By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice
Denver’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter has picked a candidate in the 2027 race for mayor. In an August 25 release, the chapter said it was “proud to announce their endorsement of Councilwoman Shontel M. Lewis for Mayor of Denver in the 2027 election.”
The endorsement comes from the chapter itself, in its own words. What is worth slowing down on is the word itself. For DSA, an endorsement is not a pat on the back. It is a category with rules attached, and the rules are written down.
The candidate
Lewis is a first-term councilmember for District 8, a seat that runs through Park Hill and parts of East Colfax.
She filed an affidavit in July to run for mayor in the April 6, 2027, municipal election, according to the Denver Clerk and Recorder’s Office. She will challenge incumbent Mayor Mike Johnston, who filed for reelection in August.
Lewis was DSA-endorsed in her 2023 council race as well, and in the chapter’s release she describes herself as “proudly running again as a democratic socialist.” She said she was “asked to run for mayor by union organizers” and pledged “a campaign of joy” that would “bring lasting and real change to Denver.”
Denver DSA was not her only backer on the left in 2023. Ballotpedia’s list of her endorsers in that race ran to SEIU Local 105, the Colorado Working Families Party, UFCW Local 7, the Sierra Club of Colorado and more than a dozen others alongside the chapter. Which of those other groups will carry their support into the mayoral race is not yet clear.
What an endorsement is, in DSA’s terms
The distinction is between backing a candidate and endorsing one. DSA keeps them separate on purpose, and it has recently raised the stakes on the word at the national level.
When DSA adopted its national program this summer, the resolution that carried it attached a condition to whom the national organization endorses. The program, the resolution says, “will have a formal role in DSA’s national candidate endorsement process,” under which endorsed candidates are “expected to accept and promote DSA’s program, and align their own campaign platforms with its contents to the best of their ability,” according to DSA’s own magazine.
That program commits the organization to “win the battle for democracy, draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic,” and it spells out planks to abolish the Senate and the Electoral College and to place the presidency and the Supreme Court under Congress.
The “to the best of their ability” clause leaves room.
The program does not mean every plank necessarily becomes a campaign message. National DSA co-chair Ashik Siddique told CNN that organizers were not knocking on doors this year asking voters whether they wanted to abolish the Senate. The expectation is a stated one, on paper, not a loyalty oath.
That condition, by its own terms, governs national endorsements. Denver DSA’s endorsement of Lewis is a local one, and the chapter has its own rules for handing the word out.
How Denver’s chapter draws the line
Denver DSA’s own ballot guide from this year shows the line in practice.
In the June primary, the chapter endorsed Melat Kiros in the 1st Congressional District. Kiros beat Rep. Diana DeGette, ending a hold on the Denver seat DeGette had kept since 1997. That was a full endorsement.
The chapter sets a floor for who can earn one.
In its June 2026 voter guide, the chapter said candidates “must identify as a socialist and be an active member of DSA to be eligible” for endorsement. A recommendation carried no such requirement. Under that rule, a full endorsement was reserved for candidates who identified as socialists and were active DSA members, not a mere nod of support.
Most of the other names on the chapter’s guide are candidates for the U.S. Senate and statewide office that received only a “recommend yes,” a category the chapter keeps separate from endorsement.
The chapter graded candidates against its own positions to sort them. It marked one down, a sitting school board president, because “she does not call for the abolition of ICE,” and stayed neutral on another after he shifted from opposing ICE toward focusing on “violent criminals.”
The other Colorado chapters were more cautious still. Boulder County DSA and Northern Colorado DSA each put out a voter guide and declined to endorse anyone at all, offering recommendations only.
So when Denver DSA says it endorses Lewis for mayor, it is using its strongest category, the same one it gave Kiros, not the softer recommendation it handed most of the ticket.
The Lewis release spells out what that involves.
The endorsement came, the chapter said, through “candidate forums, member deliberation, and an all-member vote,” and it “commits the membership to volunteer for Lewis’s campaign.” The vote was open to a chapter the release says has almost 2,000 members, and by the chapter’s account the endorsement now commits that membership to work for her. That is the weight the word carries.
Where the comparison stops
Both endorsements are Denver DSA’s, and the chapter used its strongest endorsement category in each case. What differs is the office, and with it, how much of DSA’s national platform is even in play.
Kiros ran for federal office. A member of Congress takes part in the federal lawmaking and constitutional processes the national program invokes, so the pieces that draw the most attention, like abolishing the Senate or rewriting the Constitution, are directly relevant to the level of government she was seeking to join.
Lewis is running for a city office. A Denver mayor does not vote on the U.S. Senate. The federal planks that define the national program are not decisions a mayor makes, and Denver DSA’s release does not tie its mayoral endorsement to them. Its case for Lewis rests on her record in office, from municipal sentencing reform to renter protections to collective bargaining for city workers and, most recently, protections for trans Denverites.
For a mayoral run, a local endorsement also signals alignment on the issues a city actually decides.
In her endorsement statement, Lewis said she is running to build “social housing options,” to “restore city services” and to “be sure everyone pays their fair share,” which she summed up as “let’s tax the rich.”
She carried similar priorities into her 2023 council run, when she advocated for a social housing authority, expanded tenant protections and zoning reform to promote density, the terrain of a municipal race, and issues Denver DSA has taken up in its own local work.
What to watch
The endorsement is early. The race is months out, the field is crowded, and Lewis is not the only candidate on the left in it.
Denver’s municipal races are nonpartisan by design, meaning party labels do not appear on the ballot, and a DSA endorsement travels through that quiet channel rather than a party line.
What can be said now is narrow and documented.
Denver DSA has a written rule about who it endorses, a process that runs through a chapterwide vote, and a 2027 mayoral candidate it has placed in its top category.
Its national organization has separately tied its sweeping new program to national endorsements. Whether that national program reaches a Denver mayor’s race is the part still to be written.