For two decades, he was the most successful Democratic strategist in Colorado. He ran and won U.S. Senate races for Tim Wirth and Ben Nighthorse Campbell, and served as the chief turnaround artist for faltering re-election campaigns of Democratic senators in Connecticut, Iowa and Hawaii. He won two nasty campaigns to build Denver International Airport, ran the site-selection process that put Major League Baseball in LoDo, staged the Denver Grand Prix, and directed Colorado Ski Country USA for five years.
And just last week, John Frew left Colorado for the cornfields of his native Iowa, where he will be closer to his 87-year-old mother while working as chief of staff to Iowa Gov. Chet Culver.
Shortly before leaving Colorado, Frew was ready to talk some inside baseball about Colorado politics. He wanted to meet at My Brother’s Bar, the ages-old institution at Confluence Park and the first restaurant he had eaten in after moving to Denver in 1986. Over jalapeño cream cheese burgers, onion rings and fries, he dished about the candidates and causes that moved his heart — and gave him heartburn — over the years.
• Worst task: During the 1987 campaign to build a new international airport, pollsters learned that 20 percent of all Adams County residents would vote “no” solely because of fears that the new facility would be named after Denver Mayor Federico Peña. Frew’s job was to deliver the bad news to the mayor.
“I told him I thought racism was the reason, but he didn’t agree,” Frew said. “He told me to give him a couple of weeks.” During that time, Peña and the City Council pushed through an ordinance banning any new public facility from being named after a current office-holder. Peña’s humble pie helped: Adams County approved the new airport by just 6,000 votes. (The main airport thoroughfare was named after Peña after he left office.)
• Best political skills: “Roy Romer. He could look in the eyes of somebody who didn’t have two nickels to rub together and make that person feel like he was the most important person in the world.”
• Most formidable Republican: “Bill Armstrong. There’s no Democrat like him. He started building a deep bench of talent back in the ’70s and now those people are winning offices and running campaigns all over Colorado. If Armstrong wanted to run for anything, it would still be his for the asking. Hank Brown could probably win anything statewide, too, but he might not get his own party’s nomination.”
• Best Republican strategy: “If I were them, I’d just punt. The Republican Party just has so many crosses to bear right now. They’re on the wrong side of reproductive freedoms, environmental quality. They have to sit back and hope that Obama can’t deliver on change.”
• Most down-to-earth politician: “Ben Campbell. During the ’92 Senate campaign, he stayed away from the fancy places and lived in a truck- stop motel at I-25 and 58th Avenue. He ate breakfast at the truck stop counter. Most politicians have to learn to talk with the people who swing hammers for a living. Campbell didn’t.”
• Smartest politician: “Tim Wirth. They say politics is a game of checkers, but Wirth played it like chess and was always thinking six moves ahead.”
• Disturbing reality: “Most of the big money looks at politicians like dogs at the greyhound track. To them it’s just No. 8 vs. No. 11 vs. No. 16. They don’t care much who wins. They just care that they’re perceived as being the guy who got them there.”
• Proudest accomplishment: Starting the program that gives free ski passes to every Colorado fifth-grader.
• Personal price of politics: In 1989, Frew and two other top national Democratic strategists, James Carville and Paul Tully, were driving back to the airport in Portland when talk turned to the upcoming presidential campaign. Frew remembers Carville turning to him and saying, “Let’s all three of us get behind the smartest and best candidate out there.”
Carville and Tully went on to run Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. Frew returned home to bring baseball to Denver. I asked if he had any regrets.
“People always talk about how James Carville did a big campaign and won and now he’s on television all the time, but there’s one thing they forget: My good friend Paul Tully died in a hotel room before the election,” Frew said. “Some people have great success, but there are more people with a story that has a really bad ending.”
Mark Obmascik is a Denver writer and author of “Halfway to Heaven” (Free Press, 2009). He can be reached via .
