In mid-September, former President Donald Trump said he planned to visit Aurora “in the next two weeks” as he stoked a national firestorm about immigration and an alleged Venezuelan gang takeover in the city.
On Monday — 12 days after those rally comments — there didn’t appear to be any plans developing for the Republican presidential candidate to visit Colorado’s third-largest city. The only Trump event in the offing is a campaign fundraiser in Denver next week that is set to feature Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate.
Reached by email, a Trump campaign spokesperson would not comment on the record about the possibility of an Aurora event for Trump. Aurora city spokesman Ryan Luby said Monday that the city had heard nothing from Trump’s campaign about a potential visit.
Steve Peck, the chair of the Douglas County Republican Party, wrote in a text message that he hadn’t “received any communication that the Trump campaign is coming to Aurora,” though he said state party officials might know more. Dave Williams, the chair of the Colorado Republican Party and a Trump supporter, did not return a message seeking comment.
A message left for the Arapahoe County GOP was also not returned Monday afternoon.
Trump voiced his apparent desire to visit Aurora after he’d inaccurately described the immigration and gang situation in the city, including on a prime-time debate stage earlier in September. The city drew national attention in recent weeks amid claims that several dilapidated apartment buildings had been overrun by Venezuelan gang members. At times, Trump has claimed that the entire city of 400,000 has been taken over.
City leaders have said the gang’s presence is limited — and most of the identified members have been arrested — but they have said certain properties were “significantly affected” by gang activity.
The properties, owned by CBZ Management, have also been the subject of years of complaints by tenants and investigations by city inspectors over their conditions. Those complaints and inspections predate the gang reports, and tenants have laid much of the blame on CBZ’s owners.
Trump’s claim during his Sept. 18 rally in Uniondale, New York, that he would visit Aurora — as well as Springfield, Ohio, which was the subject of its own strain of anti-immigrant conspiracy theories — drew criticism from a number of elected officials in the Colorado city.
Several signed on to an op-ed in The Denver Post accusing Trump of coming to Aurora to spread “ugly invective and continued falsehoods.” Mike Coffman, Aurora’s Republican mayor, previously told The Post that he was excited to tell Trump that the more exaggerated gang-takeover narrative “is false.”
Newsweek reported last week that Trump also has apparently dropped any plan to visit Springfield.
Though Trump may not come to Colorado, his running mate is.
Vance is set to attend an “evening reception” fundraiser on Oct. 8 in Denver, according to a flyer for the event. It is being hosted by former Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner and Republican megadonor Larry Mizel, a Denverite who co-hosted an Aspen fundraiser that Trump attended in August. (Mizel’s office previously said that Mizel “does not speak to the press.”)
Entry to the Oct. 8 fundraiser in Denver starts at $3,300 per person and rises to $50,000 per couple to be on the “host committee,” which includes a seat on a roundtable, plus a photo and a reception.
The Colorado Sun first reported the Vance fundraiser.
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