Does your city leader have a single featuring Grammy royalty Wyclef Jean? It probably doesn’t, but Glendale CO’s does.

Does your city leader have a music video featuring Grammy royalty Wyclef Jean? It probably doesn’t, but Glendale CO’s does.

When Glendale Governor Mike Dunafon began his tenure into politics he says that it all happened because he basically “had a gun held to his head.” His fiancée Debbie Mathews, owner of the wildly popular Shotgun Willie’s strip club, was being attacked by reckless legislation in the small forgotten city of Glendale, CO. City leaders were writing and quickly passing laws that would effectively make Mathews’ business illegal, thereby forcing her and her business out.

So Dunafon and Mathews took free beer, a few dancers from the club and went door to door to explain to everyone in the city what exactly was going on.

After Dunafon, Mathews and their supporters drew enough attention to the corruption of the powers that be, the area saw a record number of voting applications turned in and, after pushing a few council members out of their seat, saved the iconic club and started a political shift that would change the face of the city for good.

Dunafon eventually ran for mayor (becoming mayor pro tem initially, a backup mayor, if need be), but it wasn’t until his second election that he gained the respected chair. Now he’s going after the governor’s seat, and things are really starting to get interesting.

If you haven’t been following the governors battle going on right now, we don’t blame you. Politics are deflating and can give onlookers a sense of helplessness and a feeling of inadequacy. It’s all attack ads, political chess and only a few jaded old white men talking down to citizens like no one has ever picked up a book before.

It’s frustrating, but Mike Dunafon says he wants that to be a thing of the past.

His campaign has been nothing short of the proverbial minnow swimming upstream against a perpetual force of habit, dominated by testicle eating Pacu fish with veneered teeth that sport hygienic scale-suits meticulously decorated with the letters D and R, respectively. As an Independent, he’s often shut out of debates with the other fish or online polls that would have lookers believe that there are only two people running for the seat. There’s actually seven.

So not only is he stuck not being a visual contender in washed out media, but he struggles to get his voice heard over the right vs. left's ineffective shouting matches. One of the ways he’s found to get it out, however, is through the use of social media.

He created a YouTube channel to get his platform out in sometimes antagonistic, often humorous way. Through it all he’s touted himself as the “Most Interesting Politician In The World,” and today he upped his game by released a music video featuring Wyclef Jean titled “The Trap.”

Dunafon and Clef met while he was in Denver performing at this year’s 420 Rally. As one of the only mayors in Colorado that was pro Amendment 64 (which legalized the recreational use of cannabis), he spoke to the crowd of more than 60,000 pot loving revelers and spectators for closing remarks. The chance encounter is where Dunafon says he and The Fugees star birthed the idea for collaboration. 

“The Trap” is a broad look into the ideals that Dunafon and his team hope to get out to the masses before the November 4 election. As a songwriter himself, Dunafon challenges the ideas that government should have any say in who we sleep with, what women do with their bodies and why we haven’t developed a way to embed critical thought into our political beliefs. It’s an honest look into the world of disorientation we’ve all gotten ourselves into with political party affiliations.

So where does Mayor Dunafon go from here? The governor’s seat, he hopes, but he says he also wants his message to appeal to the masses. He wants to get people to think critically again and to stop party politics while bringing common sense back into the litigious-happy nation we’ve become. From here it’s a catchy message, but to where? We’ll just all have to wait and see.