According to preliminary, unofficial results, Mobolade defeated Williams by about 15 percentage points, becoming the city's first elected Black mayor and the first Colorado Springs mayor who isn't a registered Republican in the more than four decades since the city began electing mayors directly in 1979.
"Yemi has tremendous crossover appeal," Republican consultant Daniel Cole told The Gazette on Tuesday night.
Cole, who ran an independent group that supported Williams in the first round but sat out the runoff, said internal polling predicted Mobolade's sweeping win.
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Polling showed him winning all the Democrats, the vast majority of unaffiliateds and a significant chunk of Republicans, too," he said.
Running as a business-friendly moderate in the nominally nonpartisan election, Mobolade appears to have energized voters from across the political spectrum, while Williams battled critics from all sides, including fellow Republicans
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Williams should have benefited from the GOP's advantage. A El Paso County GOP chairman and former secretary of state, county commissioner and county clerk, he's held office nearly without interruption for two decades. But divisions within the local Republican Party and lingering rifts after a bitter first round in the mayoral race prevented Williams from enjoying the consolidated Republican vote that propelled Suthers and Bach to easy wins.
The bruising first round left Mobolade largely unscathed as the two leading Republican candidates — Williams and fellow city council member Sallie Clark — battered each other relentlessly, driving up each other's negatives.
During the five-week sprint to the runoff, Williams trained his fire on Mobolade, but his relentless attacks proved ineffective. Countering Williams' claims that his opponent was a dangerous liberal,
Mobolade won endorsements from several prominent local Republicans, including Clark, who finished just behind Williams in the first round.
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Originally Posted by Anti Federalist
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