After four years, voters got real last week with Aurora’s chaotic and gruesome city council political reality show.
Exhausted by the destructive antics and partisan politics of a handful of city lawmakers, voters on Election Day gave the boot to first-term council members Danielle Jurinsky and Steve Sundberg.
In more than 30 years of covering Aurora politics, and almost 40 years as a journalist, I’ve seen some stuff. But I’ve never seen anything as dangerously weird as what Jurinsky and Sundberg inflicted on the state’s third-largest city.
Not that there’s ever been a shortage of bizarre-bordering-on-no-way in local politics.
Years ago, former Arvada Councilmember Joanne Conte angrily told me she was “disappointed” that I was “not a virgin” when she asked me who a woman was that she saw me with at a local restaurant.
I have piles of reporter notebooks with circles around bizarre and ghastly things that all kinds of elected officials have said or done over the decades.
But I have never seen an elected official inflict the kind of damage on their constituents, their community and their own political careers as have Jurinsky and Sundberg.
Just as bizarre, I have never seen a local body of government where partisan allies either ignored, dismissed or even defended atrocities by their elected colleagues, even when they were victims of their abhorrent stunts.
Jurinsky’s A-Town demolition derby started almost as soon as she got elected when she began to first quietly and then publicly — on a right-wing talk-radio show — talk trash about former Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson.
She literally called Wilson “trash.”
Aurora is currently under a consent decree to turn around its police force after an extensive state investigation found long and extensive “patterns and practices” of police using excessive force, especially against people of color.
The consent decree isn’t about a couple of “oopsies.” This isn’t even about the time that officers involved in the death of Elijah McClain took selfies making fun of how cops fatally choked the innocent and unarmed Black man in 2019. The decree isn’t about the time Aurora cops mistakenly pulled over a car with Black girls and women inside and forced them to lie face down on hot asphalt as they cuffed them. It’s not about the time an Aurora cop was videotaped pistol-whipping an unarmed Black man bloody. He was accused of trespassing while sitting on a parking lot median.
Aurora is a community where people of color, many still talking in accents they brought with them from nations all around the globe, make up the majority of city residents.
So it was not just cruel, but obscene when Sundberg made Facebook videos in 2020 during the pandemic as “advertisements” to draw customers to his Aurora pub. In one video, he wore a Mexican blanket and spoke in pidgin English with a Mexican accent, making racist tropes during what he insisted was just a joke. He made similar videos depicting an Arabic man in a makeshift turban on a carpet, and one where he and another employee pretended to horrify a Muslim by offering him pork, and another at a urinal linked to the size of Black male genitalia.
He never apologized for making the videos nor conceded that they were racist. Instead, he apologized to anyone who felt they were offended by them. While outraged immigrant and minority community leaders demanded his resignation, his fellow Republican city lawmakers demurred and some even defended him.
That’s not the kind of community leaders Aurora needs nor deserves, and voters last week clearly agreed.
Jurinsky had taken the political club to Aurora’s diverse constituency even further.
She became a darling on the national right-wing media circuit last year after throwing a tantrum about Venezuelan immigrants. She lit up first on social media and then national TV when thousands of people surprised everyone by showing up on a Sunday afternoon last year in July to an Aurora shopping center parking lot to celebrate what at the time appeared to be the election loss of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. Police later credited the rowdy flash-mob to a social media circuit that spun out of control.
While police said the one-off event was weird and annoying, it was not the critical threat Jurinsky tried to make it out to be on social media.
“The police were totally over run (sic), and we’re (sic) forced to get out of the area for their safety,” Jursinky said in a Facebook post last summer. The post has since been deleted.
“A police car was shot up. This is in the United States of America… this is in YOUR city. Please, please spread the word. This November’s election may, in fact, be the actual most important of your lives, your children’s lives, and your grandchildrens (sic) lives.”
Police said it wasn’t true.
They insisted they were in control of the situation the entire time. The cop car “shot up” actually occurred hours later down the street from the shopping center.
This led to regular appearances on right-wing Fox News shows where Jurinsky repeatedly tried to make the case that Aurora neighborhoods and apartments were overrun with Venezuelan gangsters.
That led to Donald Trump repeatedly insisting that Aurora had been overtaken and destroyed by vicious Venezuelan gangs.
In fact, it turned out that some gang members and some Venezuelans linked to the notorious prison gang Tren de Aragua were living in three Aurora apartments that landlords had run into the ground.
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman on Next On 9News with Kyle Clark called them “slumlords.”
But credible Aurora police officials at the time made clear that hysterical claims by Jurinsky, Sundberg and Councilmember Stephanie Hancock were baseless exaggerations.
Still, Jurinsky persisted. She joined up with the Trump re-election campaign and even appeared on-stage when Trump came to Aurora last October to insist that the city, and even Colorado, was overrun with Venezuelan gangsters. That’s when Trump promised mass deportations would be called “Operation Aurora.”
It will take years to undo the damage Jurinsky and others on city council have done to the Aurora community, and especially its businesses. She and others on the city council were complicit in her partisan ruse. They scared the living hell out of people, not only who live here, but who have since said they would never venture east of Yosemite Street for fear of being murdered by TdA gangsters.
As inside and outside pressure built against Jurinsky for her savage hyperbolic dramatics, the city’s gloomy economic picture muscled onto the city council dais last year.
Aurora retail sales are down and sinking.
Jurinsky’s pet project to end the city’s $2 per-employee-per-month “head tax” on businesses, was in jeopardy. That’s because the city’s budget was bleeding dollars badly and Aurora needs the $6 million this relatively benign tax brings in.
When other conservative council members worked last fall toward a way to postpone ending the tax, Jurinsky had a political tantrum like no other on record in Aurora.
She was angry about a proposal by Republican Councilmember Francoise Bergan, offering to continue levying Aurora’s employee tax.
“…every single one of you can go fu** yourselves!” Jurinsky said in a group text to some council members. The series of texts was obtained by the Sentinel.
“I fu***** campaigned on that you fu***** pieces of shit!”…“And I hear you’re a co sponsor, Francoise. You can definitely go fu** yourself! You’ve never owned a business or a fu***** thing in your life you pretentious bitch!”…“My friendship will literally (sic) every single one of you is dead! DEAD! oh, and my loyalty… also dead! I hope you all have miserable fu***** lives! I might make that happen for a few of you. FU** YOU!”
Yeah, that really happened.
City council members on both sides of the political aisle, city staffers and others have repeatedly called Jurinsky’s behavior “toxic,” “abusive” and “bullying.”
During the last three decades, I’ve seen Aurora’s political cast play just about every part you could write into what had now become a cringy melodrama. The council dais, however, has primarily always been filled with passionate, determined and heartfelt conservatives, liberals and everything in between.
There’s been no shortage of passionate positions on a wide-range of high-voltage issues.
But previous councils have refrained from calling stubborn, disruptive protesters “terrorists” like Hancock did last year. They didn’t tell offensive sexualized tales about jock straps worn as face masks like Sundberg told captive city employees almost four years ago. And they didn’t accost lawmakers and even the public with the venomous ad hominem that Jurinsky turned to at almost every council meeting.
Whether voters dismissed Jurinsky and Sundberg because of their behavior or their political philosophies, in a city that simply doesn’t think or behave like them, they’re gone.
The Aurora City Council has a chance now to evolve and ensure that no matter how difficult city politics become, it’s never permitted to devolve into an organization that becomes a bigger threat to the community than the challenges they’re elected to solve.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
Some of the charges listed here may have merit. Funny thing though – I’ve never seen an editorial here criticising the City Council member who was out leading a mob of rioters in assaulting Aurora police who were simply protecting our city buildings during the BLM riots. I would consider that a far worse transgression than violating standards of political correctness and exaggeration of problems in our city. There seems to be a pattern here.
It is as if that didn’t happen, and you bought into fake news.
This election was a welcome surprise. I’ve commented here on Sundberg and Jurinski’s behavior, but sometimes it feels like your commenting into a pillow. I’m glad that the Aurora elections weren’t bought with dark money this time. The fact that voters looked past Jurinski and Sundberg’s ubiquitous ads and paid attention to their toxic behavior was a vindication for common sense. My dad was the mayor of a small town in Iowa. His big issues were snow and streets. Other issues arose, but always his focus was to solve problems, not create them. It was too bad that Jurinski and Sundberg chose to waste our and their time by tearing Aurora down instead of building it up!
Hey Kane. Why did you change your commenter name? A new name for a new Council? Any other names you comment under? But still, the SOS for we citizens of Aurora to ponder from your never ending big words.
Françoise, not Francoise.
No matter how many times the Sentinel is corrected, it still grossly distorts the truth. It is easy to see why Attorney General Weiser could get away with his gross exaggerations to accomplish the consent decree. I will say this one again. The pistol whipped black man was not beaten because he was a trespasser. He was a trespasser who was dealing and using drugs. When contacted, it was learned that he and his two accomplices were wanted on felony warrants. Two of the warrants advised caution. Two of the suspects fled but Officer Haubert was able to stop the third before he got to his feet. The suspect then began to resist arrest. As Haubert struggled with the suspect, the suspect made multiple grabs for Haubert’s gun. Haubert then hit him multiple times. The suspect continued resisting and trying to take the gun. Multiple civilian witnesses told officers about the violent nature of the struggle. Chief Wilson, aided by Detective Snow and a laughable Internal review by Chief Juul, charged Officer Haubert and Officer Martinez within days. It was politically correct because the suspect was black. They charged the officers before they ever picked up a business video that would clear the officers. They never showed that video to anyone, contrary to state law. The female officer was convicted of failure to intervene when the video was not shown in court. Officer Haubert used the video that I found hidden in the discovery material. He was found not guilty of all charges. Now, contrast that with two recent cases where Aurora officers shot unarmed suspects who did not grab their guns and were simply aggressing toward the officers. It will be months before a decision is made in those cases. Yet, Officer Haubert managed to not take a life in a life threatening situation and he was charged immediately. The Sentinel continues to distort the truth about an innocent officer. Despicable. Why can’t Dave Perry admit the truth? How can we trust anything he says? APD has never made right the dishonesty that was used to charge Haubert. Chief Juul and Sergeant Snow (formerly detective), continue to have glowing careers. Their violations of policy and honesty go unchallenged. An Interim Chief decided to not touch the highly detailed Internal Affairs complaint that I made. Even the present chief, Chamberlain does not have the integrity to deal with the IA complaint. All of this said, it shows the complete bias of the Sentinel staff and a lack of integrity. There may be some truths in the article. How do I separate them from all of the lies?
Quit defending Haubert. It’s old news, and according to a now retired Aurora police officer, Haubert was a “dick.” This was in response to Haubert showing up at our house one night and demanding my partner “step outside” based on a false report by the drug dealers who lived across the street from us. My partner was the only one to stand up to them as our neighbors have children and were afraid of them. The now retired Aurora police officer read the drug dealer’s complaint, said it was ridiculous and that no decent police officer would have taken it seriously. Haubert was frightening and threatening to us. His partner stood on the sidewalk as if he didn’t want to be involved. Just for statistical purposes. I am a white 75 year old woman. This happened about 6 – 7 years ago. We saw Haubert unnecessarily beating that guy with rage. So, please, Don, stop defending dirty cops. It is disrespectful to your decent brothers in blue.
Whatever you may think, it is necessary that we judge each incident on the facts. Since you and no one else, except a jury, has seen the business video, you have no basis for your judgement. We have a serious problem in our society. Decisions are now made on an emotional basis or a political basis. Truth, fairness, justice and any moral guidelines no longer matter. Our politicians care not about any of these things. If we cannot get justice or fairness even when it is based on facts, then we are lost. We are just tribes and we are not a nation of laws and the phrase “no one is above the law” is meaningless. As an officer, I strove to always be fair and to ensure true justice to everyone, whether I liked them or not. To allow the injustice done to these two officers to continue when it is easily shown, means that we have no one in our system who cares about justice. It is all just words. If we say that we don’t care about justice, then we should not expect justice for ourselves. When no one in the Aurora system, the Arapahoe DA’s Office, or the press cares about an obvious and provable injustice, then we have to say that they are just a sham. I guess that is okay. But when you expect justice for some other mistreated individual, then just accept that there no longer is justice and it just matters who you are. Tell your children that it only matters who you are and that you don’t have to be fair to anyone.
Let’s carry it a little further. Just say that you don’t care what happened to the other officer who was unjustly convicted. Just say that you don’t care that a Chief is dishonest in his use of force reporting. Just say that you don’t care that he continues to make decisions on use of force after demonstrating gross incompetence. Just say that you don’t care that the City ruined two officers’ careers without even looking at the. evidence. Just say that you don’t care that the City gave over $800,000 dollars to a drug dealer who went back to prison soon after for other crimes. Just say that you don’t care if people don’t want to be police officers because the evidence may not be used to judge their actions. Just say that it will be okay for an officer to disregard your being the victim of a crime because he thought you were a “dick”. It all becomes so easy. No messy facts.
Who says I don’t care? Projecting much? It seems to me from your ramblings all the time that you don’t care about anything but bad mouthing your superiors. You constantly try to defend rotten cops. Like it or not, they’re there. It is so unfair to the decent cop just trying to do his or her best, but you just want to bring the whole system down. Did you get passed over for a promotion so we have to listen to your drivel?
Was that a “dick” joke, Sarah. Does that accurately describe Haubert? Should I take offense? Should I use a fake name? Truly, I’m not proud or ashamed of my real name. You, though, seem not to like my name and take it in vain. Give me a break, please!
You may have missed your English classes, but it is a quote from an Aurora cop. Grow up.
Brilliant article. Jurinsky made Aurora a joke on a national scale from the moment she stepped in to office. I will be traveling for the holidays, and look forward to telling my out of state friends and family that Jurinsky and Sundberg are out, the madness is over. My city (the most diverse in CO) chose compassion and people over cruel rhetoric and corporate interests. Jurinsky owns JJ’s place, don’t go.