When Denver Mayor Michael Hancock was sworn in for his second term Monday, he pledged to push an ambitious agenda filled with plans for redevelopment of the National Western Stock Show complex, new growth at Denver International Airport and a head-on confrontation of the city's affordable-housing challenge.
But the weeks and months leading up to that hopeful moment on the stage brought the threat of an embarrassing — and some say troubling — distraction from Hancock's vision for a city that's fast becoming a magnet for millennials and, in the mayor's telling, a national model for innovative governance.
A court indictment in April thrust Hancock into an uncomfortable light. The case lays out allegations of bribery solicited by his longtime friend, Larry L. Stevenson, who worked as a city supervisor.
The allegations, Hancock said in a recent interview, are disappointing and painful. The unresolved case also could cast a shadow on the mayor's expansive plans. His agenda includes asking voters to agree to extended or new taxes and other ways of raising money that, in some ways, rest on his credibility.
The case against Stevenson, 46, raises questions about the extent of their friendship — each served as the other's best man in their weddings — and the mayor's role in his friend's hiring as a supervisor in the city's Excise and Licenses Department. Hancock, 45, also was named in the indictment as the person who introduced Stevenson to a businessman who later paid Stevenson $5,500 in cash.
Stevenson allegedly said he would use his influence with the mayor and his position at the city to circumvent formal bidding procedures. The businessman, Lucilious Ward, who was working as an informant for prosecutors, never received the contract.
"Clearly, it does not reflect well (on Hancock)," said Eric Sondermann, a Denver political analyst. "That's stating the obvious. It's one thing to be a lifelong friend and to be loyal to your friends. When you're the mayor, you have to demonstrate more discernment as to who your friends are."
"All that said, I have yet to read any allegation or implication of misbehavior on Hancock's part," Sondermann said, adding that the investigation "only becomes politically definitional if it becomes a narrative or if it becomes a pattern."
Detailed questions
Two weeks before the inauguration, the city quietly fired Stevenson, who had been on paid investigative leave.
The Denver Post recently spoke with Hancock to ask more detailed questions about his friendship with Stevenson. He declined to directly address the criminal investigation that led to the indictment since the case is still open.
Hancock denied taking any role in the alleged activities and said his longtime friend had acted on his own. The mayor said if the allegations are true, Stevenson let him down and in the process risked tarnishing the reputation and integrity of thousands of hard-working city employees.
"Obviously, if these allegations are true, it's very disappointing — and more painful and hurtful because Larry is a friend, with his alleged involvement," said Hancock.
The indictment of Stevenson contains accusations that are startling in their crassness: For example, the mayor's longtime friend met furtively with a former campaign donor to the mayor in a truck near the Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building to take cash. Also, in an earlier conversation, in August, Stevenson pledged to use his influence and connections in Denver government to ensure Ward would win part of a parking contract at DIA in exchange for $3,000 in monthly cash payments, the indictment states.
Editor's note: This document contains explicit language.
"Nice guys don't get you paid," Stevenson told Ward in another conversation at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Denver recorded by the FBI in late October, according to court documents.
Then, Stevenson opened a briefcase with a handgun inside and the informant placed $3,000 on top of the handgun, those documents state.
Stevenson, who has dropped his earlier plans to run for Aurora City Council this year, declined to comment, but his lawyer, Gary Lozow, vigorously contests the criminal charges. The FBI recordings have not been released to the public, although portions of conversations were referenced in the Stevenson indictment.
Ward in 2014 pleaded guilty to defrauding the Internal Revenue Service of payroll taxes that his company was supposed to pay for his employees. He has become a cooperating witness in the Stevenson case and another government-corruption case involving a former supervisor for the Regional Transportation District.
The mayor, in the interview with The Post, expressed dismay at the indictment. He stressed, "There was no contract let." Despite the allegations of payments to Stevenson, the indictment says Ward never received a contract at DIA. Stevenson, according to the indictment, dropped contact with Ward after their last meeting.
Hancock also pointed out that early in his first term, he issued an executive order requiring a competitive selection process for service contracts and public advertisement of them if the value is $100,000 or more. Competitive bids were already required for contracts for construction projects and goods.
"My administration, quite frankly, came in within the first 100 days and changed the (service) contracting process to ensure that, one, we have a competitive process and, two, that we weren't favoring contractors who wanted to do business with the city," Hancock said.
His spokeswoman, Amber Miller, pointed to other steps taken to add transparency and new rules to city contracting, including an ordinance revision last year that was aimed at increasing participation by minority- and women-owned businesses.
Vulgar text exchange
Denver's executive director of Excise and Licenses, Stacie Loucks, fired Stevenson on July 7. His termination letter accused him of a host of personnel violations, ranging from engaging in a vulgar text exchange on his city cellphone with an employee he supervised to trying to run a coffee distributorship out of Excise and Licenses. Stevenson even encouraged a city inspector to sell Stevenson's coffee products while making city inspections, Loucks said in the letter.
Loucks also accused Stevenson of taking other on-duty city employees to bowling and golf excursions where alcohol was consumed. She said she had not considered the bribery allegations, which are still pending in Denver District Court.
The city administration said the mayor was not involved in the firing in order to ensure it was an independent process.
Hancock said that in the time Stevenson worked for the city, the two met occasionally for meals or in the mayor's office. They were close in the mode of old friends who each led busy lives, the mayor said.
"I would see him on the street (or) in the Webb building, when I would visit Excise and Licenses," Hancock said. "Periodically, we would share a Scripture or a good joke between us, via text. That was the extent of it."
The mayor said he hasn't talked to Stevenson since the indictment on government bribery charges.
The two became friends about the time Hancock was 12, he recalled. Hancock's older sister was dating Stevenson's uncle. They later married, tying the two families together.
Stevenson and Hancock attended Hastings College, a liberal arts school in south-central Nebraska that had begun recruiting minority students from nearby cities, including heavily from Denver.
At Hastings, both belonged to a fraternity, Tau Beta Alpha, although Hancock said he was a much less active member than Stevenson. Hancock recalled being more focused on working with a group to start the Black Student Union, now called the Multicultural Student Union, to support minority students.
"It was a culture shock, without question, but it was character-forming," Hancock said of their time at Hastings.
The others from Denver who attended Hastings with Hancock and Stevenson recalled they all found ways to connect so far from home. The tight group of black students met weekly in the basement of a dorm to play games and establish camaraderie, recalled Nadiyah Gayles, a former Hastings classmate. Every other Sunday, a pastor came from Omaha, and the group met to sing and worship, she said.
"It was like family," Gayles said.
She said that when she struggled in speech class, Stevenson suggested his roommate as someone who could help. He also introduced her to another black student whom she would later marry. She competed for top grades in classes with Hancock, who even back then was gravitating toward politics.
"In my life and in my interactions, those two gentlemen were always like brothers to me," Gayles said. "They looked out for you."
Not a Hastings grad
Hancock made a name for himself at Hastings, where he earned a degree in political science. Stevenson didn't graduate from Hastings, according to a copy of his résumé. In 2012, Stevenson got his degree from Colorado State University's-Global Campus, an online program, the résumé states.
Hancock would go on to become president at the Urban League of Metropolitan Denver and then began rising in city politics while Stevenson struggled to find his footing — first as a Denver police officer, then in real estate. Along the way, Hancock provided help, agreeing to be a reference when Stevenson sought out new employment. As mayor, he introduced Stevenson to the head of Denver's Excise and Licenses when Stevenson wanted to work for the city.
Stevenson's career at the Denver Police Department was marred after he was found in 1996 to have violated rules, including "departing from the truth," getting a DUI charge and driving without a driver's license, discipline logs show. He left the police department in 1998. Detailed records of the internal affairs investigation into those matters no longer exist, city officials said.
"He's always been a good guy on the surface, and then I just started to see a dark side come out of him that I didn't know before," said Keith Billingsley, who also attended Hastings with Stevenson, referencing the DUI. Billingsley said the recent allegations shocked him.
"I was appalled by that whole case," he said. "I couldn't imagine Larry doing something like that."
As Hancock and Stevenson married, had families and pursued careers, their friendship evolved. Each was best man for the other — one marriage for Hancock, to Mary Louise Lee, and two weddings for Stevenson, including to his current wife, Tracey.
As Hancock rose politically, winning a City Council seat in 2003 and then the mayor's office in 2011, he said he always watched out for Stevenson, among others with shared roots.
"I've always been a (job) reference for Larry," Hancock said. "I've known him most of my life and we were close friends, and I've served as a reference for him as I have for many others we've grown up (with) in the city."
Records show Stevenson filed three times for bankruptcy. Records filed in 2008 in connection with the bankruptcy of Stevenson's business, Platinum Real Estate & Finance Group, show he owed $976,000 in mortgages and loans that year taken out on a 4,900-square-foot home in Centennial. Bankruptcy records filed in 2011 show Stevenson and his second wife owed about $25,000 on a 2011 judgment for failure to pay rent on a home.
Hancock continued to help Stevenson when he sought employment.
Robert McBride, the owner of Metro Taxi and a political supporter of the mayor's, said he hired Stevenson as a supervisor at Hancock's urging. He said Stevenson helped him put in place Taxis on Patrol, a collaboration with Denver police in which cab drivers alert police of any suspicious activity they see while driving their routes.
"He was nothing less than stellar," McBride said of Stevenson and his work.
When it came to seeking work at the city, Hancock said he and Stevenson discussed his interest in changing careers, recalling that his friend "wanted to look at the city based on his skill set."
Hancock said he introduced Stevenson to Tom Downey, Excise and Licenses' director at that time.
He said the introduction wasn't unusual. "There are many people who stop me, looking for employment opportunities in the city. I may introduce them to a director, but I don't get engaged in the career service process whatsoever."
Hancock said he stuck to that hands-off approach in Stevenson's case.
He said he didn't know whether Stevenson listed him as a reference. The copy of Stevenson's job application that was provided by the city's Office of Human Resources had references blacked out.
Downey has declined comment. The job was advertised by the city and other applicants were solicited.
"I only learned that he was going through the career service process the day he got hired, or the day he started his job," Hancock said.
Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747, cosher@denverpost.com or twitter.com/chrisosher