Denver Mayor Bill Vidal has been working since he was 14 years old. So it’s not hard to imagine the 59-year-old is looking forward to a break.
We hope that’s the sole reason he finally decided not to run for mayor, rather than being pressured out of the race by Gov. John Hickenlooper.
As late as Monday morning, Vidal, who’s been acting mayor since Hickenlooper resigned for his new job across the street, had considered launching a campaign — with or without Hickenlooper’s blessing.
The governor, it seems, only appointed Vidal as mayor because the former public works manager wasn’t interested in running for a full, four- year term.
We’re sympathetic to Hickenlooper’s concerns of wanting a level playing field for all the candidates, and the fact he didn’t want to appoint a mayor who would then run and thus get a leg up on the competition.
But circumstances can change.
With a few weeks under his belt in the big office, and with key community members urging him to run, why shouldn’t Vidal be allowed to make a bid for mayor if he felt he could make a difference for Denver?
In an e-mail to a small cadre of supporters, however, Vidal alleges that Gov. Hickenlooper threw an “inexplicable temper tantrum” over his intentions to run and that it was an example of someone trying to keep him from “looking to climb above my proper station.”
To take both men at their word, it sounds as if there was a colossal misunderstanding over whether Vidal said he had no intention of running or whether he gave his “solemn word,” as the governor says, that he would not run.
There is a difference.
Still, if Vidal had wanted to run, he should have felt free to do so even though we acknowledge it would have defied what he evidently told Hickenlooper.
As for Vidal’s claim the governor was trying to keep him in his place, we hardly think Hickenlooper was trying to keep a man down by elevating him to the position of mayor.
Hickenlooper is now the titular head of the Democratic Party, and we’re not naive enough to believe that he’ll take a hands-off approach to politics in Colorado.
However, the governor’s chief focus should be on the tremendous challenges facing the state.
Even though it’s Colorado’s largest city, Denver is still small enough to employ the brand of retail politics that got Wellington Webb elected mayor. That’s to say, any candidate — even if Mayor Vidal had joined the race with the advantages of being mayor — can still burn some shoe leather going door to door to meet voters and emerge as a leader in this race. Even though Hickenlooper had worried about an uneven playing field, we doubt Vidal’s brief stint as mayor would have given him an insurmountable edge.
