Colorado's most powerful people: Anschutz exerts wealth, and nine newcomers crash top-25 party.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: Editorial

You have to wield power to demonstrate you have it.

That was one of the criteria for the first-ever ColoradoBiz ranking of the state's 25 Most Powerful people in January 2004. The people listed in this year's third annual Most Powerful list certainly have wielded their clout in ways that demonstrated they have it.

U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar now stands out front of the stars of the national Democratic Party when his colleagues in the Senate take positions they know will be fought bitterly by the Republican Senate majority, and he draws full-page opposition advertisements from Focus on the Family in Denver's two major newspapers.

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Gov. Bill Owens bucked the conservative wing of his own Colorado Republican Party to back state-spending referenda that will help preserve the state's higher education system as well as many other state services; and Pat Stryker, our 2004 No. 1-ranked power person, joined again with other wealthy liberal leaders to finance the campaign to pass the spending referenda.

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Phil Anschutz, the state's wealthiest business owner, used a film company to win an Academy Award for an African-American actor who thanked him from the stage of the nationally televised awards program, as well as produced a Christian-flavored tale, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," that is expected to be a major hit of the 2005 Christmas movie season. Already, in pre-release, the movie has created a national debate over values-oriented entertainment.

Our Power List last year ranked the most powerful organizations in the state, and, although we updated what had been happening with some of the power players from 2004 in that issue, too, we intentionally let the 2004 people list lie fallow for a year in order to allow for changes in the lineup.

We got them. Nine newcomers are on the 2006 list, which means that eight "old-timers" fell off, usually because of a lack of public actions that demonstrated they were using their power. In the case of two of those former power people, it was the loss of their positions that removed them from the ranks of the Most Powerful. Both former University of Colorado President Betsy Hoffman, and Chairman and CEO of First Data Corp. Charlie Fote, resigned from their posts in the past year. Hoffman's successor, former U.S. Sen. Hank Brown, was considered for the list, but has not taken the position permanently yet, so we, the editors of the magazine who make the choices about who is on and who is off, left Brown off for now.

That's how the list is put together each year, and so far we've had only one complaint about a person or organization being left off of it. We welcome any comment from readers who might differ with our opinions of who is most powerful and who is not. Here's this year's list:

1

PHILIP F. ANSCHUTZ

PHIL ANSCHUTZ HAS BECOME MORE than the state's most wealthy citizen over the years; you could also say he has become Colorado's favorite billionaire. Certainly, Colorado's business community has to consider Anschutz a favorite because it continues to benefit from Anschutz's business creation, investment and reputation. One of the measures of power taken to determine ranks for this list is a person's audience and reach, and Anschutz demonstrated those criteria far beyond any other Coloradan over the past two years. He was thanked publicly from the stage of the Academy Awards ceremony by Best Actor Jamie Foxx for having the courage to produce "Ray," a film about the late musician Ray Charles; and at the end of 2005, he reaped pages and pages of local and national press for co-producing with the Walt Disney Co. what is expected to be this year's top hit movie of the Christmas season, "The Chronicles of Narnia." Anschutz remains a director on the board of Qwest Communications International, a Fortune 500 company he founded that remains one of the state's largest private employers; he is the chairman of his own Anschutz Corp., which includes Walden Media, the Disney partner on "Chronicles" and a large share of Regal Entertainment Group, a Colorado-founded public company that owns movie theaters and sells movie-theater advertising nationally. Anschutz still owns a significant share of Forest Oil Corp., and he remains the largest investor in the Union Pacific Railroad. And he has started a newspaper company that owns free-distribution papers in San Francisco and Washington D.C. Ranked No. 3 on the ColoradoBiz Most Powerful list of 2004, Anschutz since then has regained the No. 1 rank among Colorado's richest people on the Forbes 400; a former employee, Michael Bennet, who was Mayor John Hickenlooper's chief of staff, has become superintendent of Denver Public Schools; and Anschutz's newspaper company is now being run by a former executive of The Denver Post. Anschutz is ranked No. 1 this year because his reach continues to grow, as does his wealth and his influence.

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2

Pat Stryker

In January 2004, ColoradoBiz named Pat Stryker the state's most powerful person because she was using her wealth "to influence how Coloradans live, and more so than anyone else on the list." Striker has continued to do just that. She was one of the "Gang of Four" wealthy Democrats who plowed enough money into state legislative races at the end of that same year to turn around the majority in the General Assembly. At the end of 2005, she joined the same partners in an effort to fund the successful Referendum C campaign that broke a $3.7 billion lock on state spending created by TABOR, the Tax Payer's Bill of Rights. According to Al Yates, former president of Colorado State University, who acts as a spokesman for Stryker, she now considers herself a philanthropist, activist and business woman, whose set of Fort Collins companies, the Bohemian Cos., and her foundation, work toward improving the quality of life all Coloradans experience. She remains listed on the Forbes 400 as the state's fourth richest resident, with a fortune of $1.7 billion. Although Phil Anschutz passed Stryker up in this year's ColoradoBiz list of Most Powerful, mostly by dint of some extraordinary power-returns on his most recent investments, Stryker's continued involvement in activities that have a lasting effect on the state keeps her well positioned near the top of this list.

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3

U.S. SEN. KEN SALAZAR

Newly elected Sen. Ken Salazar graced the cover of the 2005 ColoradoBiz Power Issue because the editors of the magazine said his promotion by voters from Colorado Attorney General to the United States Senate launched Salazar into the ranks of the state's top 25 most powerful people. What Salazar has accomplished since then, elbowing his way to becoming a spokesman for moderate Democrats in a national discussion of federal court judges, Supreme Court justice nominees, reauthorization of the Patriot Act and health-care reform has been no less stunning a performance than a John Elway Super Bowl Bronco victory. Along the way to the figurative goal-line finish of that freshman year as a senator, Salazar has taken on Focus on the Family, last year's No.6-ranked most powerful organization in the state, and its founder, James Dobson, ranked No. 12 in 2004 and No. 5 in this issue, in a nasty spat that could affect both of their future power rankings. Salazar called Dobson and Focus manifestations of an antichrist in society, but then apologized for making the remark. He continues, however, to resist the influence of conservative Christian beliefs, including his own Catholic faith's stance against abortion, in the nation's secular political affairs. Whether or not Salazar comes out a winner or a loser in these national debates may serve to diminish or uphold the senator's rank in the state's power elite as time goes by.

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4

JOHN HICKENLOOPER

The mayor of Denver was ranked No. 20 in the 2004 list of Colorado's 25 Most Powerful people, but that was before he jumped out of an airplane to convince the state's voters that Colorado needed to spend more of the tax money it was collecting; it was before Hickenlooper helped convince region-wide metro-area voters to pass a FasTracks system of mass transit, and to renew a science-and-cultural-facilities tax; it was before he convinced his own city's voters to build a justice center, and to change the city charter to allow for personnel reform and to create a merit pay plan for teachers in the city's school district. It was before Hickenlooper saw the completion of an expanded Convention Center, and the building of a city-owned Convention Center hotel, and the wings of an art-museum expansion rise into the blue sky, and it was before he personally helped negotiate the city's building of a museum to house the 2,000-piece modern art collection of the late Clyfford Still. It was also before Hickenlooper cut a deal between the city's two dominant airlines that allows for both companies to grow bigger at Denver International Airport, and it was before many people began calling on him to run for governor. All of that served to move him higher on this year's list.

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5

JAMES DOBSON

During the past two years, James Dobson, founder of Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, merely helped rally enough of the conservative-Christian wing of the Republican Party to ensure the re-election of...