Denver City Council president Chris Nevitt studied the byzantine politics of St. Petersburg, Russia, after the fall of the Soviet Union when he was in graduate school.
Considering the madness that reigned there after communism collapsed, leaving more than 400 council members vying for power, he says he’s prepared to run Denver’s council in a challenging year.
He faces a fractious council that has two members running for mayor and a third expected to join the race. The current mayor, John Hickenlooper, will leave office in January after winning his campaign for governor, creating a major power vacuum at city hall. And the city is grappling with record revenue shortfalls.
Nevitt isn’t intimidated.
“I feel like I’m pretty well- equipped to deal with a lot of complexity and uncertainty,” said Nevitt, who describes himself as an unabashed “unionist and labor partisan.”
Nevitt’s blunt demeanor, direct approach and sometimes profane language have generated some political scrapes.
Parks flap drew fire
Some neighborhood activists and a former council member, Cathy Donohue, deplored his criticism, months ago, of those opposed to allowing fee-based events in Denver parks.
In an e-mail to Chantal Unfug, a top adviser to Hickenlooper, Nevitt described the opposition to that plan as “hysteria, extremism, and narrow- minded parochial interests.”
The e-mail became public after he left to attend a Denver Metro Area Chamber of Commerce trip to Portland, Ore., prompting activists to barrage his staff with complaint calls.
Some speculate that the council presidency could burnish Nevitt’s credentials for a potential mayoral campaign.
But Nevitt has denied any interest in joining the crowded field of candidates expected to run for mayor.
“Being president of the council is about the institution,” Nevitt said. “And I’m really committed to this institution and making this institution as efficient and effective as possible.”
Nevitt’s colleagues on the council ended up unanimously voting him in as president despite grumbling from some that he had lined up votes to deny the presidency to the council’s former pro tem, Marcia Johnson. Typically, the council gives the presidency to the pro tem, who serves as council president when the president is out of town.
“I’m an impatient person,” Nevitt said of the jockeying. “When it came time for a leadership change, I counted the votes and thought, ‘Wow, I can get there.’ “
As council president, Nevitt will be one person removed from the mayoral post after Hickenlooper leaves it Jan. 11 and a new mayor is sworn in next spring.
A vagabond childhood
Nevitt grew up the son of a member of the U.S. Foreign Service, and much of his childhood was spent overseas. He was born in Thailand, about 50 miles from the Laotian border, where his father ran political counterinsurgency efforts.
The family also spent time in Nigeria and Australia. When they were back in the U.S., Nevitt’s father was in charge of the East Asia operation of the Foreign Service.
“Growing up, I was completely itinerant,” Nevitt recalled. “We’d be living in northern Virginia for three or four years, and then we’d be on the move again. We didn’t have roots. We were always on the go.”
He got his bachelor’s degree from Haverford College, just outside Philadelphia, a school founded on Quaker values, his family’s religion. He then got a Ph.D. in political economy from the University of California, San Diego, studying the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He learned to speak Russian and Chinese.
After a career as an academic, Nevitt grew disillusioned with his life as a professor at Arizona State University. In 2001, he and his wife, Lisa Reynolds, also a political scientist, moved to Denver, where she had family ties.
In Denver, Nevitt joined the Denver Area Labor Federation and helped found and run FRESC, a labor think tank formerly known as the Front Range Economic Strategy Center. As executive director there, Nevitt helped derail an urban-renewal project that would have put a Wal-Mart at Alameda Square.
In 2007, Nevitt won the District 7 seat on the City Council, representing a diverse area that stretches from blue-collar Athmar Park to pricey Washington Park.
During his tenure, he has successfully battled to rezone some residential areas of his district for lower density and has become an advocate for the medical-marijuna industry.
One of his first moves as council president was to consolidate 11 committees down to five, a move he said will make the council more effective.
“This is a complex time in the city’s politics,” he said, “and I feel like I’m in a good spot to understand it and influence it.”
Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com
