Pueblo mayoral candidates gearing up for home stretch

Pueblo is less than three weeks away from the runoff mayoral election on January 22nd. The city hasn’t had a full-time Mayor running the show since the 1950s.

The two remaining candidates, former city council president Steve Nawrocki and Pueblo Board of Water Works member Nick Gradisar, earned their spots in the runoff election after breaking free from the original field of 16 candidates.

Now that the holidays are over with, it appears that both campaigns are starting to gear up towards election day.

In the next few days, registered Pueblo city voters will be receiving special mayoral runoff election ballots in the mail.

“Our vendor dropped the ballots off at the general mail facility in Denver today,” said Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert Ortiz. “So people in Pueblo should be receiving them as soon as tomorrow .” A few of the drop off locations were already open Wednesday so early voters can cast their ballots as soon as they get their hands on them.

County Clerk Ortiz is hopeful for a similar turnout to November’s.

“Pueblo has never seen a runoff election, and hasn’t had a mayor in Pueblo since the ’50s,” said Ortiz. “The combination of those two are going to get people out to vote.” There may just be nineteen days until election day, but there are a number of debates that will take place along the way. One such debate will be hosted by KRDO’s partner, “The Pueblo Chieftain,” inside the CSU Pueblo Occhiato Student Center at 7 p.m. Friday the 4th.

To push the campaigns forward, both candidates say it will take a team effort.

“We will implement the plan we have put together,” said Pueblo Mayoral candidate Nick Gradisar. “We’ve got volunteers that will be coming in and making phone calls and knocking on doors.”

“We have a lot of volunteers that will be making an average of 100 calls each,” said fellow Pueblo Mayoral Candidate Steve Nawrocki. “They will call people that they know: family, friends, neighbors. There is going to be a lot of personal contacts.”

We asked both candidates, in these next few weeks, what do you hope people understand about you as a mayoral candidate?

“The message we want to get out is the one we’ve been talking about, and that’s our vision for Pueblo’s future,” said Gradisar. “We need to increase the economic activity in Pueblo and make Pueblo a place where every young person who wants to stay here is able to find a job and earn a good living. That nobody has to leave Pueblo in order to make a living.”

“I will be able to bring a more seamless and constructive transition as we go from a City Manager form of government to the new Mayor form of government,” said Nawrocki. “I think what speaks volumes is I have 6 of the 7 council members who have publicly endorsed me plus the City Manager.” But will voters have to be patient for this round of results?

County Clerk Ortiz said the received some heat over their speed in getting results out in the past. He expects the results to get out much quicker on the runoff election night because there is just one question on the ballot.

Regardless, on election night the County Clerk’s office will have an open house and allow the public to get a closer look at the ballot counting process on election night.

Their hope is to show just how tedious the ballot counting process can be, and see why things may take longer than expected.