Taishya Adams enters Boulder mayor’s race, putting her council seat on the line

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 City Councilmember Taishya Adams has announced she is running for mayor, with a campaign focused on climate resilience, affordability and a stronger role for the city council. 

“Our city is facing unprecedented challenges like wildfires, extreme heat, water security, food access, unemployment, and housing affordability,” Adams said. “Boulder needs a leader who not only understands these intersecting issues, but brings lived and learned experiences to meet the moment.”

“For too long, community has felt like the staff runs the city versus the council, and it is time that the council takes the lead,” she added.

Adams, elected to the city council in 2023, joins a race against incumbent Mayor Aaron Brockett and first-time candidate Aquiles La Grave.

Her council seat is one of four on the November ballot. Because candidates cannot run for mayor and council in the same election, Adams cannot seek reelection to her council seat while running for mayor. If she loses, she will leave the council.

Adams moved to Boulder in 2011 and founded the Mukuyu Collective, an environmental consultancy. She has served on several boards and commissions, including as an inaugural member of the city’s Police Oversight Panel, which reviews internal investigations into complaints of officer misconduct. She was the first Black woman to serve on the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission and also served on the Business Advisory Council for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

In an interview with Boulder Reporting Lab, Adams said her environmental background has prepared her to respond to the threats of climate change and argued that the city should do more to prepare. She wants Boulder to bolster the climate resilience of local water and food systems, strengthen its defenses against wildfires and integrate climate change into the city’s financial planning.

Adams is also pushing for the council to take a stronger role in shaping city policy, particularly around public safety and policing. 

She pointed to the city manager’s authority over the Police Oversight Panel, whose members recently said city decisions had weakened the panel. The city manager will also choose a vendor for the city’s automatic license plate readers. Flock Safety, the current vendor, has faced scrutiny and a local class-action lawsuit over privacy concerns.

“It’s one of the most important responsibilities our city council has, to ensure the public safety of all,” Adams said. “It’s time to reclaim oversight from the city manager on issues related to public safety.”

Adams’ response to the war in Gaza

Adams was elected to the Boulder City Council about a month after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The war and the events that followed at city council shaped much of her term.

For much of 2024 and 2025, residents and protesters repeatedly attended council meetings to demand a ceasefire resolution and changes to the city’s investment policies. The disruptions prompted at least 19 recesses. Some demonstrators targeted individual councilmembers, calling at least one Jewish member a Nazi and a “Jewish supremacist.”

During that period, Adams was the council’s most outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza. She was one of two members who voted to consider a ceasefire resolution and one of three who supported considering revising the city’s investment policies to exclude a broader range of weapons manufacturers. 

The council considered the investment issue at Adams’ request. She pointed specifically to Microsoft’s provision of technology to Israeli officials and to a United Nations special rapporteur’s report citing the use of Caterpillar bulldozers to demolish Palestinian homes in the West Bank. She argued Boulder has “skin in the game” regarding the war.

Adams said this week that her position “wasn’t a Gaza issue,” but that the war provided an entry point for examining the city’s investment portfolio.

“There are specific incidences that put these larger questions on the table around sustainability, equity and responsibility, and do our policies and our practices align with those values?” she said.

The issue became even more charged after the June 1, 2025 Pearl Street attack, when Mohamed Sabry Soliman targeted participants in a weekly walk supporting Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Prosecutors say he threw Molotov cocktails at the group and told investigators that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people.” More than a dozen people suffered injuries, many of them older residents. Karen Diamond, an 82-year-old Boulder resident, died several weeks later from the severe burns she sustained in the attack.

The day after the attack, the city issued a statement condemning the firebombing as a “targeted, antisemitic attack.” Adams was the only councilmember who did not sign it, a decision that drew international attention and criticism from some Jewish residents and community leaders.

Adams said at the time that the statement should have described the attack as both antisemitic and anti-Zionist, citing Soliman’s comments, including his statement that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people.”

“Conflating antisemitism with anti Zionism is dangerous and factually incorrect,” she wrote in a text message to Boulder Reporting Lab at the time, saying she had recently returned from Palestine.

In the attack’s aftermath, most councilmembers supported tighter restrictions intended to restore order and address safety concerns at meetings. Adams broke with the majority. She opposed new rules for public participation, temporarily moving meetings online and suspending open comment after the June 1 firebombing. Each measure passed over her objection.

“How do we ensure that everyone is seen, valued and heard?” Adams said. “How do we ensure the safety of all community members when they come to speak to us?”

About two months after the June 1 attack, Councilmembers Matt Benjamin and Mark Wallach accused Adams of making social media posts that amounted to a “modern form of antisemitism.” Adams defended the posts. The exchange was a rare public airing of conflict among councilmembers.

Breaking from the progressive bloc

In 2023, Adams was endorsed by Boulder Progressives, Better Boulder, Bedrooms Are For People and the Sierra Club’s Indian Peaks Group.

Since then, she has been one of the council’s most independent votes, often breaking with other councilmembers endorsed by the Boulder Progressives.

In addition to Adams, the Boulder Progressives endorsed Mayor Brockett and councilmembers Nicole Speer, Ryan Schuchard and Benjamin, as well as former Councilmember Lauren Folkerts. A Boulder Reporting Lab review of more than 120 votes between December 2023 and January 2026 found that the six Boulder Progressives-endorsed members voted together on only about 30% of nonunanimous votes. A five-member bloc consisting of Brockett, Speer, Folkerts, Benjamin and Schuchard voted together about 63% of the time.

Adams said she shares values with a range of political groups in Boulder.

“Our council does not reflect the full spectrum of political views of our community,” Adams said. Before voters raised council pay from about $12,000 to $41,000 a year, she said, council elections were “a popularity contest on who can afford $10 an hour for 20 to 30 hours of work a week.”

“It’s time that we move beyond these divisive binary political slates,” she added. 

In October 2024, Adams voted against an amendment from Folkerts that would have set the city’s minimum wage 15% above the state minimum, with the goal of matching Denver’s minimum wage by 2027. Councilmembers Benjamin, Wallach, Tina Marquis and Tara Winer joined her and the measure failed. The council approved an 8% increase instead.

“Locally owned businesses would have been disproportionately impacted by a 15% wage increase,” Adams said. “It is essential that we maintain locally owned businesses and fight against corporate and private equity takeover of our local economy.”

Adams was the only member to vote against the city’s 2026 budget and also broke from other Boulder Progressives-endorsed councilmembers by opposing a new transportation maintenance fee. And she was the only councilmember to vote against allowing new short-term rental licenses during the Sundance Film Festival. 

“I had concerns around ensuring that we are not creating the conditions where we have empty homes most of the year, and working families that can’t afford to live here,” she said of her vote.

Where Adams stands on more recent issues

In several recent closely watched votes, Adams has aligned with the council majority. She opposed reconsidering the tipped minimum wage last month and voted to keep Boulder Municipal Airport open for the long term.

Adams said she remains undecided about whether to refer a proposal establishing a downtown development authority to the November ballot. The authority would temporarily divert future tax revenue growth to downtown projects. She said she wants more information about how much the city has already spent downtown.

Adams said she would address high housing costs by working with the state to discourage second homes and short-term rentals, which she said could free up housing for full-time residents.

She also opposes relocating the city’s homeless outreach efforts from downtown. She argued that the city has enough homes for everyone and that the larger problem is a governance structure that does not represent everyone in major decisions.

Adams did not frame her candidacy as a rebuke of Brockett.

“He’s a stand-up leader, and I’ve appreciated what I’ve learned,” she said. “Exceptional planner, compassionate and kind. These aren’t criticisms of him. But we’re in unprecedented times, and we need a leader who understands intersectionality.”