For the past quarter century, just three men have dominated Denver’s city hall, a trio of mayors as notable for their differences as for their achievements.
Federico Peña, the cerebral but underappreciated mayor of the ’80s, opened a new era of economic growth for the city.
Wellington Webb, an experienced and clever politician, capitalized on and expanded Denver’s economic momentum.
And John Hickenlooper has parlayed a quick intellect and some remarkable achievements into an unprecedented honeymoon with Denver voters. As the experience level of his supporting cast continues to diminish, however, flawed delivery of some basic city services may color his ultimate legacy.
Having served in the administrations of all three mayors, I can provide an insight into each:
Federico Peña
Peña was elected in 1983 and served two terms, leaving office in 1991. While he was frequently somewhat aloof in his personal style, Peña was a stirring speaker when engaged, and his intellect and idealism inspired powerful loyalty among his staff, creating a more cohesive mayoral team than those that followed.
Peña’s style entailed a high degree of delegation, though he was acutely sensitive to press coverage and tempted to react quickly and personally to criticism. His sharp sense of humor emerged more frequently in private than in public.
Because of the economic woes in Denver during the mid-1980s, public support for Peña was rarely as solid as that for his successors. He barely won his 1987 re-election and rarely enjoyed public approval ratings above 50 percent.
But his administration gathered strength as it matured, racking up successes with the development of Denver International Airport, investment in other city infrastructure projects and with launching a new era of broad civic engagement.
Peña’s relationships with the City Council were strained throughout both of his terms. He never recovered from his wobbly start with the legislative body that saw him as a presumptuous newcomer.
In contrast, Peña succeeded in empowering neighborhood groups to an extent they never enjoyed previously – and pine for today.
Wellington Webb
Webb entered office in 1991 with a clear role model for his stewardship of the city, instructing his new Cabinet and staff appointees to read extensively on the vision and political acumen of Denver Mayor Robert Speer, first elected in 1904.
However, Webb’s administration suffered a slow start, encountering difficulties in completing DIA and losing public confidence as a result of a series of personal embarrassments among Webb associates.
To help regain his political footing, Webb used his 1993 State of the City speech to stake out an ambitious vision, reminiscent of Speer, for expansion of the city’s park and open space system. He also identified an innovative source of financing for the projects, collecting revenues from Denver’s Winter Park ski area, a resource not tapped by previous administrations.
Webb’s management style reflected significant personal engagement in day-to-day management. He served, for all practical purposes, as his own chief of staff.
Webb’s frequent strolls of city neighborhoods kept him attuned to citizens’ opinions of city services, and his acquaintance with a wide range of city employees provided another valuable alliance.
Webb also enlisted the services of some highly talented Cabinet and staff. Jennifer Moulton led planning for a renaissance of the Denver’s downtown. Patricia Gabow helped Webb unshackle his newly created Denver Health Authority from city bureaucracy. Webb also enlisted Ken Salazar as a consultant in the mid-1990s to help shape and implement the mayor’s successful vision for open space and economic development efforts in the Platte River valley.
Webb’s relationship with the City Council was strong for his entire tenure. He enjoyed the give and take of the legislative process and was personally committed to nurturing solid relationships. He was rewarded with a nearly unbroken streak of easy legislative victories during his three terms.
John Hickenlooper
Hickenlooper’s management style relies substantially on his considerable personal charm, quick wit and intellectual curiosity. He is quite extroverted – unlike either of his predecessors – and is at his best in informal and social situations.
But his administration’s more formal public engagement efforts have sometimes fallen short. Hickenlooper’s Denver Listens community input effort in the first year of his administration and 2006’s Partnership Denver programs seemed like well-conceived efforts to give neighborhoods a larger voice. However, follow-through for those processes has been weak. InterNeighborhood Cooperation, the umbrella group for Denver neighborhood organizations, has complained both publicly and privately of its greatly diminished role in city policy decisions.
Hickenlooper’s successes include substantial improvements in Denver Police Department performance; progress in dealing more rationally and more humanely with Denver’s homeless; and unprecedented levels of regional collaboration and good will.
In council relations, Hickenlooper enjoys an extremely successful record, matching or surpassing Webb’s. However, the mayor does not relish personal interactions with council members to the extent Webb did. His legislative successes are likely tied more to his general popularity than to his own efforts to cultivate individual relationships.
Hickenlooper’s successes have leaned heavily on a small core of talented staffers, including Michael Bennet, John Huggins and Roxane White. With Bennet gone and Huggins leaving, and a relatively weak “bench” in terms of experience, Hickenlooper will be challenged to match his early record of success.
While it was unusual for Webb or Peña to second-guess his senior staff or Cabinet, Hickenlooper has been known to reverse course on more than one occasion, leaving mystified and sometimes unhappy staffers in his wake. While this behavior was infrequent with Bennet occupying the adjacent office, it is likely to become more common as the mayor’s confidence in some of his senior staffers diminishes with repeated personnel changes.
Hickenlooper also has a habit of none- too-gently challenging opinions that differ from his own. This results (arguably to his detriment) in a dearth of diversity of views and policy options aired in his office.
Recruiting an experienced chief of staff has proven to be a thorny issue for Hickenlooper. The peerless Bennet, current DPS superintendent, served as Hickenlooper’s first staff chief and shared responsibility for the administration’s many early successes. With a formidable intellect, substantial charisma, and a record of professional success in a variety of arenas, he also enjoyed a personal chemistry with Hickenlooper that has not yet been duplicated.
The thin experience of some of Hickenlooper’s staff is reflected in weak delivery of some basic city services. While street maintenance and trash pickup have generally been maintained at solid levels, Denver’s recent performance and ongoing difficulties with snow removal have frustrated many citizens.
In Denver’s Parks Department, poor maintenance of the parks and resistance to meaningful public engagement have plagued the system and seem to reflect weak management and a lack of mayoral interest in correcting the problem.
Hickenlooper’s promises to property developers, contractors and architects to improve Denver’s development review and land-use regulation processes have been agonizingly slow to bear fruit, alienating some of the business sector Hickenlooper has counted on as part of his political base.
Other interesting and potentially beneficial Hickenlooper ideas that seem to have stalled include promised “operations reviews” of city agency efficiency. Also missing in action are personnel system reform and performance pay that were popular centerpieces of Hickenlooper’s 2003 campaign and were approved by Denver voters in a separate charter election that year. While “bonus pay” has nominally been adopted within city government, few city managers or employees are pleased with its effectiveness.
This “mission drift” may reflect the sheer number of causes Hickenlooper has taken on. He is currently engaged in fundraising for housing the homeless, for the Democratic convention, for a proposed Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, for his million trees project and for a generous DPS scholarship program.
Hickenlooper has without question enjoyed the most successful start of Denver’s three mayors of the past 25 years. Whether he has sufficient personal focus and whether his supporting cast has sufficient skill, experience and shared personal chemistry with the mayor to extend these successes is a question for the talented mayor and Denver citizens to consider carefully as his first term ends.
Andrew Wallach is the only senior aide to have served each of Denver’s past three mayors. He was finance director for Peña and Webb, among other positions, and a consultant to Hickenlooper until recently leaving city service.
