He is a man who just did a don Keyxoti like quest to unseat a Democrat in a highly democratic district. But now he's found himself in the middle of a new kerfuffle. Vladimir al Jouetta posted something on his ex page and it turned into a thing. Valdemar, good to see you.
First of all, it is great to be back. Thank you for inviting me.
In low stress environment, not trying to earn votes.
Yeah, so that's what was supposed to happen. The election was over.
I was supposed to have a nice, peaceful holiday, no more politics.
That may not be how it's going to end up.
So what did you post on X the other day?
People are that, well, I had you know you think you recently just talked about the what Mike Johnson had said and the whole blow up from that. So I kind of made a comment about it. People started talking about recall. So I looked up some information on in post digital. Here's how you do it. He wants to know you go, And then that blew up on Twitter or X and so a whole movement has now started, and I was contacted by several people.
Who really want to follow through with this, or at least.
Investigate the possibility of following through with the recall of Mike Johnston.
You know, let's break it down for just a few Minutes's let's talk about reasons that people want to recall Mike Johnston. But then I'm going to remind them of something very important. Everything that I find horrible about Mike Johnston's administration were the exact same things he campaigned on. He campaigned on micro communities, he campaigned on warehousing, homeless people.
He campaigned on these things. Now did he campaign to spend one hundred and sixty five million dollars on homeless people? He did not. And Valdemar and I were trying to figure out what we have spent in Denver, and not just the city of Denver, but education services, but hospital services for U see health. This is a big reason why you see health needed that cash injection and attacks increase.
And the Common Sense Institute estimated in a sport from May thirtieth that between city, education and healthcare organizations, they have spent between two hundred and sixteen million to three hundred and forty million on the response of taking care of forty two thousand illegal immigrants that made their way to Denver. So all, and I'm just use the lower number, right, Well,
we'll just use the two hundred and sixteen million. So do you think people in Denver signed up for three hundred and eighty something million of their tax dollars to go to people who are either mentally illan on drugs, on drugs, addicted to alcohol, or who broke into the country and then got all their services. No.
And this is a concern of many people in Denver, and it's not a partisan issue. This is across the board. People have been concerned about that. This past year in campaigning, I've gone to tons of town halls with different city council individuals and.
That the city put on.
And by far the biggest town hall I ever attended was just about a month ago at Remington element School when they were talking about making the possibility of making that an immigrant shelter. Basically, it would only happen if the mayor called an emergency and they needed somewhere to house people. They were saying it probably won't happen, but just in case, we're looking at this as a possibility. And there are several other elementary schools throughout the city
they are looking to do the same thing. But there were hundreds of people there from that neighborhood. And this is in the Sunnyside neighborhood, north west denver, Ish kind of a.
Cityside is a very diverse neighborhood. It has some it has some people there are maybe on the lower socioeconomic spectrum. There's some areas where you have a little bit of gentrification going on there.
It's a cross section.
The southern part of it is like where the Highlands are, and so it's already been gentrified. But then you have like the northern part where it's kind of remained working class, working class, and that's so so there are a lot of people there, and there were a lot of people actually there, even from the Highlands neighborhood. But they had
heard about this happening and they were concerned. And there were a few people there who are like, you know, we want to help the migrants, how can we volunteer, what can we do And they were fine with that, but the majority of the people there were concerned about what that was going to do to their neighborhood and they were not happy with the answers that the city was giving them and beyond that, even like back in February when we kind of had this big surge come
to Denver and it became a big issue.
I was at a.
Meeting where they were and this was I think in park Hill, Mountainbalow somewhere over there, and they were talking about the when they cut back the hours of community centers. The communities up there were concerned because they're cutting.
The hours here, what are our young men going to do? You know?
Yeah, this is where they go because off the street. If they're not going to be in the community centers, where are they going to be? And again, these are not Republican citizens. They are probably vast majority Democrats, but they recognize this is a problem. What's happening is not benefiting our community. Our community is being put second to take care of migrants who are coming into the country illegally.
One of the most interesting conversations that I have heard about this I heard on a light rail train going downtown and I was sitting behind two young women and they were probably in their early twenties, and one of them was Hispanic and one of them was African American, and they were p owed that they as American citizens could not get anything from the city, and they had heard that immigrants were getting free apartments and free you know, healthcare,
computers and phones and all this stuff, and they were livid. And I think from that perspective, when you have people on the on the other end of the economic spectrum who are trying to get ahead in Denver and they're like, look, dude, what are you know? What are we doing? Why is everything so expensive for me? You're putting all of these people ahead of me. So I think it really does kind of cut across also socioeconomic lines. But as you get to the rich liberals, those are the Highlands moms
that Mike Johnson was talking about. He was talking about Highland's moms showing up because their lives are not directly impacted.
Exactly, and that is the demographic he was speaking to.
And I believe when he made his comments in the Denver are to the Denver right, that's what he was thinking about. The base in these areas where they're going to be okay with what he was saying because they aren't seeing the effects effect their lives directly, and so they want to.
Make sure they can get their house cleaned for a really inexpensive rate, and they want to make sure that their organic produce doesn't cost mark that's the extent of their concern for the impact that this has. So let's talk about the actual process for a second. What does that look like? Because you just looked it up.
Yeah, so work like that.
This is still kind of in the beginnings of Look enough, they're going to be thrown away, so you'll probably need like thirty five thousand.
Signatures, so you're going to know that.
They can hire. I heard there's a bunch of illegal immigrants that are available for work.
Well, yeah, that would be wouldn't that would be ironic? It would be amazing. Mayor Well, and the question about whether or not.
It's it's a good idea or not, we're going to talk about because I have nixed feelings about whether or not this particular deployment of resources, time and energy is the right way to go. Can you stick around through a break? Yes, I've got Valdemar Archiletta. We're talking about whether a recall of Mayor Mike Johnston makes sense, if it's a good idea, or if it's worth it, if the juice is worth the squeeze, to use a very
popular cliche. Right now, we'll be right back. We're back with Valdemar Archiletta talking about what it might look like to do a recall of Mayor Mike Johnston. To be clear, Valdemar is not doing a recall of Mayor Mike Johnston. This is a kind of an exercise, a conversation and what that might look like.
So here we're looking into the possibilities of a recall, but is it the.
Best use of resources? And that's where it gets tricky.
It is because again it's going to cost money, So we want to figure out how much money will this cost financially and of course people's time as well, going now into the holiday season, is it worth the time of the volunteers in that who are going to be out there collecting signatures and that to do this and then even afterwards it should we be successful in creating a recall, who do we have to replace, right Mike Johnston?
And I am looking into that as well.
People have asked me, I am not going to run for mayor, but let me just throw that out there right now.
Will I will not run for.
If I am nominated, but I am looking into you know, I want to contact some people, talk to them and see if we do have someone lined up, because if we were to recall Mike Johnston and then we'd get is.
Talking about more aggressive person mayor or at Leasta caldar on God forbid, I mean now in Aurora.
So Aurora, my head's up. I do believe.
My thought is like in a few years he's going to run for city council and Aurora or something like that.
So Aurora just you know, he's.
All yours now. The problem that we have, honestly is that Denver is so deeply democratic. There's a zero percent chance that a Republican is going to win in Denver, and.
So we want someone maybe just a step in the right direction. So someone who's maybe a more moderate Democrat would be great. You know, it's going to be a step up from where we are.
Someone who's going to.
Be more supportive of getting you know, Prime under control and doing some things that will help bring business back to Denver.
Here's what I want to see that, Here's what I think Denver needs. Not that anybody ask me, but this is what I think Denver needs. Though the mayor has been concentrating on get homeless people off the streets. The success rate of these programs and getting people into stable, permanent housing is very low. So we are throwing good money after bad. We have to have somebody in office
that says we are going to be results oriented. We are going to say to our providers, we need a detailed account of what you've done for each resident to get them the help that they need, the drug treatment that they need, the alcohol treatment that they need, the mental health care they need, and moving them towards independence or into some kind of stable housing situation that the government's going to have to pay for forever, because unfortunately
there are people that are not going to be able to take care of themselves. And then you go to all those businesses on the sixteenth Street mall and you say, we're taking the money that we've spent on homeless people and immigrants and we're pouring it into your businesses with grants to keep you afloat until all this is done. They're about to destroy businesses on Colfax Avenue with its.
Stupidvice all right, that whole button, and not just that. The people in the neighborhood's there are quite upset. Was at another town Hall. I forget the name of the middle school over there, but kind of like Congress Park,
Capitol Hill area, right. They they know that when this happens to Coalfax, if people who don't know out there, what they want to do is basically make Coalfax one one lane direction and the other one's going to be buses and like a little park down the middle whatever, which looks pretty and I can I can see that, but you're going to be pushing people off Coalfax and onto Fourteenth Street or fourteenth Avenue, thirteenth and so the
neighborhoods there are concerned that they've already gotten too many, too much traffic over there. Now that all these other traffic from Coalfax is going to be in their neighborhoods, it's going to make things worse. So the businesses are upset because the people are leaving Coalfax. The neighborhood's upset because now they're coming into their neighborhoods.
So that's a mess.
And they're also looking at doing that to Colorado Boulevard, which is a mess as it is.
I hate Colorado Boulevard.
I imagine Colorado Boulevard one lane each direction.
There are two roads that I will avoid at all costs. Colorado Boulevard is one, Parker Road is the other, because oh my god, so so Wich traffic. Anyway, Valdimore, it's a nice thought experiment. We'll see if it goes anywhere. My concern is that we waste a whole bunch of time and energy. The mayor keeps his seat and is then emboldened to double day.
That is something too, because you look at the likeli of this outcome will probably be like, it's really difficult to replace a mayor. It's really difficult to recall someone. So what do you be emboldened? Or is the statement going to be good? That we made a stand? We made a statement because I think a lot of people in Colorado are really upset that our leadership across the state, whether it's the governor the secretary of State, are doing all these things and no one ever pushes back from them.
And they already feel that they can just do whatever they want because there is no pushback.
So will the pushback be worth it? Or you said, will it make it worse?
That is Valdimar. Archiletto will keep you posted on whether or not this movement gets legs. Felt good to see you, My friends, good to see you too, and happy Thanksgiving.