Nearly a year has passed since U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet launched his bid to become Colorado’s next governor, but the Democrat’s campaign is still fielding questions from voters about why they should help him leave Washington before his term ends.
The subject came up no less than five times on a recent video call the Bennet campaign held for top supporters and volunteers to discuss strategy and the state of the race. The meeting was supposed to be private, but a recording was made without authorization and obtained by The Colorado Sun.
There was talk of the prominent Boulder activist who won’t support Bennet’s gubernatorial campaign because she wants him to remain in Congress and put his seniority to use. There was mention of a Steamboat Springs political mixer where a crowd of about 50 people had a lot of questions about why the senator now wants to be governor. And there was discussion about how house parties are proving to be an effective way to assuage concerns about the state giving up one of its longest-serving members of the Senate, especially when President Donald Trump is in the White House.
“It’s a great way of reaching people who might be on the fence or who might be trying to figure out who they want to support — or they have, like, really big questions about why Michael’s actually running for governor instead of staying in the Senate,” Susan Daggett, Bennet’s wife, said on the call.
The fact that questions remain about Bennet’s attempted job switch could be a benign indication that voters are just starting to pay attention to the governor’s race. After all, the primary isn’t until June. Bennet and his staff say it’s coming up less often than it did at the beginning of the campaign, when they concede it came up a lot.
“I think he has a really compelling answer,” campaign manager Nellie Moran said on the call. “So I love when people ask him that question.”
But it also could be an indication that his answer isn’t landing.
“They have kind of struggled to deliver that message,” said Alvina Vasquez, a Democratic political strategist in Colorado who isn’t working on the race and hasn’t backed a candidate.
Bennet’s answer
Bennet’s primary opponent, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, has made keeping Bennet in Washington a key part of his pitch to voters. The Weiser campaign has even created bumper stickers that say “Weiser for governor. Bennet for Senate.”
“Sen. Bennet has 17 years’ experience in the U.S. Senate,” Weiser said at a debate last month. “You heard him talk about his important work in the Senate on immigration. We need federal leadership on immigration. He’s positioned to provide it. I’m gonna keep him there, doing that important work.”
(Weiser has also, ironically, criticized Bennet’s record in Congress, specifically Bennet’s votes for some of Trump’s cabinet nominees.)
Bennet, in an interview with The Sun on Sunday, said “it’s an amazingly convenient talking point for Phil.”
“But that’s not how this works,” he said at his campaign office in downtown Denver.
Bennet said that he thinks questions about his decision to try to leave the Senate are natural — ”not a lot of people historically have made this choice” — and that he feels they reflect support for his time in Washington. Some want him to stay because they think he’s done a good job since arriving in the Senate in 2009. He was most recently reelected to a six-year term in 2022.
But Bennet said he wants to leave the Senate because he thinks as governor he’d be best positioned to both continue his pushback against Trump while simultaneously helping Democrats nationally find a way out of their political rut.
“It’s important for us to have leadership that is fighting back against what Trump is doing,” he said. “It’s important for us to remind people about what it looks like to live in a democracy that is functioning the way our founders wanted it to function. That’s really important. But it’s insufficient. We also need to provide a vision — a compelling vision — of what the future is going to look like.”
Bennet thinks Colorado can provide answers to the issues that he believes led to Trump’s political success — the high costs of health care, child care and housing, as well as the nation’s growing wealth inequality. He said “Colorado can ride to the country’s rescue.”
“There is absolutely no indication in human history that if you don’t have a society where people feel like their family can move forward if they’re working hard that you can hold onto a democracy,” Bennet said. “I believe very strongly that Trump is a symptom of those economic challenges, and has to be understood as a symptom of those economic challenges.”
Why can’t he tackle those things from his perch in the Senate? Bennet said it comes down to the political realities of Congress.
“There’s a way of getting things done, even within the dysfunction that exists there,” he said. “But I believe that we’re living in a place where, for at least the next decade or so, we’re going to continue to see the perpetual game of shirts and skins that is not going to deliver change for the American people.”
He added: “I’m sad to say this, but I believe it’s true that the Republicans in the Senate have become sort of a cult of personality for serving Donald Trump and his family and their economic and political interests. I believe the Democrats in the Senate in general are not coming to grips with the degree to which the Democratic Party was repudiated in the last election. And it’s for those reasons that I actually don’t think that is the place for me to be able to provide answers.”
Bennet is one of several senators running for governor this year, including Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn. They’re getting similar questions — and have answers similar to Bennet’s.
“Everybody asks me, ‘Why are you doing this?’” Republican U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama told The Associated Press. “Because I think I can do more good in that seat than I can in this one.”
Bennet said Weiser’s criticism of his decision to leave the Senate distracts from what the gubernatorial race should really be about.
“I think it’s completely uncompelling, with respect to the question of who should be the governor of Colorado, at a moment when we are under attack from Donald Trump and virtually nobody feels like their kids are going to be able to afford to live in this state,” he said. “We should be focused on those issues.”
Who Bennet would choose to replace him in the Senate
Another thing the volunteer call revealed is that Bennet’s campaign and its supporters are fielding a lot of questions about how the senator plans to handle succession if he wins the governor’s race.
Bennet has said he won’t resign from the Senate until after he’s sworn in as governor, which would give him the power to select his replacement to serve out the last two years of his term.
Some volunteers and supporters sought advice on the campaign call about how to answer questions from prospective voters on who Bennet plans to select as his replacement if he wins the governor’s race, and how that could affect Colorado’s influence in the Senate.
Daggett told supporters to answer questions this way: “There will be some really great, young Democrat who is there to vote exactly the same way that Michael votes.”
She also said Bennet won’t talk about who he is considering to be his replacement while he’s campaigning. “I don’t think he’s thinking about it yet.”
Still, a shadow primary has begun as top Democrats jockey for the seat. Democratic U.S. Reps. Joe Neguse, Brittany Pettersen and Jason Crow are thought to be at the top of the list — as acknowledged by a volunteer on the campaign call — and even Gov. Jared Polis, who is term limited, has appeared to show interest.
Colorado’s deep Democratic bench, and voter behavior in the state in recent years, makes people like Gunnison County Commissioner Jonathan Houck feel fine about Bennet leaving the Senate. Houck, a Democrat, originally endorsed Weiser, but switched to Bennet when the senator entered the race.
“I don’t feel like we’re going to lose out on having good representation in Washington, D.C. — and strong, effective leadership — if Michael was the governor and someone was appointed to fill his existing seat,” he said.
Managing two jobs at once
Finally, the volunteer call also highlighted how it’s been difficult for Bennet to manage running for governor while still serving in the Senate — and how those two responsibilities are often colliding.
Daggett and Moran painted a picture of a strained schedule.
“The challenge is Michael’s not here enough,” Daggett said. “He’s got a limited amount of time on the weekends when he’s here, and he balances that between fundraising events and nonfundraising events.”
Vasquez worked on Polis’ 2018 campaign, while Polis was still serving as a U.S. representative, and said that managing both roles was very difficult. Members of Congress typically spend at least four days each week in Washington, meaning — after travel is factored in — they have a little more than 48 hours in state.
“You have to create more high-touch moments in a really limited time frame,” she said. “You have to make every moment count.”
Bennet said he wouldn’t describe his time constraints as a problem so much as a reality of being fully committed to his work in the Senate and as a candidate.
“I am grateful to have the chance to work seven days a week for the people of Colorado,” he said, explaining how he arrived back in Colorado after midnight on Saturday and then still went on to do a day trip to the Western Slope. “There are cocktail parties in Denver that I miss every now and then because I’m fighting on the floor of the Senate. There are previously scheduled political events that I miss sometimes because I’m on the floor of the Senate. That’s always been true. That’s the nature of working there four days a week.”
Bennet also served in the Senate during his brief 2020 presidential campaign.
But as the primary creeps closer, the scheduling demands will likely only become more intense.
“Neither of the campaigns I feel like have kicked into high gear yet,” Vasquez said.