Wellington Webb -- Imperial Chairmanship?

Wellington Webb, Denver's three-term ex-mayor and current candidate for Chairman of the Democractic National Committee used to like to tell the story about his first campaign for mayor in 1991. He started out the campaign sitting on poll numbers of about 8%. So, he put on his tennis shoes and started walking Denver's neiborhoods, knocking on doors and telling all kinds of folks why he should be elected the mayor.

When Webb reached Southwest Denver -- conservative, white, blue-collar neighborhood -- he knocked on a door and an elderly man opened the door. Webb started to give the old guy his spiel, when he heard an elderly woman's voice in the background ask, "Who's at the door?"

The elderly man turned and hollered back into the house, "It's that colored fella' I'm gonna vote for for mayor."

Webb would end his story then by saying that -- with the comment of the old white guy in Southwest Denver -- he knew he would prevail; that he would be Denver's next mayor.

Curiously, from that humble, tennis shoe trek across the city, once Webb became mayor, he insisted the citizens of Denver provide him with a new Lincoln Town Car every year; refer to his wife as the "First Lady;" and pay for ever-increasingly expensive inaugurations (there were three), which many used to refer to as "coronations." It was reported that the last inauguration exceeded sixty-thousand dollars.

For all the steel and stone, brick and mortar projects Webb was able to initiate (including a $140Million municipal building named -- what else? -- the Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building), I personally believe his greatest achievement was the improvement of the South Platte Valley, adding miles and miles of riverside trails and enabling the development of the previously largely neglected river valley.

Interestingly, Westword saw some of that Webb imperialism in that Platte River development.

But, of all the projects that desperately needed attention during his incumbency -- the redevelopment of a dilapidated shopping center in a largely black area of Denver -- he was never able to make a dent.

Some people's memory of the Webb incumbency is of an imperial-like, good ol' boy network that was far removed from that 1991 trek across the city in those old tennis shoes.

What kind of a Chairman of the Democratic National Committee would Webb make? Who knows. But, there is that hunch it might be just a little imperial which, in my opinion really won't play in Paonia.

The Democratic Party needs tennis shoes in precincts ... certainly not Town Cars at the Four Seasons.