‘I’ll settle for not crazy’: Denver business leaders brace for socialist shift after big win for DSA
Affordability was a top concern for voters who helped launch democratic socialist candidate Melat Kiros to victory in Denver's Democratic primary in June, defeating 15-term incumbent Diana DeGette. But as democratic socialists gain momentum in Colorado, business owners are grappling with how their progressive policies may collide with the actual costs of running a business in Denver.
"With DSA specifically, I think that too many times, the rhetoric sounds great until it meets the economic realities," J.J. Ament, president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, told Fox News Digital. "And by the way, the basic laws of economics, they still apply even at altitude."
Ament runs the oldest and largest chamber of commerce in Colorado, representing the business community. The chamber is nonpartisan and has members from both sides of the political spectrum, he said.
While the chamber does not endorse individual candidates, Ament noted that it does participate at the member level to promote pragmatic, pro-business candidates, and promote free enterprise and free-market policies.
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"I tell people sort of as a joke, but not really, that I want pro-business. I'll settle for not crazy," he said.
Colorado, according to Ament, has changed significantly over the past decade or more as the state has come under single-party Democratic control, shifting from one of the top 10 states for business to a place where increasing regulations and higher taxes have made it more difficult to operate a business.
"Those risks could be created whether it's single-party control by Republicans or single-party controlled by Democrats," Ament said. "The reality is where everybody thinks the same, very little thinking actually occurs. And so the trend has been to more regulation, higher fees and taxes, the cost of doing business."
He added that as the city has grown and housing has not kept up, affordability has become a crucial issue, driving up the costs of running a business.
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As DSA-backed candidates took seats on the Denver City Council in 2023, the chamber warned that Colorado was becoming "increasingly hostile to business."
Kiros' platform calls for a number of policies affecting the economy, including raising corporate taxes and the federal minimum wage.
Ament believes some DSA-backed policies, like raising the minimum wage, have hurt the very workers and small businesses they were intended to help.
"Just ask any restaurant owner in Denver how the government's interference in minimum wage and tipped wage has helped or hurt the very people, again, it was purported to be designed for," he said. "A lot of times we have policies that are in the name of consumers, but aren't necessarily for consumers."
Ament said the chamber's goal is to help people understand the economic realities of running a business while promoting policies and incentives that make starting a company simpler and less expensive.
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"We want every resident here to fully participate in the benefits that come with a thriving economy," he said. "But the choices that are being made are making that even more difficult. We were constantly trying to figure out how to create ladders to crawl over barriers when we just should stop creating the barrier in the first place."
Brad Deen, service manager at Import Mechanics, knows full well the challenges facing small business owners in the area. He said his auto shop has faced increasing problems with crime, drug use, and public safety as the population has boomed.
"It seems like it's directly correlated to the influx of the population to Denver," Deen told Fox News Digital. "Seeing more unhoused and more open-air drug use than I would have in 2004."
Deen was one of several business owners and residents who launched the South Broadway General Improvement District (GID) this year. Community members and businesses voted to impose an additional mill levy tax on themselves to fund private security and cleaning crews in order to make the area more appealing for customers.
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Deen admitted he was reluctant to support additional taxes but felt it was necessary to protect his business.
"As somebody who has kind of railed against tax increases my whole life, this was kind of a different line for me to take, but something that I felt had to be done," he said.
He said the Broadway GID is already making a "huge positive change" by providing 24/7 staff to clean up graffiti and trash. The district has also worked to foster a more collaborative relationship with city leaders, and he noted that police have been more responsive and more present in patrolling the area than in years past.
Deen took a pragmatic approach when considering how DSA policies might affect his business if Kiros wins the election in November.
He said he has benefited and been hurt by policies from both the left and right, and believes no one has all the answers to complex problems like homelessness. If Kiros is elected, he said he would ask her to address encampments outside Denver businesses first.
He expressed some concern about policies supporting higher taxes on corporations eventually being placed upon small businesses and hurting their operations.
"As a relatively large employment group in the city, any large tax increases have a huge impact on us being able to, you know, get staff raises, give bonuses, and provide benefits," Deen told Fox News Digital.
Dealing with crime and rising costs is a challenge also facing Jamie Sanchez, another Denver small-business owner. He runs The Drip Café in Denver's Santa Fe Art District. He also operates a Christian homeless ministry called Recycle God's Love, which he started with his late wife, Carolyn, in 2012.
"I am seeing a lot of businesses turning over and shutting down just through the past three years we've been here," he told Fox News Digital. "So I could imagine why the cost of living here is skyrocketing. I mean, our minimum wage is insane right now to pay baristas to make coffee. So that makes it really difficult. So I can only imagine for some of the other business owners, it's getting really difficult, especially with rent and tax and all that going on. It's definitely been a strain on our business."
Since opening his coffee shop three years ago, Sanchez said he has experienced broken windows, graffiti and threats.
An outspoken Christian, Sanchez drew the ire of a local group called the Denver Communists before his shop even opened, after the group noticed Recycle God's Love called homosexuality a sin in its beliefs section on its website.
Since then, on every first Friday of the month, protesters from the Denver Communists have held signs and passed out flyers accusing the coffee shop of being run by a "right-wing church" that hates the LGBTQ+ community. Sanchez said "Keep Santa Fe gay" and obscene stickers have also been placed on his windows and doors.
"The Denver Communists specifically have targeted us because of the beliefs that we have," Sanchez told Fox News Digital. "Even though we haven't shown any hate towards these individuals. In fact, we serve people from this group at our homeless outreach. We serve them in our café, we've welcomed them in, we have invited them in, and so our goal is to actually show them the love of God because yeah, we do believe different things, but our approach is to love them in hopes that they would come to Christ."
The Christian shop owner sees the backlash as part of a spiritual battle.
"The reason I come to that conclusion is because a lot of these protesters claim to be Satanists," he told Fox News Digital, adding that he's seen protesters wearing shirts depicting Satan or attacking Jesus. Sanchez said he now holds live worship music in the café every first Friday to help "drown out" the commotion outside.
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"These groups have decided to twist things and use half-truths to try to stir people in the community to not frequent our coffee shop in hopes that we would not have enough sales to meet rent and that we will shut down," Sanchez said. "And it hasn't been working. In fact, the opposite has been happening to where people are knowing we're here now because of this situation and God has been using it for good."
The Denver Communists told Fox News Digital they were not protesting the café strictly because it is Christian, but because of its religious beliefs about sexuality.
"We are not targeting Christianity, we [are] targeting homophobia and transphobia," a spokesperson for the Denver Communists said. "Sanchez wants to claim Drip’s particular right-wing evangelical fundamentalism is representative of all Christianity, but it’s not. Many Christians are not homophobes and transphobes. Many Christians have joined us in protesting against Drip, including clergy members."
The group, which formed in 2012 as a branch of the International Socialist Organization, told Fox News Digital they view the Drip Café's mission as part of a nationwide, right-wing "coordinated assault ... against the democratic rights and cultural acceptance won by LGBTQ+ people."
"Right-wing churches like Drip Café are key incubators of the homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny that underpin this assault," the group said. "Any effort to make anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry mainstream must be vigorously opposed."
The group is not affiliated with the DSA but shares some broader anti-capitalist and socialist goals promoted by Kiros, such as wealth redistribution and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
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Kiros recently brushed aside concerns regarding communists inside the DSA faction of the Democratic Party, telling PBS "Firing Line" host Margaret Hoover there is room in the party for various viewpoints.
"Yeah. Well, some members of the Democratic Party are proudly proclaiming themselves as capitalists, and it’s a big tent, right?" Kiros said. "But, again, at the end of the day, it’s up to the voters, right?"
Kiros denied being a communist, arguing that younger voters are embracing the democratic socialist message because it represents "economic populism."
Jamie Sanchez has concerns about what it could mean for his business if candidates sharing similar viewpoints to those protesting his shop get into local government.
"It definitely is concerning when I hear some of the socialist, communist-type people getting into the local government because of what we've been facing from just national groups who are coming and protesting us," he told Fox News Digital. "So I feel like if they're aligned with that, it is pretty concerning because that would mean that the government eventually would be against this Christian coffee shop essentially. But overall, I trust God and what he's doing, so I don't have any fear about that either."
Melat Kiros's campaign and the Democratic Socialists of America did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.