Colorado’s junior senator is Michael Bennet, a Democrat appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter in January 2009 to succeed Ken Salazar, who’d been named Interior secretary by President Obama. Bennet was born in New Delhi, India, where his father, Douglas Bennet, was an aide to Ambassador Chester Bowles. His mother and her family were Jews who emigrated from Poland after World War II. Michael grew up and attended private schools in Washington, D.C., while his father pursued his career in public service. Douglas Bennet was a staffer for Vice President Hubert Humphrey, assistant secretary of state in the Carter administration and later president of National Public Radio. The younger Bennet graduated from Wesleyan University, and went to work as an aide to Democratic Gov. Richard Celeste of Ohio, a family friend. In 1990, Bennet entered Yale Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. He clerked for a federal judge in Baltimore, where he met his wife, Susan Daggett, and then joined Lloyd Cutler’s influential law firm in Washington. In 1995, he was named counsel to Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick in the Clinton administration and wrote speeches for Attorney General Janet Reno. In 1997, he moved to Denver, where his wife, a natural resources lawyer, went to work for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. Bennett took a job with the investment company headed by billionaire Philip Anschutz, a political conservative. Bennet had never read a balance sheet, and Anschutz told him to attend accounting school at night at his own expense. Eventually, Bennet got such assignments as restructuring $3 billion in debt for several companies, including Forcenergy, Regal Cinemas, United Artists and Edwards Theaters. He also oversaw the consolidation of the three theater chains into Regal Entertainment Group, the world’s largest movie theater company. Read More
Colorado’s junior senator is Michael Bennet, a Democrat appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter in January 2009 to succeed Ken Salazar, who’d been named Interior secretary by President Obama. Bennet was born in New Delhi, India, where his father, Douglas Bennet, was an aide to Ambassador Chester Bowles. His mother and her family were Jews who emigrated from Poland after World War II. Michael grew up and attended private schools in Washington, D.C., while his father pursued his career in public service. Douglas Bennet was a staffer for Vice President Hubert Humphrey, assistant secretary of state in the Carter administration and later president of National Public Radio. The younger Bennet graduated from Wesleyan University, and went to work as an aide to Democratic Gov. Richard Celeste of Ohio, a family friend. In 1990, Bennet entered Yale Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. He clerked for a federal judge in Baltimore, where he met his wife, Susan Daggett, and then joined Lloyd Cutler’s influential law firm in Washington. In 1995, he was named counsel to Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick in the Clinton administration and wrote speeches for Attorney General Janet Reno. In 1997, he moved to Denver, where his wife, a natural resources lawyer, went to work for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. Bennett took a job with the investment company headed by billionaire Philip Anschutz, a political conservative. Bennet had never read a balance sheet, and Anschutz told him to attend accounting school at night at his own expense. Eventually, Bennet got such assignments as restructuring $3 billion in debt for several companies, including Forcenergy, Regal Cinemas, United Artists and Edwards Theaters. He also oversaw the consolidation of the three theater chains into Regal Entertainment Group, the world’s largest movie theater company.
In 2003, a fellow Wesleyan alumnus, John Hickenlooper, was elected Denver mayor and asked Bennet to be his chief of staff. Bennet says he gave up millions in stock options to accept “an opportunity that wouldn’t come around again.” He worked on balancing the budget, mediating a dispute between United and Frontier airlines at Denver International Airport and brokering agreements with public-employee unions. “I have referred to him as the second mayor, the hidden mayor,” Hickenlooper told The Denver Post. In 2005, the position of Denver Public Schools superintendent came open, and among the 14 top candidates was Bennet—even though he had no experience in education, had himself attended private schools, and was sending his daughter to a private kindergarten. In 2005, the board picked him to head a system of 73,000 students, three-quarters of them Latino or African-American and two-thirds of them eligible for the school lunch program. When he closed the predominately minority Manual High School in 2006, black community leaders protested and called Bennet a “dictator.” But the school reopened in 2008 with a new emphasis on student achievement, and Bennet mended fences with the community leaders. He instituted a “Denver Plan,” which boosted performance standards in the schools and created workshops to teach principals how to lead schools to reform. An early-childhood education program was put in place, and more than 90% of five-year-olds got full-day kindergarten. By 2008, enrollment was at its highest point since 1976, and test scores rose faster than or at the state average in 140 of 164 schools. Still, Denver schools performed below statewide levels: Only 46% of Denver students showed proficiency in reading and 35% in math, compared to the statewide averages of 68% and 53%, respectively.
When Obama was running for president in 2008, Bennet co-hosted a fundraiser for the then-Illinois senator. He was later included in the Democratic candidate’s weekly education conference calls with innovative big city school heads. After Obama was elected, Bennet was on the short list for secretary of Education, although Obama ultimately chose Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan. Yet Bennet was not even considered a long shot for U.S. senator after Obama named Salazar his Interior secretary. That left it up to Democratic Gov. Ritter to appoint a replacement to serve until Salazar’s Senate seat came up for re-election in 2010. Bennet had limited national experience, consisting mainly of a 2004 speech he gave to a group of business leaders denouncing the Iraq War and President George W. Bush. In Colorado political circles, Bennet was on exactly no one’s radar.
The more obvious candidates were outgoing state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, who had ties to Democratic politicians and activists across the state, and Hickenlooper, Bennet’s mentor, who was well-known and popular throughout the state. On Jan. 2, 2009, Ritter astonished just about everyone by naming Bennet, saying he was impressed with his record of bringing diverse interests together to solve problems and by his pragmatic approach to turning around troubled public and private enterprises. Republican leaders relished the prospect of taking on a candidate far less formidable electorally than Hickenlooper or Romanoff in 2010.
On Jan. 22, 2009 he was sworn in as a senator. The other Colorado senator, Democrat Mark Udall, had been elected in November 2008, and so, after just 16 days on the job, Udall became the senior senator from Colorado and Bennet the junior senator. (Vice President Joe Biden, who swore Bennet in, served 28 years before he became the senior senator from Delaware).
In his early days as senator, Bennet began setting up a campaign organization heavy with veterans of the Obama campaign, who had helped the new president carry Colorado by 54%-45%. During his first two years in the Senate, Bennet tackled a number of government reforms. He joined Udall in pushing to change the rules of the filibuster, which had frustrated the Democratic majority by ensuring that almost any piece of legislation needed 60 votes for passage. He also sponsored a bill eliminating annual cost-of-living adjustments for members of Congress until unemployment rates fell significantly. Bennet was a strong supporter of the DISCLOSE Act, which would rewrite campaign finance laws in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee. The high court struck down laws barring corporate and union campaign spending. In late July, the bill garnered 57 votes, a solid majority but not enough to break a threatened filibuster.
As a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, he introduced a bill in August 2010 that would strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s ability to identify and prevent tainted drugs from reaching consumers. During the 2009-2010 fight over health insurance reform, he secured Senate passage of an amendment that established a deficit-neutral reserve fund to address inequities in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to providers. It also required Medicare savings to be invested back into the program.
In March 2009, Bennet joined a coalition of 15 moderate Senate Democrats that met every other week to focus on fiscal discipline and budget matters. He occasionally broke from liberal orthodoxy. In July 2009, he supported an amendment by Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., to allow concealed gun laws in one state to apply to other states with concealed gun laws. On an important state issue, Bennet said he would follow Ritter’s and Udall’s go-slow approach on oil-shale leasing in western Colorado.
Still, Bennet’s frog leap over more prominent state Democrats to the Senate was not forgotten. As he prepared to seek election to the seat in his own right in 2010, he drew a ferocious challenge from state House Speaker Romanoff, who portrayed himself as the outsider in the race and attacked Bennet, a one-time investment banker, as a tool of Wall Street. He also accused Bennet of failing to support the public health insurance option component of health care reform, which many liberals favored. Bennet proved to be a strong fundraiser, and heavily outspent Romanoff. He vehemently defended his health care record and claimed he had indeed supported the public option, which was left out of the final health care law because of opposition from party conservatives. One setback for him was a damaging New York Times article that said Bennet’s efforts to eliminate a $400 million hole in the pension fund when he was Denver schools chief ended up forcing the school district further into debt. The story ran just four days before the primary, as Romanoff was surging in the polls. The two candidates appeared to be in a dead heat as the Aug. 10 primary neared. However, in a year that was widely viewed as tough for incumbents, Bennet defeated Romanoff 54% to 46%.
In November, he faced another tough contest against Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, who had won the GOP nomination over the establishment Republican candidate, former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, with the backing of tea party activists. Buck portrayed Bennet as part of the problem in big-spending Washington, and attacked his votes for Obama’s $767 billion economic stimulus bill and the overhaul of the health insurance system. Buck called for dismantling the U.S. Department of Education and replacing the income tax with a national sales tax. But Buck was also gaffe-prone, and his record in office, including his opposition to abortion in all circumstances, was more susceptible than Norton’s to being painted as extremist, which Bennet and his Democratic allies did at every turn.
During the primary fight with Norton, Buck first raised eyebrows when he said Republican women should vote for him because he didn’t “wear high heels.” Democrats later made an issue of his 2005 decision as district attorney not to prosecute an accused rapist because a jury would likely conclude that her complaint was a case of “buyer’s remorse.” In an appearance on Meet the Press, Buck compared homosexuality to alcoholism, saying, “I think that birth has an influence over it, like alcoholism and some other things. But I think that basically, you have a choice.”
With $11.5 million in campaign funds, Bennet saturated the airwaves with Buck’s missteps and a picture of a candidate who would turn back the clock on abortion rights and who was too extreme for Colorado’s independent-minded voters. Denver Post columnist Vincent Carroll wrote, tongue-in-cheek: “During the height of the onslaught on TV, it was sometimes hard to tell if Buck was a candidate for office or a fugitive from justice.” Buck himself raised $5 million and had help from the GOP-friendly American Crossroads, which invested $5 million in negative ads against Bennet. But the Democrat held the upper hand in the air war in spite of his votes for major elements of the Obama agenda, which were hurting Democratic incumbents elsewhere in the country. Colorado College political scientist Bob Loevy told The Denver Post, “To a very large extent, Bennet made the issue not about the national economy, but about the characteristics of Ken Buck.”
Bennet won 48% to 46%. Exit polls showed that he was heavily favored by independent voters and benefited from a significant gender gap. Women voted for Bennet over Buck 56% to 40%. He carried unaffiliated voters 52% to 41% in the exit polls.
