Denver Mayors I’ve Met

You know you’ve lived in a town a long time when you’ve met three of the last four mayors. And the three I’ve met all suffered re-election. Adding up their combined time served results in nearly 30 years. Denver’s long been a Democratic town and I dabbled in Democratic politics back when I was young and foolish, but the circles I’ve traveled in since include few politicians. Living here a long time is the only way I can account for this “meeting mayors” thing—unless it’s the fact that Denver is one of those cities in which you can’t go anywhere without seeing someone you know. I’ve never understood how people have affairs here.

I moved to Denver in late 1967. Hippie kids hung out at Civic Center Park, Tom Currigan was mayor and people told stories about the 1965 flood: if they still talked about it two years later, it must have been major. In 1970, I got a job with an employment research agency. A tall thin young man named Wellington Webb worked there. I was thin too. It was easy to be thin in the 70s. Webb and I talked about writing. We both thought it was something we’d like to do some day. But he got busy getting elected to the state house in 1972 and I got busy having an ill-fated marriage.

Those were, as I said, my young and foolish days and the marriage involved Chicano Democratic politics. I did volunteer work for Rich Castro, door-to-door campaigning for Ruben Valdez. By the time that marriage ended, it was 1981 and I found myself having a poetry publication party at the Skyline G.I. Forum Hall. The G.I. Forum is a Mexican-American organization started by WWII vets who discovered after the war that they still didn’t get equal opportunities. They were not okay with that. When I knew them, they were conscientious beer drinkers, dedicated Democrats and staunch Broncos fans, not shy about manning a picket line if they saw the need. Not so big on poetry, but generous with their friends: they let me have the hall for free. That evening, Federico Peña, House representative since 1979, showed up, stumping for mayor. It was an informal affair, my book party. I shook Peña’s hand and we chatted. He might’ve been confused by the gabacha poetry party being at a Chicano hall, but he didn’t let on.

In the 80s, I was a UCD grad student. One of my professors invested in a brew pub pool hall thing with a businessman named Hickenlooper. The idea was radical: no one had brewed and sold beer in the same establishment in Denver before. The location was a sketchy warehouse area that wasn’t even called LoDo yet. There were pawnshops and sleazy bars, no condos, no baseball stadium. The term “urban pioneers” cropped up like an alley weed. I envisioned guys in suits and raccoon caps slinking through dark streets armed with briefcases. So my husband and I—new marriage, much better—went to Wynkoop a couple times and met Hick. We decided not to invest because a) it was such a risky scheme and b) we had no money.

Peña became mayor in 1983 and I scored points because I’d met him. Webb took over in 1991, and I really bragged: shoot, we were colleagues. The new marriage lasted, my teaching career kicked in, years tumbled by, and Hickenlooper ran for mayor. I liked Webb and Peña as mayors, but brew pub guy? Nonetheless, Hick was elected in 2003 and I liked him as mayor just fine too. Oh, I met him years ago, at Wynkoop, I said airily.

In 2009, I was at the coffee shop on Five Points when Hick walked in. The driver kept the car running. An aide ordered coffee while Hick worked the room, shaking hands, and then, as they headed for the door, he spotted the upright piano. Hick apparently can’t resist a piano. The aide was tapping her cell, like, we gotta go, but the mayor sat down and played us a honky-tonk tune. It was, as the kids used to say, way cool.

Now Hancock’s mayor but I can’t talk about him because I haven’t met him. I know Albus Brooks, my city councilman, and these days that seems more important. I like knowing when the neighborhood gas line replacement will disrupt my street, leaving it full of lumps forever after, or the status of the long-awaited Five Points redevelopment, which is beginning to sound like something my great-grandchildren may live to see. Still, meeting Hancock is only a matter of time: I just need to attend the right Whittier Neighborhood meeting during the next re-election campaign.