DENVER — Denver Mayor Mike Johnston is launching a $100 million plan to boost the local economy and support 10,000 jobs over the next three years.

Johnston announced the four-part program Thursday morning, flanked by business leaders while praising downtown businesses like brunch eatery Snooze.

▶️ WATCH: Denver7’s Alex Dowd reports on the plan

Denver mayor promises to create 10K jobs in next 3 years

Snooze Co-Founder Adam Schlegel said his business benefited from a similar program when U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper was mayor in the early 2000s.

“The city really was the one that stepped up,” Schlegel said. “We wouldn’t have started if it wouldn’t have been for the economic development office. We ended up getting an incentive from the city to open up, particularly in this space [downtown]. It was a fiscal incentive to do it, in addition to coaching.”

Both of those are offered in the new four-part Denver Jobs Agenda. With funding from the Denver Downtown Development Authority and the Office of Economic Development and Opportunity, Johnston aims to develop start-ups in the city, grow existing businesses and draw in new companies while working to advance the Denver-area workforce across industries.

At the end of the last fiscal quarter, Denver’s unemployment rate hovered around 3.6% — under the national rate of 4.2% — according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, while office vacancy sits just under 40%, according to commercial real estate broker CBRE.

Johnston and other speakers made multiple references to more jobs bringing more people downtown.

“Denver has so many things going for it, so it will come back,” Schlegel said. “It’s not coming back as fast as I want, or as much as anyone will, but will it have a long-term future? 100%. It’s things like this, though, that I think give us a lot of hope that it can happen sooner than waiting it out.”

▶️ Watch the full press conference

Press conference: Denver mayor announces Denver Jobs Agenda

Chris Berthiaume, the city’s director of workforce industry initiatives, says the three workforce development centers across Denver serve around 20,000 people each year. He’s confident this new initiative will help more of those visitors find employment.

“We want to focus on things like aerospace, cybersecurity, green construction,” Berthiaume said. “This new initiative really just tightens the focus on sectors that we know are growing. Colorado is home to a huge aerospace culture. Quantum technology is emerging and coming. Green workforce are jobs that we know drive around Denver. Construction is everywhere. We need to make sure we have a skilled workforce that’s ready to take on those jobs.”

While also finding employers to hire them and stay within the community for the long haul.

“I think the reason businesses work — certainly restaurants work — is that you are integral to the community specifically where you are,” Schlegel said. “There are so many people in our community that really believe in Denver and want to see what it can be, and so it will get there.”

It’s well on the way. Denver’s Economic Development Corporation says they’re working with 52 active prospects that could bring more than 12,000 jobs to the area.

Victor Marx, a first-time candidate and nonprofit leader with a controversial personal history that’s drawn intense scrutiny, has edged out his more establishment opponent and will be Colorado Republicans’ gubernatorial nominee in November.

The Associated Press called the race for Marx late Thursday afternoon, nearly nine days after polls closed. He led the runner-up, state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, 39.9% to 39.4%, with 99% of ballots counted, according to the AP.

Marx had taken his first narrow lead over Kirkmeyer the day after the June 30 primary, and though the race remained close, he never lost the advantage. While outstanding deficient and overseas ballots helped delay a final call on the race, those votes only served to expand Marx’s margin. He led by 2,524 votes at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, out of about 522,000 ballots cast.

State Rep. Scott Bottoms was a distant third, with 20.8% of the vote.

A veteran lawmaker and former Weld County commissioner, Kirkmeyer had jumped to an early advantage on the strength of early ballot returns. But as votes returned on Election Day began to filter in, her lead thinned and collapsed. Within 48 hours of polls closing, and with few ballots left to count in Kirkmeyer’s Front Range strongholds, her path to retake the lead had all but vanished.

Marx will next face Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser in November. No Republican has been elected to the governor’s office in more than 20 years. Four months out, Weiser appears to be heavily favored to continue Democrats’ electoral dominance.

In an email to supporters after the race was called, Marx said he was humbled to be the nominee and that the victory was “the starting line.”

“My team and I have put together this special message that I want every Coloradan to hear — Republicans, independents, unaffiliated voters, and Democrats who are open to a better way,” he said. “Because what we’re building now is bigger than a primary victory.”

In a video, he appealed to Coloradans who are frustrated with the status quo and don’t think things can change — citing his victory as proof they can.

“Now Phil Weiser, he’s a smart fella — but he represents the current system, because he is part of it,” Marx said. “And that current system has made Colorado more expensive, less safe and harder for regular families to trust government.”

In a separate statement, Kirkmeyer said she was proud of the race that she had run and the “clear vision” she had laid out for the Republican Party here.

“While we came up short in what appears to be the closest Republican gubernatorial primary in Colorado history, I’m grateful for every voter who placed their trust in us,” she wrote.

Echoing the pledge she’d made before Election Day, she pointedly did not endorse Marx. She said only that she hoped voters “choose the path that is best for Colorado” in November.

Kirkmeyer also threw a final jab at Marx, who declined in late May to tell 9News how many people he’d killed as an adult.

Kirkmeyer wrote that, “for the record, I still haven’t killed anyone.”

First-time candidate shrugged off questions

Marx’s primary win is a remarkable result for the embattled Colorado GOP and for Marx, a former Marine, martial arts instructor and nonprofit leader whose extensive and much-scrutinized personal history had drawn national headlines. It’s also attracted sharp criticism from other Republicans.

In his video, Marx appealed to Republican primary voters, saying there was room in his campaign for those who supported his opponents.

Marx had entered the fray last fall with no political profile and no experience as a political candidate. But by the time voters began receiving ballots last month, he’d ridden an atypical — if thoroughly modern — campaign to fundraising dominance and front-runner status.

Kirkmeyer’s support largely flowed from northern Front Range counties, nudging her ahead initially. But Marx picked up bigger margins among Election Day voters — meaning those more conservative voters skeptical of mail-in balloting.

He also won ruby-red El Paso County while racking up smaller wins in rural counties and grabbing enough in the Front Range to edge Kirkmeyer.

Map: Where did the votes come from in the Colorado primary races for governor?

In a pitch reminiscent of President Donald Trump, the arch-dealmaker, Marx has cast himself as a solutions-focused negotiator disinterested in partisan squabbles. In 2003, he founded All Things Possible Ministries, a Christian nonprofit that has provided stuffed animals and trauma support to people. It has also done work in conflict areas in Syria and Iraq, where Marx primarily worked away from the front lines as a funder and facilitator.

By 2024, the nonprofit’s annual revenue had surpassed $7.5 million, and Marx has said the group — from which he has resigned — now primarily works to help law enforcement.

Despite his outsider status, Marx was considered the likely winner in the weeks before Election Day. His narrow victory, then, came as something of a surprise, and, on election night, he speculated that Bottoms — a conservative pastor from Colorado Springs — had pulled votes from him. In El Paso County, Bottoms earned more than 20,000 votes, or 24% of the county’s Republican total.

Though Marx out-raised and out-spent both Kirkmeyer and Bottoms, it was Kirkmeyer who had been perceived as the expected nominee when she entered the race last year. Marx had never run for office before, and the stories he’s told about his life — that he’d killed a man at age 7, been involved in “high-risk humanitarian” operations across the globe and could free people from demonic possession — drew intense scrutiny and national punchlines.

But he repeatedly shrugged off questions about his background and said he stood by all that he had said and written.

Through his personality-heavy, direct-to-voter campaign, he encouraged Colorado Republicans to shrug it off, too. He spent heavily on direct mailers, which provided a boost to both his fundraising and name recognition.

Marx eschewed policy discussions and skipped nearly every debate. When he did participate in one, he spent part of the event leaning on the lectern, with his dog at his feet. Rather than deliver a closing statement, he prayed.

Campaigning his own way

Though he leaned into his outsider status, the aw-shucks appeal belied a careful campaign shaped by Marx’s emergence from a political environment forged by Trump: He skipped one debate after a moderator pressed him about his background, and he held a rally instead; his campaign later highlighted how many more people attended the rally than the debate.

His media operation was led by a former Turning Points USA staffer, and his campaign touted its social media posts’ views at Marx’s watch party last week. He was comfortable as a podcast guest, regularly released videos of himself and repeatedly assured voters that he was no politician.