Dark money group weighed involvement in Boulder City Council 2025 election

A dark money group called One Main Street, which has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years backing moderate Democrats in state and local races, considered getting involved in this year’s Boulder City Council election. 

On Aug. 8, Andrew Short, the group’s executive director, reached out to city council candidates to begin what he described as an endorsement process, according to emails obtained by Boulder Reporting Lab.

The group has recently drawn scrutiny for agreeing to pay tens of thousands of dollars toward a Vail hotel retreat for the Colorado Opportunity Caucus, a coalition of moderate Democratic lawmakers that includes Boulder’s state Sen. Judy Amabile and Rep. Karen McCormick of Longmont, according to reporting by the Colorado Sun. The event brought together lawmakers and lobbyists representing clients such as the Colorado Association of Realtors, Xcel Energy, the private prison contractor GEO Group and the Colorado Restaurant Association.

One Main Street receives most of its money through donations to its 501(c)(4) nonprofit, which then channels funds to political committees under the same name. The organization is considered a dark money group because it does not disclose its donors. 

According to the emails, Short shared a questionnaire with those Boulder candidates who expressed interest in being endorsed by One Main Street. Among the questions was whether candidates are, or “desire to be,” members of the Colorado Opportunity Caucus, some of whose members won their seats with help from One Main Street’s spending, according to Colorado Sun reporting. Other questions touched on topics like collective bargaining and apprenticeships, the future role of energy companies, tax policy and housing affordability. 

“We’re beginning our endorsement process for the upcoming Boulder municipal elections and we want to know: Do you want to be endorsed by One Main Street Colorado?” Short wrote in the email, calling the questionnaire, “the first step toward earning the support of a powerful coalition that isn’t afraid to lead.”

In other local races where One Main Street has made endorsements, the group has paid for mailers and other campaign materials. It has drawn attention for spending heavily to back moderate Democrats and at least one Republican in state primaries and in city council races in Denver and Aurora.

This type of outreach is notable in Boulder, where campaigns are small and spending is almost entirely local. The city’s contests have long been free of the big-money forces that shape politics elsewhere in Colorado. City council races are officially nonpartisan, and nearly every candidate abides by Boulder’s voluntary campaign-finance cap in exchange for public matching funds, which keeps overall spending modest.

In what may have been a sign of changing times, in 2023, the national Working Families Party spent about $14,000 on a mailer attacking then-Boulder mayoral candidate Bob Yates, depicting him alongside images of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and $24,000 overall. The mailer sparked criticism from civic groups, including the League of Women Voters of Boulder County, which this election cycle issued a statement reminding residents that Boulder’s municipal elections are meant to be nonpartisan and locally funded. The group urged candidates to reject money from outside organizations and reaffirm that principle. 

New Era Colorado, which has a statewide 501(c)(4) advocacy arm and political action committee that work to engage and mobilize young voters on progressive issues, has spent about $6,400 in Boulder’s 2025 election and has endorsed Mayor Pro Tem Lauren Folkerts, Councilmember Nicole Speer and Rachel Rose Isaacson.

In the weeks following its initial outreach to candidates, One Main Street stepped back. Short confirmed to Boulder Reporting Lab that the group ultimately did not participate in Boulder’s 2025 city council elections.

“Boulder’s late filing deadline, combined with a smaller concentration of union members and partner organizations in the area, ultimately led us to focus on municipalities where our engagement could have a stronger impact this year — including Wheat Ridge, Denver, Westminster, Aurora, Centennial, Arvada, Thornton and Fort Collins,” Short said. “We finalized that decision in late summer as we shaped our broader municipal engagement plan.” 

He said the group sends questionnaires to candidates across the state each election cycle as part of its “standard outreach.” Speer, who also ran for mayor in 2023, said this was the first time she had received a questionnaire from the group. 

Boulder Reporting Lab asked all 11 city council candidates whether they had been contacted by One Main Street. All who had announced by Aug. 8 received the email. Councilmembers Matt Benjamin and Mark Wallach, and candidate Jenny Robins, said they were contacted for follow-up interviews. Isaacson did not respond before publication.

“After several weeks of hearing nothing, I received a phone call to the effect that One Main Street had determined that they would not participate in any way in the Boulder elections and that no endorsement was forthcoming,” Wallach said.

A growing player in local politics

Founded in 2022, One Main Street is part of a growing number of political action committees that have poured large sums into local races once considered too small to attract national attention.

The group followed a similar playbook during Denver’s 2023 election, when it sent questionnaires to candidates before endorsing all but one, progressive incumbent councilmember Candi CdeBaca, who lost her seat. One Main Street spent roughly $215,000, funneled from its nonprofit arm to its Denver PAC, targeting candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America. 

At the time, Short told the Denver Post and Denver Gazette that One Main Street sought to counter DSA-backed candidates and opposed CdeBaca’s efforts to significantly reduce police funding. In total, more than $23 million was spent on Denver’s 2023 city elections, nearly triple the amount in the previous two cycles.

That same year, One Main Street transferred $80,000 to its Aurora PAC to support former Republican-turned-independent candidate Curtis Gardner, part of a broader coalition of mostly conservative PACs that spent nearly $2 million in Aurora’s election, according to the Colorado Sun. 

Boulder’s local elections have rarely attracted that kind of money. Still, the 2023 race provided an early indication of increasing outside interest. (Councilmember and former mayoral candidate Speer was endorsed by the Colorado Working Families Party, a local branch of the national party. The mailer was not coordinated with her or any of the other campaigns, according to previous Boulder Reporting Lab reporting.)

Denver’s political dynamic mirrors, in some ways, what’s unfolding in Boulder’s current election. Groups describing themselves as “pragmatic” are seeking to unseat progressive incumbents Folkerts and Speer, both endorsed by the Boulder Progressives. Folkerts has also received an endorsement from the DSA, and Speer was endorsed by DSA in her 2023 mayoral bid but has since left the organization.

A mystery survey surfaces

Four days after One Main Street’s Aug. 8 email, a political survey began circulating in Boulder that appeared to test messaging favoring more moderate Democratic policies and candidates. 

Respondents were asked to rate statements such as: “Some Boulder progressives have gone too far in focusing on narrow groups to the detriment of the broader community,” “Public safety is a serious problem in Boulder,” and “Boulder has put too much focus on bike lanes at the expense of most people who still have to drive cars,” on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree.

Short told Boulder Reporting Lab that One Main Street had nothing to do with the survey. “I’ve heard some people suggest we were behind the August survey, but that’s not the case,” he said. “One Main Street Colorado did not fund or conduct that survey.” 

He added that his group’s polling is handled exclusively by Keating Research, while this poll appears to be run by GCJ Research, a national firm linked to the super PAC Future Forward, one of the largest spenders in the 2024 election cycle. 

Speer criticized the survey as biased and a possible signal of outside influence. 

“Polls like this can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars, more than any candidate will spend in this fall’s city council race,” she wrote in an Aug. 21 blog post. “That kind of investment suggests someone is preparing to shape the narrative around our elections. It’s worth asking who benefits, and whether their goals align with Boulder’s values.”

A summary of the survey results was later distributed to council candidates by two restaurant industry groups — Eat Denver and the newly formed Boulder Restaurant Alliance — in advance of a candidate forum.

Kristen Rauch, a spokesperson for Eat Denver, told Boulder Reporting Lab she couldn’t say where she got the survey results.

“I was forwarded these survey results with a confidentiality clause,” she wrote, adding she did not know who funded the survey or who else may have received the results.