Largely responsible for delivering the Democratic National Convention to Denver, Steve Farber still “has something more to give.” And he’s not talking about strokes on the golf course.

Steve Farber, prominent Denver attorney and co-chair of the Denver 2008 Convention Host Committee, takes a strong southpaw swing and splits the 12th fairway at Cherry Creek Country Club. 

This lefty approach with a center-cut result provides a fitting analogy for Farber, a self-professed centrist Democrat who believes the country desperately needs a change in direction. Influential, well-connected and highly respected, he is one of the prime reasons the party selected Denver for this month’s convention. 

As of the day of our golf date, however, the host committee stands $11 million short of the $40.6 million for which it bears responsibility. “At this time in ’04, Boston was even further behind than we are now, and they made it,” Farber says, not worried. “But everybody wants to know if we’re going to make it—that’s why my phone keeps buzzing.”

But he silences it and gives his undivided attention to a reporter interested in his golf game.

Which is flattering because he’s teed it up with some of the most influential people in Colorado and the United States, including former President Bill Clinton, whom he’ll be hosting at Castle Pines Golf Club during this month’s convention.    

“I’m looking forward to seeing the reaction,” he says with a smile.

“You must be one of the few Democrats at Castle Pines,” I joke. 

“Shh,” he says with a mock conspiratorial whisper. “We keep a low profile.”

Frankly, it’s hard to imagine Farber maintaining a low profile about anything. Playing at Cherry Creek on a glorious Friday morning, he’s greeted by at least a dozen members—including club owner Stacy Hart—all of whom seem to have either enlisted his services, raised funds with him, worked in his office, or served with him on civic or charitable boards. More than just one of Denver’s most successful attorneys, he’s also one of the city’s biggest boosters and most philanthropic citizens. 

Since co-founding Brownstein Hyatt Farber with childhood friends Norm Brownstein and Jack Hyatt 40 years ago, the west Denver native has hustled to earn every bit of his notoriety. Real estate developer Larry Mizel and industrialist Marvin Davis were early clients, and the firm, now called Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, employs 237 people in 12 cities throughout the West and in Washington, D.C. Making his mark in the complex world of public-private partnership negotiations, he brokered United Airlines’ initial lease at Denver International Airport, and negotiated Ascent Entertainment's deal with the city to finance and build the Pepsi Center, as well as the Denver Broncos’ efforts to do the same with Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium. 

A list of his past and current prominent clients and contacts would occupy columns of space, as would the roster of trustee positions he’s held at organizations such as the Rose Community Foundation and the Anti-Defamation League. He chaired Roy Romer’s gubernatorial campaigns and worked closely with Denver mayor Federico Peña, whom he hired briefly before Peña joined the Clinton cabinet. The former president appointed Farber to the site committee for the 2000 Democratic National Convention, which gave him the roadmap to land this month’s Democratic National Convention. 

“I rarely get a chance to come out here,” he says, while briefly getting lost as we cross a street between holes 10 and 11. “They’ve done a great job fixing it up.” He’s right. Thanks to the hiring of Superintendent Matt Lombardi from Trump National, the poor turf conditions that plagued the course no longer do.

Although he turns 65 in September and endured a much-publicized kidney transplant four years ago, Farber goes straight to the gold tees, just short of the tips. “I don’t need the head start like some of my contemporaries,” he says, pointing at the white tees ahead of us. “But I’ll play from there if they want.” The golds suit the 16-handicap just fine, as his drives find the fairway. Regular workouts, tennis matches, golf and skiing keep the one-time starting point guard for the North High School basketball team in tremendous shape.

“Steve’s a very good athlete and very competitive,” Brownstein tells me later. “He always intends to have a good round.” On this day, however, Farber seems more intent on having a good time than a good round, as he sends more than one Pro V1 to its final resting place. In his defense, however, his playing partner’s interrogations between shots might have distracted him.

“Yes,” he answers with a laugh when asked whether Clinton really takes as many mulligans as reported. “No,” he and Brownstein don’t get in each other’s pockets. And “no” he didn’t play golf growing up; he started after he married Cindy Cook in 1971 and joined Green Gables Country Club, where, “yes,” he had a hole-in-one in his first year of playing golf.

Swinging a golf club is the only left-handed activity the natural righty does. “Growing up playing baseball, I found that there were more right-handed pitchers than left-handed ones, and i t’s easier for lefties to hit righties,” he explains, adding that his strong tennis backhand also influenced the side from which he addresses the ball. 

It’s how he addresses his chips and putts that distinguish him. He does both with a cross-handed, right-hand low grip he just started using. “It prevents me from flipping at it; you can’t break your wrists this way,” he says, demonstrating his chipping technique to great effect. On the greens, however, the same method has him toeing his putts and cutting across the ball. “Come on, Steve,” he chides himself as a short one slides by the hole. 

“I play with a lot of people who get upset if they don’t play well,” he says. “If it’s going to get to you, quit.” 

A gracious playing partner, Farber commiserates on bad shots and compliments good ones. On more than one occasion he talks about the golf prowess of his three sons—Gregg, Brent and Brad—all 10-handicaps who could easily outdrive us and would go for the green instead of laying up, as we’ve both done, on the 308-yard 15th.   

Gregg donated the kidney that saved his father’s life. This heart-warming story almost didn’t play out, Farber says. His failing kidneys, possibly a recurrence of the nephritis that almost killed him at 18 months, qualified him for an organ transplant. But faced with a possible three-year wait for an anonymous organ donation, the attorney toyed with traveling to Turkey for an operation of dubious legality.

But Midnight Express images haunted him—justifiably, it turns out, since Turkish authorities later arrested the surgeon and a number of his patients—and Gregg was a perfect match. Highly regarded transplant surgeon Dr. Igal Kam performed the operation at the University of Colorado Hospital. 

“When I was going through the ordeal, I told my spiritual advisors I have something more to give,” Farber reflects. So he founded the American Transplant Foundation to raise awareness about eliminating our country’s shortage of human-transplant organs. There’s something like 100,000 people on the waiting list in our country alone. And 18 die every day because of a shortage of available organs."  

Last September, the foundation endowed a $1.5 million Chair in the transplant program at the University of Colorado Denver and the University of Colorado Hospital, which now operates out of the Transplant Center at the Anschutz Medical Campus.

This year, instead of a holding a golf tournament to raise funds, Farber’s foundation staged June’s Crosby, Stills & Nash concert at the Wells Fargo Theatre. Farber knew David Crosby had received a liver transplant 13 years ago, and the band was only happy to oblige.

Forty years ago, when he’d just graduated from the University of Colorado Law School, CSN was about to launch its debut album and produce the politically charged antiwar anthems that resound to this day. Farber himself would become politicized that June. After spending the previous summer clerking at Lewis and Roca, where he worked on the landmark Miranda v. Arizona Supreme Court case, he began the summer working for a f riend who ran Coloradoans for Kennedy. “I spent an entire day with Bobby Kennedy getting out crowds, and I saw the way he dealt with people. He was so genuine, inspiring and courageous.” Two days later, Kennedy was shot after winning the California primary. 

The experience galvanized Farber’s resolve. He and his partners decided they would differentiate themselves from other Denver firms and be civically and charitably active. “We wanted to move Colorado forward,” he says. “At the time there were people who wanted just to keep it good; we wanted to make it great.”

Brownstein claims that golf has helped them realize that goal. “To tell you the truth, I would say our practice became more sophisticated about the same time we started playing golf,” he says. “Over the years, we’ve done a lot of business at the golf course. Clients, potential clients, politicians and other attorneys.”

One of the other attorneys in both Brownstein’s and Farber’s life is Hank Brown, the former U.S. congressman, senator and University of Colorado president who joined their firm in March. That he’s a Republican makes no difference to Farber. “He’s been my mentor since college when he encouraged me to pledge Delta Tau Delta and sponsored me even though the fraternity had no Jewish members.”

Person trumps party every time, says Farber as we enjoy après-golf soft drinks on the porch overlooking the 18th green. “Hank Brown is one of the most courageous men I know. I wish I’d shown the kind of courage in college that he did.” He proceeds to tell the story of Norm Rice, his friend, who left CU after a few semesters. 

“He happens to be African-American, and I invited him to all the Delta functions. He went on to become mayor of Seattle, and I never knew why he’d left CU. So years after we’d seen each other, we had dinner and I asked him. 

“‘All these years later and you haven’t figured it out?’ he said. ‘You invited me to all these parties and we were friends, but you never invited me to pledge your fraternity. That hurt.’ 

“It never dawned on me. I was willing to be the beneficiary of change, but not prepared to be the agent for it. I apologized to him. It was a valuable lesson.”

Given Farber’s track record with diversity, social, political and medical activism, he’s taken that lesson to heart. He’s happy the convention won’t be a brokered one and that his youngest son, Brad, left his law job to work on Barack Obama’s campaign. Even though he himself isn’t completely sold on the Illinois senator’s experience, “McCain’s experience is writing The McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act—probably the most poorly worded, loophole-filled legislation ever.” 

Before leaving, Farber turns my “who’s in your dream foursome” question back on me. “Well,” I say, “I’d start with Moses so I could walk to the ball I hit in the water on 18.” 

Farber picks the Hebrew prophet, too. He then fills out his foursome with a bipartisan pairing of John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln, “two thinkers with vision.” He pauses. “Where are the thinkers with vision to day? The media discourages them from public service. Today’s thinkers are all making money in business.”

Farber has made lots of money, too. But he gives the sense that he wants it to serve a greater purpose. “I almost died as a child, and then again a few years ago,” he reflects. “My mother used to tell me, ‘God let you live for a reason.’ And I know it sounds cliché, but I really believe that reason is to leave this country a better, stronger place.”

Jon Rizzi is the editor of Colorado AvidGolfer.