering it was City Hall itself that had commissioned the survey.

Voters appear to be unhappy with the city’s response to drugs, violence and homelessness, the poll showed. And there’s Johnston’s handling of the illegal immigration crisis that, by the mayor’s own estimate, will cost $90 million this year.

As insult to injury, the administration is paying for it by pilfering from public services for which those tax dollars were intended. Hence, measures like the round-robin closures of Denver DMV offices — so motorists now have to wait in line even longer for their license plates.

This is also the tin-eared mayor who actually devoted a page on the city’s official website to blaming the DMV closures and cuts in other city services — on Republicans in Congress. (Yes, really: https://denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Mayors-Office/News/2024/Feb-Budget-Announcement)

Apparently, it was politicians seated 1,600 miles away in the nation’s capital who ordered Denver to play innkeeper to the world — and to stick local taxpayers with the tab. Got that?

Which brings us to the Johnston administration’s flagging fight against crime. He came to office promising to beat back an epic crime wave — vying with other mayoral hopefuls in a crowded field who, for the most part, promised to do the same. It was the No. 1 issue.

Last week, the Johnston administration announced its biggest move in the crime fight thus far — the creation of a new city Office of Neighborhood Safety.

It is based on “a commitment to racial and social equity” and will divert $11 million and 65 employees from the Department of Public Safety to the Office of Social Equity and Innovation. That’s the bureaucracy that enforces City Hall’s “DEI” agenda — diversity, equity and inclusion — hardly the turf for a crime fight.

In other words, the mayor is siphoning resources away from the department that fights crime to one that presumably fights injustice. Because, you see, ensuring safety isn’t about stopping criminals so much as it is about leveling the playing field. Good grief.

Never mind how some other cities, including elsewhere in Colorado, are succeeding in curbing crime by doubling down on law and order — and stepping up traditional law enforcement. Alas, that’s too old-school for the progressive hipsters with whom Denver’s mayor keeps company.

“You cannot create a safer city without clear commitments to racial and social equity and justice,” the city equity office’s executive director, Ben Sanders, declared at the new Neighborhood Safety Office’s rollout.

To Johnston and his inner circle of daydreamers, it’s a bold stride. To the crime-weary public, it’s a cop-out.

Don’t take it from us, Mr. Mayor. Just ask your own pollster.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board