Mayor Michael Hancock made a splashy landing in Politico on Sunday, including a colorful illustration, as part of the magazine's "11 most interesting mayors" feature.
Featured alongside the mayors of Los Angeles, Louisville and Boston, Hancock is described as a "low-key leader" who's living out a childhood dream.
The piece recounts the mayor's backstory, including his brother's death of AIDS and his sister's murder by a domestic abuser. The creation of the new Office of HOPE in reaction to the housing crisis also gets a mention.
"That deft touch has come in handy as Denver has navigated hot-button issues like marijuana legalization," writes Denver-based journalist Caleb Hannan.
Hannan praises Hancock's "signature understatement" in his responses to the Trump administration, highlighting the fact that the mayor didn't mention Trump's name in a recent video.
Facing threats to immigrants, Hancock's "response was to spend months lobbying to change local laws, rather than making confrontational speeches."
The mayor in that time wavered on whether the city was a "sanctuary" or not, but helped to shorten crime sentences in a way that could help legal residents' immigration cases.
One other little detail: Trump's victory apparently so shocked Hancock that the mayor left work at lunch on the day after the election, "only the second time he had done so in more than five years in office," as Hannan reports.
