AURORA | Omar Montgomery, longtime diversity and equity leader deeply involved in the city’s police reform, is running for mayor, promising a campaign focused on cohesiveness and making Aurora a magnet for shopping, eating and entertainment.
“I want people to look at the City of Aurora as the destination for everything they want to do,” Montgomery said Sunday. “That’s the type of leadership I’m bringing. That’s the type of enthusiasm I’m bringing. That’s why I’m running.”
Montgomery filed his campaign commitment with the Aurora city clerk Friday, the first officially out of the gate for the 2027 city election. Offices on the ballot next year include mayor, two at-large seats and seats in council wards IV, V and VI.
Mayor Mike Coffman, serving his second term, has not filed his intentions and was not immediately available for comment. His 2023 campaign records report a $41,677.25 balance.
Montgomery, regional NAACP president, national director and previous Aurora NAACP chapter executive director, lost by only 215 votes to current Coffman in a five-way race in 2019.
Montgomery didn’t run again for mayor in 2023, saying Sunday that his entire focus at the time and for the last few years has been on working to restore public trust and police transparency and accountability in the shadow of the Elijah McClain shooting and subsequent police department upset.
Montgomery is currently the director of equity, culture and community engagement for the Cherry Creek School District, where he leads districtwide efforts to build partnerships among schools, families and community organizations, according to the school district.
His career spans work as a teacher in public schools and, locally, in higher education. He began as a middle and high school teacher in the Long Beach Unified School District before becoming director of Upward Bound Math and Science at Compton Community College, according to past Sentinel reporting.
For the past several years, Montgomery has been deeply involved in the city’s work to extricate itself from police reform issues. In 2021, after a state investigation, the attorney general determined that Aurora police were guilty of using excessive force in numerous incidents, especially against people of color. The investigation resulted in a state-mandated consent decree, requiring a bevy of reforms inside the police and fire departments.
Montgomery has had key citizen roles in those efforts and regularly used his public position as a leader of the NAACP to weigh in on ongoing efforts.
“I believe literacy is a component to public safety, which is why the Aurora Branch of the NAACP for the past two years started swim lessons and a summer reading camp which the City and community partners have supported,” he said. “The NAACP also has a grant to develop a public safety initiative that will be shared in November.”
As for how much progress the city’s made in restoring public trust and proving it’s reformed the department in ways to prevent further abuses of force, Montgomery said the department as a whole has moved forward over the past four years.
Aurora announced late this summer it was soliciting applications for someone to head up the city’s inaugural Office of Public Safety Accountability.
“I think the city is on the right track, but I don’t want to just say it’s one individual,” Montgomery said.”I think we’re moving in the right direction, with a caveat that we still have some issues to address, when you listen to the pain of some of our residents.
A group of Aurora activists announced last week they would hold a “sit-in” during the Monday city council meeting, demanding that city officials sack Police Chief Todd Chamberlain. The group has long criticized the current chief for doing too little to promote police reform, and that he has wrongly supported officers involved in recent police shootings involving Black people.
Montgomery said his experience as a public schools teacher and community organizer has solidified his opinion that the more federal, state and local governments invest in education and community programs, the less communities will have to invest in police protection.
He pointed to recent reports of substantial drops in violent crime in Aurora and across the metro area as a positive sign that recent pushes for education equity and community programming are paying off.
“Yes, we still have some things we have to address, but I think young people are making wiser decisions,” Montgomery said. “There’re more resources out there, and we have a police force that’s out there every day risking their lives to protect our city. As a city, we have come together and say public safety is every single person’s responsibility.”
Beyond public safety, Montgomery said he wants the city to pay closer attention to how best to serve small businesses and how to make everyday life more affordable — and the good life more attainable — for the city’s working class.
While many of those affordability issues are driven by federal and state policymakers, he said there are many things the city can do to help ease the financial burdens of the city’s growing elderly population and a growing number of families unable to pay for rent, healthcare, food and basic necessities even with both parents working full time.
“We have teachers working in Aurora that can’t even afford to live here,” he said. “We need to support programs that are supporting our struggling residents and make sure we get the word out to everyone what’s available to help them.”
He said the city can do more to help itself by focusing on shoring up large and small businesses, and helping draw patrons to restaurants, shops and events, to boost the city tax base and shore up ailing finances.
A caveat to that business support, however, could be data centers. Currently, Aurora is embroiled in a growing number of battles among data centers, city building officials and neighbors near planned projects.
Montgomery said the city should pause new projects until more thorough research on what the environmental and fiscal impacts are in the Aurora region.
“It could be that some projects are beneficial to everyone in Aurora and others could be too problematic,” Montgomery said, but he believes the city has too little information to make good decisions right now.
He hopes, if elected, he can help bring what has become a fragmented city council into a more cohesive group working for the benefit of the city rather than for what he sees too often as merely personal political victories.
“If you just got elected for the seat, you’re in it for the wrong reasons, and you’re doing the city of Aurora a disservice,” Montgomery said. “What we need are elected officials who are excited and love the city of Aurora, and if you don’t have those two components going in, you shouldn’t run for office here.”