Born, as the song goes, ‘deep in the heart of Texas’, Denver’s Federico Peña has lived a life that, perhaps, has outpaced even his wildest dreams. The former mayor, cabinet secretary and private business executive and philanthropist, says, very modestly, he has covered “a lot of territory.”
Now, mostly, but not entirely removed from politics and day-to-day work in the financial sector, Peña has moved away from the breakneck, Autobahn speed he once traveled, to a more leisurely ‘city street’ way of navigating life. But the view in the rear-view mirror tells a tale of decades of extraordinary accomplishments and, at various times, of meeting the moment.
While his life and education are bathed in shades of Texas, it is Denver where he cemented a legacy. A newly minted lawyer with a UT-Austin degree, Peña came to Denver where a brother, also an attorney, lived. Brother, Alfredo, invited him to check out the lay of the land. He came, he saw and, boy, did he conquer.
When he arrived, the country was still recovering from the Vietnam War, a war he opposed and demonstrated against as a college student. Once here, he hung his shingle. But his talent and ambition soon drove him to politics and in 1979 he won a seat in the State Legislature, rising to House Minority Leader. The odyssey was just beginning.
His time in the legislature got the attention of people who, like him, were not satisfied with staid politics and they convinced him to challenge a legacy politician, Denver Mayor Bill McNichols.
His campaign was inspiration, perspiration and determination. He challenged people to “Imagine A Great City,” a signature slogan that resonates today.
His tenure as Denver’s Chief Executive, by almost any definition, was remarkable. He laid the groundwork or oversaw a number of significant undertakings, among them, helping bring Major League Baseball to Denver, starting the building of a new airport, new library, a new convention center and laying the groundwork for light rail.
He oversaw the evolution of lower downtown, LoDo, transforming it from warehouses and vacancies into blue chip real estate. He dug one of the first shovels of ground for Coors Field.
As one of the country’s youngest mayors as well as one of the few Latinos to oversee a major city, he helped transform Denver from a flyover to a destination city.
His political skills did not go unnoticed. Former President Clinton picked him for two cabinet posts, Secretary of Transportation and Secretary of Energy. In the latter role, he oversaw an $18 billion budget and was instrumental in the drafting of a national energy strategy.
After politics, Peña returned to Denver and spent fifteen years in private equity as a principal owner. Later, he focused on his Colorado Impact Fund. “What we do is invest in small minority-owned Colorado companies,” he explained. “They have to be doing constructive things,” he said, primarily undertakings in education and health care.
Along with his wife, Cindy, a former Denver television executive, Peña helped plant the seeds for the Latino Leadership Institute, a laboratory for growing the next generation of Latino business and political leaders.
But politics, for the iconic Peña, never move far off his radar and—no surprise—the politics and policies of the current President are hard to ignore. And, for Peña, the hardest to overlook is Trump and his use of race as a weapon.
“They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people,” were Trump’s words back in 2015. Peña says those words were just an ‘opening act.
“Back then my main concern was (his) attacks on the Latino community,” he explained. Today, Trump touts his plans for mass deportations, including deporting immigrants in the country legally. Peña wonders “why we can’t have more national leadership speaking out.”
Peña thinks Latinos have the numbers to combat Trump’s racism, but, so far, not the vehicle. Latinos need a single voice, a coalition of all Latinos to counter Trump’s megaphone, he said. He also wants more “national leadership” speaking out.
Latinos have been indispensable in every American conflict, he said. “Ever since the beginning of the nation, Latinos have been involved.” Latinos in the U.S., Peña said, are vital to the future of the country.
“We’re critical,” Peña said, underscoring a study by the UCLA Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture. It calculated a $4.1 trillion U.S. Latino GDP, a figure that surpassed that of France, India and the United Kingdom.
Peña also assailed Trump’s on-again, off-again worldwide tariffs, calling them a disaster. “When they’re fully implemented consumers will pay…they’re a tax.” China tariffs, now reset to a stratospheric but, perhaps only temporary, 145 percent, “make no sense.” Without someone stepping in to reset Trump’s tariff frenzy, he worries, “He will wreck our economy.”
Peña said he is equally baffled by the 47th president’s foreign policy calls, which he labels as disastrous. Trump, Peña believes, has crippled relationships with our allies. “They’re our friends,” he said. He also worries that Trump is potentially corroding relations with our two closest and trusted allies, Canada and Mexico. “It’s an absolute disaster,” he said, “with policies changing every other day.”
While his voice is forceful and critical of President Trump, the octave softens dramatically when the subject turns to family.
Peña and wife, Cindy, share a blended family that includes four now adult children and three grandchildren. While age and health are now life factors, Peña says he tries to spend as much time with all of them. “I see my role as someone who can provide insight and guidance.”
Despite his many accomplishments, including serving at the highest levels of government, meeting with world leaders, including Popes, and having an armchair to contemporary history, Peña remains awed by those who inspired him. They are people whose legacies will forever be cloaked in invisibility but, to him, are giants and key builders of his foundation.
“My mother and father,” he said. “No question.” They raised six children. “All six of us went to college. Three of us became lawyers.” His parents, he shared, “sacrificed, they devoted their time, resources and love on all six of us.”
But, perhaps odd, because he was only a brief part of his life, Peña points to a childhood football coach, Gus Zavaleta, as an immense influence in the person he became.
Peña remembers Zavaleta in almost reverential tones. “He instilled a drive to push myself both physically and mentally,” he said of his long ago coach and mentor. “He taught the importance of teamwork and allowed me to be a leader.”
His early political north star lands on President John F. Kennedy, a man whose youth and dreams for a nation, while all too short, were also inspirational to Peña’s generation.
Despite the demands of family and work, work he now picks and chooses to prioritize, Peña remains grounded in his Catholic faith, but no longer in his church.
Like many or even most of the south Texas Latinos of his youth, faith played a central role, including twelve years of Catholic schools, in his life. It still does. “I consider myself a religious person,” he said. “I’m just no longer attending institutional events.”
Recent politics of Church leaders, especially those connected with the closure of the Peña’s church, Our Lady of Visitation, where his father-in-law was a deacon, left him on a spiritual island, not stranded, he said, but also not in need of rescue.
