The 2023 election results are, with perhaps one exception, almost certainly pretty clear after late returns were reported on November 9, so I feel pretty confident that the general results I’m writing about below will stand. If something changes, I’ll edit, but for now let’s dig in!

Council Majority Still 6-3, Shouldn’t Brag About It

Boulder politics, for what it’s worth, has evolved or devolved into kind of a local duopoly not that much different than “red vs. blue.” For decades, the citizen organization PLAN-Boulder County often endorsed most or even all of the winners in municipal races. But since about 2015, a few newcomer organizations have challenged PLAN-Boulder’s dominance, often with measurable success. The most recent City Council (2021-23) was nicknamed the “Progressive Council,” in part because all members of a perceived 6-3 majority had been endorsed by the citizen group Boulder Progressives. The new Council also seems like it will have a 6-3 Progressive-endorsed majority, but there should be some nuance to an analysis of the results.

Tara Winer

Tara Winer, top vote-getter in 2023

First of all, the top two vote-getters in the 2023 race were not endorsed by the Progressives. Tara Winer, the only incumbent in the Council race, won the most votes by a large margin. This result was to be expected, partially because incumbents have a pretty good rate of success, but also because the field of Council candidates this year weren’t generally overwhelmingly experienced in city politics. Even though Winer was endorsed by PLAN-Boulder and others, she really doesn’t operate like a stereotypical old-school PLAN-type Council member on most issues. She’s open-minded and at times methodical in her decision-making process, definitely not likely to rubber-stamp votes based on partisan leanings, and I think the voters made a wise decision to return her to office.

Tina Marquis

The second-place finisher, Tina Marquis, hadn’t run for City of Boulder office before but did serve two terms and as the president of the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education (School Board). When I interviewed her in late August, she emphasized that her experience on School Board put her in touch with a lot of issues in which BVSD had to collaborate with other levels of government including the City of Boulder, and I think this means she will hit the Council ground running or at least jogging.

I didn’t really want to put the next two possible future Council members in the same paragraph because they’re very different people, but Taishya Adams and Ryan Schuchard were both

Taishya Adams

endorsed by the Progressives, along with other organizations. Their results were typically very close after each batch of results were released, and in fact after the second batch Tuesday night, they were both at 11.99 percent, separated by only a few votes. They both have some experience in local service – Adams with the Police Oversight Panel and Schuchard with the Transportation Advisory Board. Their eerily similar vote totals throughout much of Tuesday and Wednesday indicates to me that Progressives supporters probably voted for the two candidates as a bloc, but both candidates seemed worthy of serving on Council to me when I interviewed them.

Ryan Schuchard

The candidate currently sitting fifth in a race for four seats, Terri Brncic, was in third place throughout Tuesday’s returns and didn’t fall to fifth until later returns were reported Wednesday afternoon. As it stood on Nov. 10, she was just 42 votes behind Schuchard with ballots remaining to be cured and/or counted. After everything was processed, the race was close enough to go to a mandatory recount, and Schuchard eventually beat Brncic by 46 votes. Brncic is a relative newcomer to local politics but made a splash in part because of her work helping build the public safety movement that led to putting the Safe Zones 4 Kids (Question 302) measure on the 2023 ballot. Again, she was not endorsed by the Progressives.

Terri Brncic

I’m not going to write about all 10 candidates here, but the sixth and seventh-place finishers deserve some mention. Jenny Robins, also a relative newcomer to Boulder politics, was part of the so-called “Yates slate” named after Mayoral candidate Bob Yates that included the first, second, and fifth-place Council finishers. She came off as very well-informed in my interview, and I’m guessing Boulder hasn’t heard the last of her. Waylon Lewis, founder of Elephant Journal, finished seventh in his first run for office. That might have been disappointing for the many locals who have known him over the years, and I personally believe the Council could have used his born-and-raised-in-Boulder local perspective, but sometimes candidates have to see if it’s worth running again and try a second time.

The dynamics around organizations endorsing in 2023 were slightly different than in 2021, and here’s a brief explainer.

  • A relatively new organization called Boulder Elevated endorsed the same “Yates slate” as did PLAN-Boulder. This was Yates for Mayor, Winer, Marquis, Brncic, and Robins.
  • Better Boulder and the Sierra Club Indian Peaks Group (IPG) endorsed the exact same slate of Aaron Brockett for Mayor, along with Winer, Schuchard, Adams, and Lewis for Council, an interesting commonality between Better Boulder – typically known for ties to the business community – and the Sierra Club, historically known for environmental activism.
  • Boulder Progressives only endorsed Adams and Schuchard for the Council race, but they endorsed Nicole Speer with Brockett as their two choices for Mayor. Speer didn’t win the Mayor’s race, but she will stay on Council to finish the term she earned in 2021.
  • In 2021, an umbrella organization called “The Coalition” endorsed candidates and formed its own Unofficial Candidate Committee (UCC) to collect donations to support its slate. The Coalition members included Boulder Progressives, Better Boulder, Open Boulder and others, but it did not formally file as an election committee in 2023, and neither did Open Boulder.

Council terms are staggered so there isn’t complete turnover after any one election. Current members Matt Benjamin, Lauren Folkerts, and Speer will stay on until at least 2025, and Brockett won a three-year term as Mayor. All four were endorsed by the Progressives and other organizations, and adding Schuchard and Adams could form a new 6-3 majority depending on how they all operate. Many candidates pointed out to me this year that not every important vote from 2021-23 broke down perfectly along these local-partisan lines, so we’ll see what happens 2023-25.

But honest observers should note that the Boulder Elevated slate stood at first, second, fifth and sixth in the 2023 Council race, Brncic was only 46 votes out of fourth, and just an extra tiny percentage of the vote (about 0.24%) for Brncic could have put the Elevated slate at first, second, and third. There were numerous calls in the community for change on Council during the 2023 campaign, but only time will tell how the new majority will use its potential power and how Boulder voters will react in 2025.

Mayor’s Race: New Experiences Give Us The Incumbent

Aaron Brockett

Aaron Brockett, who served as Mayor from 2021-23, won re-election with an asterisk to earn a three-year term that expires in 2026. The asterisk was because this was Boulder’s first direct Mayoral election, whereas until this year Mayors were chosen internally through a vote of the nine sitting City Council members. The new Council will also choose a new Mayor Pro Tem after they’re seated.

Brockett beat Bob Yates in this election by a relatively narrow margin, and Yates was actually running ahead through the early ballot return batches. This was also Boulder’s first experience with ranked choice voting (RCV). In a brief nutshell, Yates actually earned the most first-place votes by 2,767 votes, but under the RCV formula Brockett picked up several thousand votes from third-place finisher Speer, which put him over the 50% needed for victory.

Beyond serving as Mayor for two years, Brockett had served two four-year terms on Council, five years on Boulder’s Planning Board, and as president of the Holiday Neighborhood HOA. His term as Mayor was not without some community criticism, as Boulder experienced problems with crime and homelessness, plus some community members view him as pro-development, and he was perhaps the only Mayor of a sizeable Colorado city who supported the state bill (SB 23-213) that would have given the state more authority over traditionally local land use decisions. However, he’s certainly experienced and super-active in the community, and even if he seems excessively pro-development to some, Boulder has real problems with housing. The voters did well giving him back the gavel.

Bob Yates

Yates and Brockett were both first elected to Council in 2015, and Yates earned the most Council votes in both 2015 and 2019 to serve two four-year terms, plus he was named Mayor Pro Tem for a year. Yates also had other experiences in the community, including chairing the Parks and Rec Advisory Board and the Museum of Boulder board. During the campaign, it was often emphasized that he was a former Republican, although he left the GOP to register unaffiliated in 2022. Perhaps the most controversial part of the 2023 municipal elections was when the Brooklyn-based Working Families Party National PAC spent more than $23,000 to send out several mailers attacking Yates, including one with his picture superimposed over a scene from the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. I’ll write more about the mailers below, and it’s tough to prove but conceivable that the mailers could have had some impact on the race, one way and/or another.

Nicole Speer

Nicole Speer had only served on Council for two years before running for Mayor, but I felt she gave me a high-quality interview, and she had community support perhaps coming from Boulder’s farther-left and as the only woman in the race. Paul Tweedlie also ran and finished with single-digit support. He was the only registered Republican among 14 candidates for Mayor or Council, and had never served in the public sector.

I opposed the ballot measure calling for a directly elected Mayor back in 2020 for more than a few reasons. First, it did not change the power of the Mayor’s position, and under the old system the Council could make an internal decision to pick the person they trusted most to basically run meetings, manage the agenda committee, and be the face of the community at events. There’s more to it and I don’t want to be facetious, but in many ways Mayors are basically one of nine Council members with a title, some increased responsibility, and certainly now more visibility. I just looked back on what I wrote in 2020, and I think a fair number of my points on the Mayor proposal and ranked choice voting might look familiar to people who followed this election, but check it out yourself if interested.

A friend of mine pointed out in 2022 that forcing candidates to choose between running for Mayor or for Council could have some negative consequences, and I think we saw this happen in 2023. Yates now has to drop completely off of Council for at least two years because he didn’t win the Mayor’s race. This was a choice – either Brockett or Yates could have decided to run for Council instead of Mayor – but losing Yates cost an already fairly inexperienced Council many years of direct city service, professional experience and community perspective – and losing Brockett would have been more or less the same. It’s completely logical that the most experienced Council members might believe they’re ready to become Mayor into the future, and if only one can win, the other(s) might have to completely disappear from a Council that could actually use their expertise and talents.

In 2020, I pointed out that it was possible for someone with no experience in city government to run, and that happened in 2023 with Tweedlie. I met him briefly before learning he was going to run, and he’s a happy, personable fellow though far too conservative for Boulder and too inexperienced to be the best choice for Mayor. Tweedlie had no chance in this race, but the possibility remains that another candidate with no experience in city government might run in the future, and fare better or even win.

Still, I begrudgingly accept that it was kind of interesting to have a Mayor’s race, and I don’t get any sense that we’ll go back to the old system in the near-term future. Congrats to Mayor Brockett for winning, and to everybody else for running.

Student Voting: Compete or Lose

The 26th Amendment says 18-year-olds have the right to vote. Period.

Just a quick note here – anyone 18 years or older has a legal right to vote, and it’s legal to turn in a ballot for any reason right until 7:00 p.m. on election night. That’s two full stops.

In a number of recent local elections, early returns favored certain candidates or ballot measures, but the numbers changed after later returns, sometimes enough to reverse candidate standings or yes-no decisions on ballot measures. It’s typically assumed that this is because of CU campus voting on the last day or two before the polls closed. But nobody should complain about this – if ballots were cast on time and legally, it does not matter when the counts are reported. Every single vote counts equally.

Anyone who runs a campaign should understand it takes different strategies to compete among different demographics. It’s true – we experienced what some people called “Pizzagate” a few cycles ago when the youth participation organization New Era Colorado handed out pizza and gave college voters rides to the polls when a Boulder electric utility municipalization measure was on the ballot. In 2023, older folks from multiple local factions blanketed the campus late in the cycle to try and drum up votes, and while I don’t know if there was pizza, I read on social media that there was candy. Still, no whining allowed in front of me unless someone broke the law. Students over 18 are legal voters who contribute heavily to life in Boulder and its economy. There are only two choices here – compete or lose.

Safe Zones: Surprise, People Want Safety

I wrote enough about the Safe Zones 4 Kids ballot measure (Question 302) in my voter guide, so I won’t write much here. Still, I was surprised that it passed by a landslide, sitting at about 61% support with an almost-7,300-vote margin.

I’m not even saying propane tank explosions at schools are common. But why risk it?

For a campaign wrap-up in a nutshell, proponents put forth a relatively simple measure while opponents threw out all kinds of talking points to obfuscate what it was really about. In essence, 302 makes pitching a tent or possessing an unauthorized propane tank within 500 feet of school property or within 50 feet of a multi-use path of a sidewalk “subject to prioritized removal.” It was pretty easy to understand if you could tune out the noise. Proponents asked for school zones free of unregulated encampments, and to keep encampments a not-unreasonable distance away from paths and sidewalks – including those that kids might use to get to school.

Opponents ran a campaign in part saying the city should focus more on root causes of homelessness, which the city can do with or without something like 302. This was never a persuasive argument to me – just for an illustration, you can legitimately have drunk driving laws without solving the root causes of alcohol abuse, and you can try to address alcohol abuse with separate programs. I honestly hope Boulder and nearby communities make great strides in helping the unhoused find shelter or services into the future, but it never was the purpose of 302 and nobody within the campaign ever said it was.

There were other messaging points launched against 302 that will now mercifully slip into distant history over time. While opponents to 302 were perhaps not all technically members of Boulder Progressives, some of the major players were. I will remember the 302 results as one refreshing piece of evidence that orchestrated messaging campaigns with talking points and rhetoric are not all-powerful – arguments have to be at least within the range of compelling for an educated community to buy them carte blanche. And it was another example that local odd-year elections give the community a chance to discuss these issues in great detail, as opposed to having the finer points buried beneath federal and state candidate races and ballot measures in even-year elections.

Ranked-Choice Voting: Meh

I was lukewarm at best on ranked-choice voting (RCV) back during the 2020  2E campaign, and I still don’t have the fever.

Basic unofficial numbers from the Ranked Choice election in Boulder in early November

Follow me on the numbers for a bit, because it’s slightly complex if it’s your first ranked-choice rodeo. In 2023, Aaron Brockett won the election despite receiving 2,767 fewer direct first-place votes than Bob Yates (see chart at right, though they’re early November unofficial numbers).

Council member Nicole Speer ultimately received 6,369 first-place votes, but most of her votes went to Brockett because he was her voters’ second choice. In ranked choice voting, the winning candidate must have more than 50% of the votes, and Speer’s second choice numbers pushed Brockett from his original roughly 35% to about 52% and victory.

Also note there were 1,295 ballots with no choice at all, so I will now coin the phrase “blank-choice voting.”

In a post-election statement, Yates compared this situation to being along the lines of a “two against one” election, and let’s face it, the raw numbers from 2023 are pretty straightforward. The second-place finisher in first-place votes and third-place finisher combined most of their votes (I’m not saying intentionally), enabling the second-place finisher to beat the first-place finisher. Still, I’d like to put the kibosh on things I’ve read on social media suggesting it was like Trump winning the Electoral College in 2016 after losing the popular vote.

Had there not been ranked choice voting, it’s completely possible that Speer wouldn’t have run out of concern for splitting the votes in a typical “first past the post” election. Speer and Brockett are certainly not the same person, but they’ve generally been endorsed or supported by a lot of the same organizations and individuals who possibly/probably might not have chosen Yates in a one-on-one contest. The 2023 results probably indicated a preference for general ideology, or for/against candidates who belong to a political or factional organization.

Right now, there’s just no way to know for sure whether Brockett would have beaten Yates one-on-one, but it would be denialism at its finest to suggest it wouldn’t have been possible. Moving forward, people should remember the 2023 Boulder Mayoral election was a one-time event with its own unique characteristics. Three years from now we’ll do it again, and observers might get a better sense of the systemic aspects of RCV as opposed to results from one campaign.

Nonetheless, I still don’t think RCV is some sort of optimal way to choose a leader. It really wasn’t that exciting for me to vote for runner-up choices, and as I wrote back in 2020, I’m not impressed that the final standings were partially decided with second-choice votes coming over from the third-place finisher. That’s not how I define “mandate.”

Some voters also treated this ranked-choice election almost as if it was a regular “pick-one” election, to me legal but not really in the spirit of ranked-choice. I believe some people voted for Yates only, while others probably took the advice from the WFP mailer or local factions to vote Speer first and Brockett second (or vice versa), leaving the rest blank. So, here’s the dirty little secret. Not choosing certain candidates in a ranked choice election means they can’t get your positive vote that they might need to reach 50%.

In 2020, we were fed a few purported benefits of ranked-choice, and I don’t think they wound up true in practice in 2023 Boulder.

Advocates of RCV have often said it can minimize campaign spending, but I don’t think it did here. Two candidates in the Mayor’s race accepted voluntary spending limits in order to qualify for public matching funds, though Yates did not and he spent at least $32,000 – far more than Brockett’s $21,000 or Speer’s $18,000. I would argue that Yates’ campaign total and anti-Yates dark money outside spending demonstrated that money wasn’t taken out of this race at all. Boulder’s voluntary spending limits and public matching funds undeniably did more to minimize spending than did ranked-choice voting.

We were told ranked choice would improve small-d democratic participation, but voter turnout in 2023 was probably no better than the last odd-year election in 2021. Just for example, turnout for the top City of Boulder ballot measure in 2023 (Issue 2A) was 33,283, while in 2021 the top ballot measure (Question 300) gathered 33,052. That’s a wash, basically.

Ranked choice advocates also claim it minimizes negative campaigning, largely because candidates shouldn’t risk angering voters they might need for second or third choices. Sorry, the 2023 Boulder election was as local-partisan as ever. Typically, the candidates themselves in Boulder local races are decent to each other and their official websites or literature are not inflammatory, but where it gets mean is on local-partisan social media or if outside groups get involved. So, check the next section below and you’ll see that nastiness was a total factor in 2023, and if you didn’t read the nasty social media, consider yourself lucky.

The Flyer(s): Shock and Awe From the Left Flank

I would dare say that the 2023 Boulder local races were almost boring until late in the cycle, when many people were shocked or at least awakened by a flyer they received from Working Families Party National PAC. It showed that Yates was a registered Republican until 2022, which is factually true, but the information was laid on top of a backdrop of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Y’know, where Capitol Police officers were killed or severely injured, the venerable Capitol building was structurally damaged, members of Congress feared for their lives, insurrectionists used weapons and chemical sprays, and people chanted “Hang Mike Pence.”

All’s fair I guess, but nobody has to like certain tactics moving forward.

I don’t think we can tell without surveying what sort of impact this might have had on the Mayor’s race or the local-partisan majority on Council. Anecdotally, almost to a fault everyone I spoke to said the mailer was beyond the pale. But what about the people who don’t know Bob Yates personally, or who will follow what WFP tells them to do? The Mayor’s race was extremely close through the first several batches of returns, WFP told people not to rank Yates at all on the ranked-choice ballot, and certainly tens of thousands of people in Boulder got WFP’s mailers.

The Brooklyn-based WFP PAC spent more than $23,000 on a Boulder election, and voters got a second mailer that wasn’t as over-the-top as the first but was in my eyes a cherry-picked shock-value flyer that had the appearance of a national PAC’s Congressional hit piece. That’s decidedly not what I want in my local campaigns.

I was reminded of the old Machiavelli quote saying “the end justifies the means.” Politics can indeed get unsavory, and everyone should take a quick look in the mirror to see if we were ever complicit in other types of attack campaigns, because we probably were even if it was a distant connection. Still, WFP unquestionably took it far too far in 2023, not only nationalizing but also partisanizing our non-partisan local election by telling people to vote for Democrats (and I’m a proud Democrat, but would like to keep non-partisan local elections). Speaking perhaps only for myself, maybe Boulder isn’t Mayberry anymore, but we don’t need to emulate Tammany Hall or Chicago-style politics either. Let’s avoid a repeat of this episode.

Prop HH: Nice Try, But Time To Try Again

With property ownership comes property taxes, but rates and tax bills are still very much uncertain in the wake of Proposition HH going down.

The State of Colorado Proposition HH on property tax relief went down in flames, losing by about 59% – 41%.

Let’s not go through everything it would’ve done, OK? You can read the analysis I spent hours preparing if you want all that. For an election post-mortem, I’ll start by saying there might have been 8-10 relevant components to the measure, but voters only had two choices – yes or no. The more complex a measure is, the more reasons a person might have to vote “no.” I’ll suggest a few reasons I know why people might have done just that:

  • To backfill the loss of property tax revenue to local governments and districts, HH would have increased the amount of tax revenue the state could retain. Opponents painted this as major growth in government, which is not a slam-dunk mathematically because some of that money was to backfill local governments and districts who might lose property tax revenue, but it was probably quite persuasive politically.
  • The growth in revenue retention would have decreased the amount of TABOR refunds in certain years. I’m a long-time TABOR critic, but refunds have been pretty good lately – enough to pay a major bill or make a decent purchase. I could make the case that last year’s check got me four new tires. People like buying something nice, so this potential HH sacrifice just didn’t prove popular.
  • Renters would have not gotten direct property tax relief, plus they would have also lost some of those big TABOR refunds in future years. That’s probably a double-whammy, unless they had a kind-hearted landlord who would keep rents lower after getting property tax relief. There are lots of renters in Colorado, and some non-renters disliked this part of HH as well.
  • There was a provision ending backfill to local governments once property valuations increased by 20%, and readers know how much property values are increasing around here so we probably would have hit 20% quickly. Local government advocates Colorado Municipal League and Colorado Counties Inc. more or less had to oppose HH for that reason alone, and it really was the second time this year that the state government tried something major that flew in the face of these organizations (the land use bill SB 23-213 being the other). Lesson learned maybe – listen to cities and counties during stakeholding?
  • For some voters who don’t have hours to do research, HH was perhaps too complex to understand, and some voters will give an automatic “no” vote if they don’t comprehend what they’re potentially putting into law.

There’s more, but I think you get the picture. However, HH would have been very good for schools, and maybe that’s why Boulder County was among roughly six Colorado counties that gave HH majority support.

I actually thought HH was a reasonably well-assembled plan, if we had to do something so complex and comprehensive. I would have been proud to have cobbled something like HH together, and frankly losing a ballot measure isn’t the end of the world whether it feels like it or not for proponents. But with that many components, there almost had to be winners and losers, and it must have been brutally tough to convince people HH was the only path forward.

Governor Jared Polis has since called a special legislative session to take another crack at property tax relief. Unfortunately, one underlying problem isn’t going anywhere – you can easily cut property tax rates with a simple bill, but the local governments and districts that rely on property tax revenue need something to replace the tax revenue so they can provide services. We’ll see how the whole issue works out in a) the special session, b) the upcoming 2024 regular session, c) local property tax discussions, and/or d) a 2024 ballot measure liberals and progressives probably won’t like if they don’t forestall it with an acceptable solution. Stay tuned, maybe for many years.

School Board: Sorry Pink Floyd, We Actually Do Need Education

Jason Unger, District A winner

I’m not happy to leave the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education (school board) race until almost last, but it never really seemed to be a very controversial race, and none of the results were ever very much in doubt.

I asked all candidates to answer my questionnaire about top issues facing BVSD, and 8 of the 10 candidates responded, generally giving very thoughtful answers even if it was the 40th time they answered some of the basic questions.

In short, I think the School Board is in very good hands, as voters gave BVSD an incredibly experienced new set of members. Winners were: Jason Unger (District A), Alex Medler (District C), Lalenia Quinlan Aweida (District D), and Jorge Chavez (District G). Readers could actually trust

Alex Medler, District C winner

me on this – if you check out the questionnaires on my website (try Unger’s for starters), you’ll see lists reflecting years if not decades of relevant experience for all of the winners.

I’ll give credit to anyone who wants to run for the right reasons, but wanted to give special shout-outs to two candidates who didn’t win.

Despite Unger’s credentials, the District A race was tough for me because his opponent Neil Fishman is a quality person who’s been very involved in the community on a number of levels.

In District D, Andrew Brandt actually did not list direct experience in education, but he seems to

Lalenia Quinlan Aweida, District D winner

be an interesting person with experience in cybersecurity, at a time in which important databases are at risk from all kinds of attacks – and don’t kid yourself, your information is on some of these databases. Fishman and Brandt obviously appealed to many voters, as they cracked 40% in the still-unofficial results.

I have been following education issues for a long time and for a variety of reasons. Readers – do not sleep on your school board races, ever! While we probably shouldn’t expect right-wing educational forces like Moms For Liberty to prevail in BVSD, they’re out there, and with a seven-member School Board it wouldn’t be that hard to flip a majority.

Education is our future, and with the wrong types of education parts of our future might be to some extent at risk. That’s why I

Jorge Chavez, District G winner

started including School Board races in my Election Guide – well, also because a friend bugged me

to do this.

Also-Ran Ballot Measures

Maybe we’ll get another Guernica out of Boulder 2A. Positive thinking, folks!

In my opinion, Prop HH and Question 302 were the only exciting ballot measure races in 2023. But voters passed a few other measures worthy of a quick mention:

  • Boulder Ballot Issue 2A extended a 0.15% city sales tax for 20 years, devoting half the revenue from this tax to the arts and half to the General Fund. There was a small amount of controversy over earmarking admittedly a pretty large amount of money to the arts, at a time in which the city has other needs. But 2A passed easily, about 75% – 25%.
  • Boulder County Issue 1B extended a 0.185% Boulder County sales tax to fund affordable housing needs for 15 years. It passed about 71% – 29%.
  • State of Colorado Proposition II allowed the state to keep about $23 million in “excess” tobacco tax revenue above TABOR estimates, to be used mostly for preschool programs. It passed by about 67% – 33%.
  • Boulder County Issue 1A extended a 0.05% Boulder County sales tax for 15 years, to be used for Boulder County open space needs. It passed by about 81% – 19%.
  • Boulder Ballot Question 2B was basically a City Charter language clean-up measure, and I’d guess most people didn’t even read it. It passed by about 86% – 14%.

Conclusion: Local Elections Rule

I went on KGNU Radio for a show the morning after Election Day, and couldn’t help concluding that I really like local elections. It’s where locals have the chance to really discuss local issues in great detail, without as much competition for voter attention from larger and better-funded federal and state campaigns. Personally, I published more than 60,000 words in my 2023 Election Guide, and I hope readers noticed the levels of detail some issues deserved. Information guides decisions or actions, and voters with incomplete information might make misguided decisions that burden us with bad laws or mediocre elected officials for years into the future.

I roundly criticized the Boulder ballot measure from 2022 that moved our Council and Mayoral elections to even-numbered years starting in 2026, and this year reinforced my appreciation for the odd-year elections we’re mistakenly getting rid of. The types of detailed local discussions we all just went through in 2023 will be buried beneath larger races beginning in 2026, a year in which we elect a brand new Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, State Treasurer, and probably get a dozen potentially complex state ballot measures along with a U.S Senate race that could determine partisan control of the Senate. Every four years starting in 2028, the Boulder Mayor’s race will compete for attention with the Presidential race – no contest in terms of which race has the highest magnitude of importance.

I don’t want to see the “local” part of our upcoming even-year elections become something like a multiple-choice quiz that people don’t prepare for, just filling in ovals on the ballot without really knowing why. I think we made a huge mistake passing the 2022 ballot measure, and as always I would not say this as readily if every registered voter didn’t already get a ballot delivered to them in the mail in odd-numbered years. Voter turnout is important, but not voting when you have a ballot in your hand is a choice.

Nonetheless, we’ve got one more local-focused election coming up in 2025, and as always I’m looking forward to learn more about the people who will step up to the plate not for the money – City Council pay is lame, by the way – but in the interest of public service and guiding policy issues that determine our quality of life. Thanks to everyone who participated in any way this year, and thanks to everyone who took a look at my Election Guide!

(Editor’s note: I did a fairly minor update to this piece in early December, almost exclusively to update numbers after late tabulation and a recount.)