Businessman Yemi Mobolade will be the first Black person and first non-Republican to be elected mayor of Colorado Springs, Colo., after defeating a longtime Republican state politician in Tuesday’s runoff election.
Unofficial results in the race showed Mobolade, a politically unaffiliated candidate who founded restaurants and a business consulting company in the Colorado Springs area, defeating Republican Wayne Williams, who has served as a member of the city council and Colorado secretary of state, by about 15 points.
Mobolade immigrated to the United States from Nigeria. His platform called for policies like addressing police staffing shortages, expanding community initiatives and youth programs to improve relationships with police, increasing funding for housing development, recruiting companies to provide well-paying jobs to residents and launching a city “reskilling” program.
Incumbent Mayor John Suthers (R), who previously served as Colorado attorney general, was first elected in 2015.
Mobolade will become the first mayor of Colorado Springs who is not a Republican to serve since the city began choosing mayors by direct election in 1979, according to The Gazette, a newspaper in Colorado Springs.
Mobolade has also served as the city’s vice president of business retention and expansion and small business development administrator.
The office of mayor is officially nonpartisan, but every elected mayor until now has been a member of the Republican Party.
Colorado Springs has traditionally been seen as a Republican stronghold, but The Gazette reported the city has been shifting less conservative in recent years. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis edged out his Republican opponent, Heidi Ganahl, within the city limits during his reelection campaign in 2022.