Mayor of mayors: Hickenlooper, Owen's trip reflects mayor's influence.

• Author: Schwab, Robert

Last January, what was described as a sardonic grin played at the lips of John Hickenlooper as he faced his opponents in the 2003 Denver mayor's race during the first of a series of candidate debates leading to the election. The debate was about public support for the arts, and later, after his election in a June runoff, Hickenlooper said the face-to-face, think-on-your-feet roundtable was actually the first time he realized he could hold his own during a public forum with real politicians who were more accustomed to such performances.

Last month, while still getting comfortable in the mayor's office at City Hall, Hickenlooper said two of his opponents on that January night, even by summer, could hardly believe they had lost the race to a political amateur. Hick--as the new mayor has been dubbed by the city's newspaper headline writers--could still grin about that irony two weeks after being installed in the office where larger-than-life Mayor Wellington Webb once roamed Perhaps the confidence that comes with victory was foretold in Hickenlooper's sly grin on that cold night in January. Today, time grin is much wider and there is no foretelling about it. John Hickenlooper, a businessman bar owner, is Colorado's mayor of mayors.

Mayor of mayors. Tim Jackson, director of the Colorado chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business, which lobbies for small business owners across the state, likes the term. It recognizes the image-making nature of the Denver mayor's office as it relates to Colorado's role on a national stage,Jackson said. "If local and state (governments) are getting along that well, that helps sell this area," Jackson said.

Jackson was commenting specifically on Hickenlooper's early August trip to California with Gov. Bill Owens. The trip was organized by the Metro Denver Network to lobby California executives of companies who might move employees here or--more importantly--to convince those who already have employees here to keep them busy with work and even expand their operations if possible.

Owens attended Hickenlooper's inauguration and called the newly elected mayor shortly after Hickenlooper won the city's June 3 runoff election.

"I went over to see the governor two days after my election," Hickenlooper said in an interview. He said the meeting was not just about the trip to California, but "about whether we were going to work together, whether we were going to roll up our sleeves and become a team to make...