Interview: Michael Bennet on Colorado Politics and Challenger Ken Buck

Like many Democrats in Congress, Michael Bennet didn't expect he'd have to work so hard to defend his Senate seat this year, but for Bennet the circumstances are a little different than his colleagues' – Bennet didn't expect to be in Washington at all, let alone in the professional fight of his life against Republican Ken Buck.

Two years ago, life was good for Colorado Democrats, including Michael Bennet. The Mile High City was the site of the Democrats' political convention, and one of the happy hosts was Bennet's college buddy, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. Bennet, then Denver's school superintendent, basked that week in the spotlight shined on him by education reformers who were ascendant in the Democratic Party for the first time in a generation. The 2008 convention helped Barack Obama carry Colorado in November, and even before Obama's victory was assured, the reformers were floating Bennet's name as a possible secretary of Education.

That was not to be, but politics – like the good Lord – often works in mysterious ways. President Obama chose Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar as secretary of Interior, leaving the Senate seat open. For reasons known only to himself, Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. bypassed the obvious candidate – Bennet's friend and former boss Hickenlooper – and named Bennet to the vacant Senate seat.

It was an unorthodox move, and a huge surprise in political circles, but it wasn't a stretch on the merits. Bennet was known to be bright, hard-working, personable, and politically ecumenical. He had an impressive résumé and had succeeded at everything he'd done since law school, where he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, and continuing as Justice Department lawyer in the Clinton administration. Bennet moved to Colorado in the 1990s become a managing director of the Anschutz Investment Company (owned by Republican businessman Philip Anschutz), and served for two years as chief of staff to a Democrat -- Mayor Hickenlooper. In 2005, he was named school superintendent where he battled teachers unions, bean counters, and entrenched apathy -- some of it on the part of the at-risk students he was most trying to help.

Nationally known in education circles, Bennet was barely known at all in Colorado outside Denver's city limits. And even before he was sworn in, his 2010 re-election seemed problematic. It's been made all the more difficult by a terrible economy and a sour public mood aimed at incumbents, especially Democrats. And so Bennet has the worst of both worlds: He's painted as a Washington insider, yet, having never run for political office before, he lacks the obvious benefit of incumbency – experience as a campaigner. Meanwhile, for Colorado Democrats, the poll numbers are upside down from two years ago.

Yet, Bennet has hung in there, blasting away at his opponent as an "extremist," and making his case that what's happened in the economy can hardly be blamed on him, and that Democrats have a better answer for the state's woes than the opposition party.

"It's no mystery what happened here – this is the worst economy since the Great Depression," he tells me (interview highlights above, full interview here). "It's a huge challenge because we've got huge structural issues -- it didn't happen just overnight. The more important fight of people's lives is that fight – it's a lot more important than my fight."