Down with Big Nick

Glistening, growing Denver (pop. 511,800) had a dynamic mayor in Will Faust Nicholson. An Ivy Leaguer (Dartmouth, '22), he made a good marriage (to the daughter of a Cripple Creek mining man), a good career (investment banking, real estate) and a good name (twice elected as a Republican to the state senate). He was elected nonpartisan mayor of Denver in 1955 by only 802 votes, but Big Nick was marked well for the future by his good Republican connections in the state. Long, lanky (6 ft. 3 in., 180 Ibs.) and handsome, he sported a friendly, lopsided smile, drove himself hard. Last week it was clear that Big Nick, 57, had driven himself too hard; the people of Denver, smarting under Big Nick's whiplashing insistence on a new city payroll tax, lashed back--and--well, he could always go back to real estate.

Big Nick's problem was no different from that of other harried mayors of big cities in the U.S.: how to raise cash for increased municipal services and capital improvements when more and more of the people who work in the city--and demand the improvements--live in and spend their dollars in the suburbs. Early in his term Big Nick set up committees to study Denver's needs and to find ways and means of raising the money for an improvement program. The mayor's own suggestion: a city income tax. To the folks in metropolitan Denver, who already pluck the petals off their salaries for federal and state income taxes and state and city sales taxes, this seemed a big nick indeed. They said so bluntly. Even more bluntly, the mayor persisted.

Tea Bags & Insults. Disregarding recommendations of his own citizens' committee (which suggested a bond issue and such new service charges as a trash-collection and auto users' fee), the mayor and his nine-man city council adopted an income tax ordinance without a public vote. Shouts of outrage echoed in the Rockies, as the Denver citizenry dramatized memories of the Boston Tea Party by waving tea bags at protest meetings and crying, "No taxation without representation!"* Newspapers took sides, and, surprisingly, the hard-hit Chamber of Commerce, figuring that the tax would drive still more people into the suburbs, lined up against the mayor. Organized labor supported Big Nick.

The mayor himself was incensed. Driving near a Denver shopping center one day, he saw an anti-tax woman circulating petitions, climbed out of his car to demand that she be chased off the property. Publicly, he charged that his biggest opposition came from "non-Denverites and crackpots," and so alienated the few leading businessmen and professional men who had remained on the sidelines. On public panel programs he would all but stop the show by insulting his opponents. When a petition was circulated for his recall, Big Nick allowed that he would like to sign it, "because I would like to see what these people look like." In bounced three sponsors of the petition; the mayor read and signed it, after asking attending newsmen: "What does 'reviling' mean? This petition is full of it."

Brochures & Ballots. Backing down at length, Big Nick consented to run a city-wide vote on the tax. In his campaign, he sent pro-tax literature to Denver motorists in the same envelopes with their 1958 city auto registrations, even tried to slip his brochures in with old-age pension checks until the state welfare department stopped him. The Chamber of Commerce accused him of engaging in "a dance of vulgarity," while one Denver lawyer described him as "the most stupid excuse for a mayor this city has ever had." Pleading, bullying, wheedling and finally threatening the whole city with a reduction of services and improvements unless the tax was voted, Big Nick came down to the wire last week stubbornly refusing to admit that he might be wrong.

The ballots beat him down: Denver voted 5-4 against the tax. Announced he: "I do want to caution all Denver residents that [the vote] means fewer trash collections and street repairs, and slashes in many other activities." Then he took off on a five-day "vacation"--a rest and physical examination at St. Joseph's Hospital. "Actually," observed one Chamber of Commerce man, "the income tax wasn't beaten too badly. Had Nick only stayed home and kept his mouth shut, it would have passed."

* City income taxes are already in force in more than 40 U.S. cities, e.g., Philadelphia, Washington, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Columbus, Louisville, Toledo.

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