How Michael Bennet was appointed to the U.S. Senate

If U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet is successful in his bid to become Colorado’s next governor, the Democrat says he’ll handpick his successor in Washington, D.C. 

A lot must happen before then: Bennet would have to beat Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser in the Democratic gubernatorial primary and then win the general election. Then he would have to resign from the Senate to become governor. That would give him the power to pick the person to serve out the remainder of his Senate term, which ends in early 2029.

However, all of those hurdles haven’t stopped the palace intrigue. Nor has it stopped the jockeying for Bennet’s seat among Colorado’s top Democrats.

Bennet was the last person appointed to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy in Colorado. That happened in 2009 when then-Gov. Bill Ritter selected Bennet to fill the seat vacated by Ken Salazar, who was tapped by President Barack Obama to be interior secretary. 

The Colorado Sun recently sat down with Ritter and Jim Carpenter, who was Ritter’s chief of staff at the time, to hear the inside story of Bennet’s selection, which shaped the trajectory of Colorado politics.

“What makes the best U.S. senator?” 

Bennet, who at the time was superintendent of Denver Public Schools, was one of more than a dozen people angling for the Senate appointment. That he had never held — let alone run for — elected office was going against him. In his favor was the personal relationship he had built with Ritter.

Ritter worked with Bennet when Ritter was Denver’s district attorney and Bennet was then-Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s chief of staff. The budget for the Denver District Attorney’s Office is controlled by the city, so the two were effectively colleagues.

“He was really good to work with,” Ritter said.

Then, when Ritter launched his 2005 gubernatorial campaign, Bennet served as an education adviser.

“He was the person I looked to most to talk about education and education policy,” Ritter said.

One night, Ritter, still a gubernatorial candidate, was attending a Democratic organizing meeting at South High School in Denver when he heard Bennet was upstairs defending a school closure at a tense community gathering. Ritter stood in the back and listened. He was impressed with how Bennet handled himself in a tricky situation. 

Bennet was officially on Ritter’s radar.

Fast forward to 2008, when Salazar was picked to lead the Interior Department. Ritter wanted Bennet, hot off being a finalist to be Obama’s education secretary, in the replacement mix.

Also seeking the appointment were Hickenlooper, then-Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette and then-U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter.

Ritter said he called Colorado’s former U.S. senators to help him decide whom to appoint to fill Salazar’s seat. That included Republicans Bill Armstrong and Hank Brown and Democrats Tim Wirth and Gary Hart.

“‘What makes the best U.S. senator?’” Ritter said his question was. “It was intellect that mattered a lot for those senators.”

Bennet checked that box in his interview with Ritter.

“He was very comfortable talking about the Middle East, very comfortable talking about foreign policy and foreign relations,” Ritter said. “He had this ability to talk about this wide swath of issues that senators have to deal with.”

In early January 2009, Ritter announced that Bennet was his guy. The reaction was mixed.

“The one thing that we didn’t know is whether he could win an election,” Ritter said, “and we had to kind of take that as an article of faith that he would be able to win.”

Rod Blagojevich, Barack Obama, the FBI

About the time Salazar was tapped to lead the Interior Department, then-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested for a pay-to-play scheme around his power to appoint someone to fill the Senate seat vacated by Obama when he was elected president. 

The scandal served as Ritter’s backdrop for the process of replacing Salazar.

Ritter said Obama called him during the appointment process.

“His message was, ‘you pick whoever you want,’” Ritter said. “He never suggested that there was a candidate that he preferred, probably imagining that the FBI could be listening to that phone call.”

But even if Obama wasn’t putting his thumb on the scale, others were trying to. 

Ritter said his close friends and confidants were the target of an influence campaign. Meanwhile, a group of prominent women pushed him to appoint the first woman from Colorado to the Senate.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee tried to weigh in, too, because Salazar’s seat was up for grabs in 2010 and at the time Colorado was still very much a swing state.

“They had polled it and they had their favorites,” Ritter said of the DSCC. “I’m not gonna actually talk about who their favorites were, but Bennet was not on their radar.”

In fact, the DSCC hadn’t even included Bennet’s name in the poll.

“Chuck Schumer was not very happy with the pick when I made it,” Ritter said of the Senate Democratic leader. “But Michael had to run in 2010, and Schumer called me in October and said, ‘I’m sorry. You were exactly right. This guy has a chance to be the best U.S. senator there is.’”

Bennet beat Republican Ken Buck in 2010 and has won reelection two times since.

Ritter’s experience may have influenced his decision

Ritter said his own experience being appointed Denver’s district attorney in 1993 by then-Gov. Roy Romer was in the back of his mind as he made the Senate pick. 

Ritter, a 36-year-old prosecutor with no political ties, was the dark-horse candidate among three people, including Beth McCann and Andy Loewi, seeking the job.

“Political wisdom said Gov. Roy Romer had only two real choices for the Denver district attorney’s job,” the Rocky Mountain News wrote at the time, referring to McCann, who was then Denver’s public safety director, and Loewi, a politically connected attorney.

Romer chose Ritter. McCann went on to be a state representative and then was elected Denver’s district attorney in 2016. Loewi died in 2007.

“Romer made sure of one thing in picking Bill Ritter as Denver’s next district attorney. No one is going to accuse him of playing political games with the appointment,” the Rocky Mountain News wrote.

The question now is whether Bennet, should he win Colorado’s gubernatorial race next year, will make a similar dark-horse pick.