Interminable Ben

To newcomers, Benjamin Franklin Stapleton, 73, seems one of the most ineffectual old men in the rambling, shady-city of Denver. He dreads change. He falls asleep at public meetings, mumbles in monosyllables and exudes a little less social warmth than Marley's ghost. He does not smoke or drink and has never been known to swear. Beyond these traits the other fact for newcomers to learn is that Ben Stapleton is Denver's mayor.

He has been mayor since 1923 (except for one term). Under the city's home-rule charter, he has become one of the most powerful municipal dictators in the U.S. But last week there were signs that Democrat Stapleton might be unhorsed. For the first time in a decade he had a tough opponent: wealthy, Yale-trained Republican Quigg Newton, a onetime legal secretary to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who had the backing of a growing reform movement.

Firing their ammunition well in advance of the May 20 election, the reformers pointed to Ben's political machine--a bloc of politicians, city employees and big businessmen who had exploited the city's complacency for years by splitting the opposition vote among several politically feeble candidates. They pointed to the dirty and rutted streets, the antiquated purchasing methods, the confusing street signs, the inadequate health and police and fire services as examples of Stapleton's do-nothing policy. And they wondered why a city of 380,000 should allow its mayor to appoint, and thereby to control, all municipal employees except the auditor.

If Ben Stapleton was moved by all this, he said nothing. He is a shrewd politician who has worked in or for Denver since the turn of the century. In his five terms as mayor, he has pushed gambling and prostitution outside the city limits, completed the $50 million water system on which Denver's hopes for industrial expansion are based, fought for and built a municipal airport, encouraged tourist money and kept the city free of major strikes.

But old Ben had outstayed his age.

Sitting in his huge, circular office in Denver's gleaming, modified-Roman city hall last week, he listened to the assurances of his machine men that he could win again in a trot. But the mayor seemed not so sure; aggressive Quigg Newton seemed to mean business.

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