Swanty wins Loveland City Council race 

LOVELAND — Insurance broker Jen Swanty will be sworn in at next Tuesday’s regular Loveland City Council meeting to fill the Ward 1 vacancy left by the resignation of attorney Troy Krenning.

Results of the March 4 special election that were certified Thursday by the Loveland City Clerk’s office showed Swanty with 1,922 votes, while her opponent, real estate agent Geoff Frahm, tallied 1,903. That’s the same 19-vote margin as the initial tally on election night, but with the addition of five votes for each candidate.

According to Loveland mayor Jacki Marsh, Swanty will be sworn in at the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting by newly appointed municipal judge Jennifer Edgley.

The special election was the city’s first in 30 years.

A total of 4,083 ballots were received in the all-mail election out of 14,815 the clerk’s office sent out, representing 28% turnout of registered voters in Ward I. 

Kimberly Overholt, the city’s communications manager, told BizWest that some ballots were cured for issues such as a missing or illegible signature. She said the 19-vote margin did not automatically trigger a recount under state law, and Frahm, contacted Thursday morning by BizWest, said he did not intend to ask for one.

Overholt did, however, say that “interested parties” could request a recount. Besides his own fundraising, Frahm’s campaign had gotten more than $13,000 worth of help from The Silent Majority Speaks, a Windsor-based committee whose registered agent is Amber Cecil, a member of the “Weld Faith Partnership.” Cecil could not be contacted on Thursday.

Swanty, 46, is a broker for Kastl Insurance who had worked more than two decades for her family’s insurance firm. A 30-year Loveland resident, she is a member of the Thompson School District’s master planning committee and the Loveland Affordable Housing Commission. She is a single mother with four daughters — 21-year-old twins and girls aged 17 and 12.

Swanty’s votes on the council will determine the balance of power on the often contentious nine-member council, which currently includes four members more supportive of developments such as McWhinney Real Estate Services Inc.’s Centerra South project and four — including three members elected in November 2023 — who are more skeptical of them.

The latter four plus Krenning voted to rescind the financing and urban-renewal agreements for Centerra South that a previous council had approved — an action that was reversed in February 2024 after McWhinney sued the city for breach of contract. Krenning’s opposition triggered a successful recall petition drive against him last summer, and the March 4 special election was originally to determine whether or not he would remain on the council. Krenning resigned in January, but the election was held anyway to determine who would succeed him.

The March 4 ballot included the question of whether Krenning should be recalled, but because of his resignation, those responses weren’t counted. A spokeswoman in the city clerk’s office said some voters may only have made a selection on the Krenning question without then choosing between Swanty and Frahm.

on Facebook on LinkedIn