Lifelong Curtis Park resident and retired IT professional Aurelio Martinez entered the Denver mayor’s race back in 2024, around three years ahead of the upcoming election.
In a recent interview, Martinez said Mayor Mike Johnston is a flop, and the city needs fresh leadership.
“There’s so much wrong with Denver right now that every time I talk to people about the election and why I’m running, the basic answer is because Denver’s broken,” he said. “And it’s been broken for a long time, and there was a lot of folks that had high hopes when Mayor (Mike) Johnston took over… but it’s gotten worse.”
As he sees it, homelessness is up, the city is less safe and downtown is a disaster. His solutions include a bit of pizzazz.
Martinez promised new attractions that would make the city center more like downtown Las Vegas: dancers, magicians and other buskers on the streets, and promotions for downtown businesses and theaters.
He also hopes to create a Hollywood-style Colorado Walk of Stars downtown, a zipline down the 16th Street Mall, and a sky drop from the Republic Plaza, the tallest building downtown.
“Tell me that's not going to bring people downtown,” he said.
Martinez also pledged to give downtown businesses rent incentives to keep them through the first year. The Downtown Development Authority has already supported businesses moving to the city center. He also promised to have more officers walking the downtown beat and move a full-scale police district station downtown, replacing the police kiosk Johnston added off 16th Street.
“Look at downtown, 16th Street Mall,” Martinez said. Johnston “ran everyone out there. Do you know that at one time Denver, downtown, 16th Street, had the largest Wendy's in the world, right here in Denver on 16th Street? So, if we're going to make 16th Street viable, then we have to bring that type of business back: retail. We have to bring retail back!”
(We couldn’t confirm whether Denver ever hosted the world’s largest Wendy’s, but let us know if you know.)
Johnston pushes back on critiques like Martinez’s, pointing to a dramatic drop in homicides and overall crime, his record of housing thousands of people and sheltering thousands more, and the reopening of the 16th Street Mall and the slow return of visitors to downtown Denver.
It’s the second time Martinez has run for mayor.
In the last mayor’s race, Martinez came in 12th place with 755 votes out of 172,589.
Despite his performance in 2023, the candidate is optimistic he will win now that he has earned better name recognition, built a team and started running early. He’s spent the past six months crafting his campaign strategy and prepping for when the election gets “hot and heavy.”
“I'm not running for mayor to promote a political career,” he said. “I'm not worried about becoming a senator, a governor, president. I’m not interested in any of that. I just want to fix the home that I was raised in all my life.”
Martinez was one of the first candidates to enter the race following Robert Treta. The race is only starting to heat up now: Lisa Calderón, the third-place finisher in the last election, recently declared for 2027, and Johnston hasn’t yet filed his reelection paperwork.
Martinez has raised just $1,309 of his million-dollar goal, according to campaign finance reports.
But he said Johnston’s performance has opened a door for a candidate like him.
Last year, Johnston laid off around 170 city employees to address a budget deficit. Martinez blamed the deficit on Johnston’s approach to the migrant and homelessness crises.
“Spending $400 million on homeless and migrant issues without having any positive anything come out of that is ludicrous,” Martinez said. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
It’s unclear where Martinez’s $400 million number comes from — or what has actually been spent.
The city reports that its spending on homelessness has helped move 8,200 people into shelters and 7,173 into housing.
Johnston blamed the budget crisis on years of city spending outpacing revenue and sluggish sales taxes.
As for addressing homelessness, Martinez wants to build a campus akin to what Salt Lake City is building — a project some homeless advocates in Utah liken to a “concentration camp.” But he says his vision for a Denver campus would offer addiction and mental health treatment, schools, job training and housing that everyone could access, funded by a voter-approved bond, he said.
Martinez distinguishes himself from the two leading candidates – incumbent Johnston and Lisa Calderón — by arguing they’re career politicians.
He, on the other hand, said he’s anything but status quo.
The general election is April 2027.
