Editor’s note: Boulder Reporting Lab will profile all mayoral candidates as they enter the race, as well as city council candidates later in the election season.
Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett is running for reelection, saying he wants to continue the council’s work on housing, the city’s budget deficit, homelessness and wildfire resilience.
“I feel proud of many things that I’ve done, but I feel like there’s still more work to be done,” Brockett told Boulder Reporting Lab in an interview.
By the end of this year, Brockett will have served 11 years on the Boulder City Council, including five as mayor. He was selected as mayor by fellow councilmembers in 2021 and narrowly won Boulder’s first direct mayoral election in 2023.
For now, Brockett is facing one challenger. Earlier this week, entrepreneur Aquiles La Grave, a first-time candidate campaigning for a more assertive mayoral role, announced his bid. Candidates have until late August to qualify for the ballot.
The record Brockett is running on
Brockett said he is proud of recent ordinances that loosened restrictions on accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, and made it easier to build duplexes and triplexes in neighborhoods where they were previously prohibited or difficult to develop. The council also changed zoning rules to allow more homes in some neighborhoods near downtown and along bus routes and made it easier to build permanently affordable housing. The changes generally retained existing limits on building height, size and setbacks.
Following changes to state law, the council also eliminated minimum parking requirements and repealed occupancy limits on how many unrelated people can live together. Brockett said he wants the city to continue expanding opportunities for “missing middle” housing, including duplexes and triplexes.
“I want to continue to look at opportunities for additional housing options,” Brockett said. “I actually personally live in a townhouse that’s part of the building that has eight units in it, an eightplex, and it works out really well.”
Brockett also highlighted Boulder’s sanctuary city ordinance and assault weapons ban as notable achievements from his time serving on the council.
Many groups that typically weigh in on local elections haven’t issued endorsements yet this year. In 2023, Brockett secured endorsements from Boulder Progressives, Gov. Jared Polis and Bedrooms Are For People, among others.
In 2003, Brockett and his wife, Cherry Anderson, quit their jobs in Connecticut and moved to Boulder. They bought a townhome at the Wild Sage cohousing community in North Boulder’s Holiday Neighborhood. Brockett, who co-founded the software development company Charon Software, served on the city’s Planning Board from 2011 to 2015 before running for council.
Boulder mayors are term-limited to eight years. Because the terms of the mayor and councilmembers elected in 2023 were extended to three years as the city transitions to even-year elections, Brockett would reach that limit if reelected.
Asked what he might do after that, he said it was “still up in the air.” He has previously sought state office. In 2022, he ran to fill a vacancy left by former state Rep. Edie Hooton but lost to former Boulder City Councilmember Junie Joseph, who now holds the seat.
Managing a turbulent council term
Under Boulder’s council-manager government, the mayor has the same voting power as other councilmembers but presides over meetings and represents the city publicly. Brockett’s responsibility for managing meetings has come under strain during his current term. Months of disruptions tied to the war in Gaza, followed more recently by a councilmember’s resignation over an airport vote, have tested his ability to keep council proceedings on track.
For much of 2024 and 2025, residents and protesters attended open comment to urge the Boulder City Council to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and to change the city’s investment policy to exclude a broader range of weapons manufacturers from its portfolio. The council voted against both proposals.
Protests continued after the council’s decisions. Some demonstrators made repeated personal attacks against Jewish councilmembers, including calling one of them a Nazi. The disruptions prompted Brockett and other councilmembers to call at least 19 recesses.
In response, the council temporarily moved meetings online, banned large flags and signs and authorized the city manager to bar disruptive people from attending in person.
Tensions intensified after the devastating June 1, 2025, firebomb attack on a group walking in support of Israeli hostages on Pearl Street. One Boulder resident later died from her injuries, and others suffered severe burns. As mayor, Brockett became one of the city’s principal public voices during the traumatic aftermath, speaking with news organizations around the world. The attack also heightened an already charged atmosphere surrounding council meetings.
Further changes adopted in July 2025 shortened open comment to 45 minutes, prioritized infrequent speakers and ended video broadcasts of public commenters. Meetings also began 30 minutes earlier, at 5:30 p.m.
“Seeing how successful those changes were, it would have been great to put those into place earlier,” Brockett said of the July amendments. “Hindsight is 20/20.”
Since the changes took effect, Brockett said, “disruptions have been dramatically lower. I think I’ve only had to call one recess in like the last eight months.”
Brockett also said he believes he runs meetings efficiently, noting that they have often finished early in recent months.
“I’m proud of that, because I think you make better decisions when you can do it earlier in the evening,” he said.
He said he also tries to keep councilmembers “focused on ideas and policies rather than personalities or any form of attacks on each other.”
“We’ve got a great council for doing that,” Brockett said.
The council has faced criticism in recent months for reaching an informal agreement on the future of Boulder Municipal Airport during a study session without first holding a public hearing. Last week, the council held a public hearing and voted 8-1 to continue operating the airport for the foreseeable future.
Following the vote, Councilmember Mark Wallach, first elected in 2019, resigned, saying the decision conflicted with his values. His departure was the city’s first council resignation since 2019, when Jill Grano, a real estate agent and community organizer who is now running again for city council, resigned to become community affairs director for U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse.
Where Brockett stands on major issues
The airport has been one of the council’s most divisive issues in the last year. Other contentious decisions await Brockett and the council in the coming months.
Later this week, Brockett is expected to be one of two deciding votes on whether to slow wage increases for tipped workers in Boulder. He said he has not yet decided how he will vote.
Next month, the council will vote on whether to create a Downtown Development Authority, a proposal intended to revitalize downtown but one that could temporarily divert potential revenue from other city needs.
Brockett also supported the city’s increased enforcement of the camping ban downtown and its effort to move homeless services away from downtown, following recommendations in a recent consultant’s report.
The council continues to face pressure to require wildfire protections for existing homes. Last year, the council passed an ordinance requiring new construction and major remodels to meet wildfire standards, including a requirement that homes have a five-foot buffer of noncombustible material around the structure. Existing homes are largely unaffected by the ordinance, potentially putting mitigated homes and entire neighborhoods at risk.
“I would like us to look at some opportunities for mandatory wildfire hardening,” Brockett said. “The one at the top of the list being juniper removal. We should be getting to a point where we don’t have landscaping junipers in town.”
He said he wants to expand cattle grazing on open space near city limits and “look at more ways to deploy additional city resources to make progress on things like forest thinning and hardening within the city.”
On the city’s budget deficit, Brockett said Boulder has made some progress. He cited the new Alpine-Balsam redevelopment, which will allow the city to consolidate operations and close aging buildings that require costly repairs.
“But there’s still a lot left to go,” he said. “The biggest thing that we’re looking at right now is the bond measure that we’re likely to put on the ballot this fall. I’ll be supporting that, and if the voters vote for that, that actually will close a very substantial part of the facility maintenance gap.”
