Taishya Adams has served nearly three years on Boulder City Council and is running for mayor on a platform focused on climate resilience, affordability and giving the council a stronger role in city governance. Her council term ends this year, and because she cannot run simultaneously for mayor and reelection to her council seat, she will leave her current seat regardless of the mayoral election’s outcome.
In 2023, Adams was endorsed by the Boulder Progressives, Better Boulder, Bedrooms Are For People and the Sierra Club’s Indian Peaks Group. . The Boulder Progressives endorsed only incumbent Aaron Brockett for mayor this year, though the group has said it may recommend how voters use their additional choices under Boulder’s ranked-choice voting system. Better Boulder has not yet announced its endorsements.
Adams has frequently broken with colleagues who shared her Boulder Progressives endorsement. She opposed raising Boulder’s minimum wage to match Denver’s by 2027, instead supporting a smaller increase because of concerns about locally owned businesses. She was the only councilmember to vote against the city’s 2026 budget and new short-term rental licenses for the Sundance Film Festival. She also opposed a transportation maintenance fee supported by most of her progressive colleagues.
Adams said the council “does not reflect the full spectrum of political views of our community” and called for moving beyond “divisive binary political slates.”
A defining feature of her campaign is her call for the council to exercise more authority over city policy. Adams wants councilmembers to take a stronger role in overseeing the Police Oversight Panel, whose members have said city decisions weakened the panel, and the city’s contract with Flock Safety for automated license plate readers. The city and police chief face a local class-action lawsuit alleging that the camera system violates residents’ privacy rights.
Much of Adams’ term has been shaped by her response to the war in Gaza. She was the council’s most outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, one of two members who voted to consider a ceasefire resolution and one of three who supported considering revisions to Boulder’s investment policies amid residents’ calls for divestment.
Adams was the only councilmember who did not sign the city’s statement condemning the June 1 firebombing as a “targeted, antisemitic attack.” The attack injured more than a dozen people and killed longtime Boulder resident Karen Diamond, 82, who died weeks later from her burns. Adams said the statement should have described the attack as both antisemitic and anti-Zionist, citing the attacker’s statement that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people.” Her decision drew national attention and criticism from Jewish residents and community leaders.
Adams founded the Mukuyu Collective, an environmental consultancy, in 2020. She previously worked for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the American Institutes for Research as an educational equity specialist and Outdoor Afro.
She was an inaugural member of the city’s Police Oversight Panel and the first Black woman to serve on the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission.
Adams moved to Boulder in the summer of 2013.
Occupation: Nonprofit founder
Neighborhood: South Boulder
Rent or Own?: Rent
Age: 52