Michael Farrand Bennet (born November 28, 1964) is an American attorney and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Colorado, a seat he has held since 2009. A member of the Democratic Party, he was appointed to the seat when Senator Ken Salazar became Secretary of the Interior. He previously worked as a managing director for the Anschutz Investment Company, chief of staff to Denver mayor (and his future Senate colleague) John Hickenlooper, and superintendent of Denver Public Schools. He is married to Susan Daggett.
Bennet is the son of Douglas J. Bennet, a former State Department official and president of Wesleyan University. Early in his career, Bennet worked for Ohio governor Richard Celeste. He received a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School, worked as a law clerk, and was counsel to the U.S. deputy attorney general during the administration of Bill Clinton.
Bennet served then-Mayor Hickenlooper as his chief of staff from 2003 to 2005 and became superintendent of the Denver public school system in July 2005. Governor Bill Ritter appointed Bennet to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Ken Salazar when Salazar became Secretary of the Interior in January 2009. Bennet was elected in the 2010 Senate election, defeating Republican nominee Ken Buck. He chaired the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) for the 2014 cycle. Bennet became Colorado's senior senator in 2015, after Mark Udall was defeated. He was reelected to the Senate in 2016 and 2022.
On May 2, 2019, Bennet announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. He dropped out of the race on February 11, 2020, after a poor showing in the New Hampshire primary. Bennet ran for governor of Colorado in 2026, but lost the Democratic primary to Attorney General Phil Weiser. Bennet is set to become the dean of Colorado's congressional delegation when Representative Diana DeGette leaves office in 2027.
Bennet was born in New Delhi, India. His mother is Susanne Christine Bennet (née Klejman), a retired elementary school librarian and Jewish Holocaust survivor who was born in 1938 in Warsaw, Poland, and immigrated to the United States with her family in 1950. Her parents survived imprisonment in the Warsaw Ghetto. His father was Douglas J. Bennet, who was born in New Jersey, and served as an aide to Chester Bowles, then the U.S. ambassador to India. Douglas Bennet ran the United States Agency for International Development under President Jimmy Carter, served as president and the CEO of National Public Radio (1983–93), and as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs in the Clinton administration (1993–95). His grandfather Douglas Bennet was an economic adviser in Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration.
Bennet grew up in Washington, D.C.; his father served as an aide to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, among other politicians. He was held back in second grade because of his dyslexia. He enrolled at St. Albans School, an elite all-boys preparatory school, and served as a page on Capitol Hill.
In 1987, Bennet earned his Bachelor of Arts in history from Wesleyan University, the alma mater of his father and grandfather. At Wesleyan he was a member of Beta Theta Pi. In 1993, Bennet earned his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School, where he was the editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal.
From 1988 until 1990, when he left to attend Yale, he served as an aide to Ohio governor Richard Celeste. After law school he served as a law clerk for the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and as an associate to Washington, D.C. attorney Lloyd Cutler. He then served as counsel to the Deputy Attorney General during the Bill Clinton administration. His father, Douglas Bennet, worked in the Clinton Administration as well, as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. Following a stint as an assistant to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, Bennet moved west. After briefly living in Montana, he moved with his fiancée to Colorado in 1997. Bennet worked for six years in Denver as managing director for the Anschutz Investment Company, where he led the reorganization of an oil company and helped consolidate three movie theater chains into the Regal Entertainment Group.
While working for Anschutz, Bennet befriended fellow Wesleyan alumnus John Hickenlooper, informally advising the latter's successful campaign for mayor of Denver. Moving back into public service, Bennet served for two years as Hickenlooper's Chief of Staff.
The Denver Board of Education selected Bennet as superintendent of Denver Public Schools on June 27, 2005, and he took office on July 1. He had no experience as a school administrator. Under Bennet's leadership, the Denver Public School system grew student enrollment, decreased dropout rates, and improved graduation rates and college enrollment. Those trends have continued since Bennet left the office. Bennet collaborated with educators and community members to develop the Denver Plan, a commitment to increase student success by focusing on higher expectations, better professional learning opportunities for educators, and deeper engagement with the community and stakeholders. Bennet and the City of Denver also partnered with private philanthropists to increase college enrollment and affordability for DPS graduates. The Denver Post said of his tenure, "Bennet has been a force—pushing reforms and steering the state's second-largest district to a culture of success."
In 2008, Bennet persuaded the Denver Board of Education to enter into a 30-year, $750 million financial bond transaction with variable interest rates designed to fluctuate as economic conditions changed. According to The New York Times, "In short order, the transaction went awry because of stress in the credit markets, problems with the bond insurer and plummeting interest rates." As of 2010 the school system had paid $115 million in interest and other fees, at least $25 million more than it originally anticipated.
Bennet was among the many officials whose names were circulated for United States Secretary of Education in the Obama administration, a position eventually filled by Arne Duncan. He and his wife were early Obama supporters during the 2008 Democratic primaries, and he was among those who advised Obama on education issues.
On January 3, 2009, Bennet was named by Colorado governor Bill Ritter to fill the seat in the United States Senate vacated by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on January 20. Ritter chose Bennet after interviewing several prominent Colorado Democrats, and Bennet took the job with the blessing of Hickenlooper. Upon taking office on January 21, 2009, Bennet became the youngest senator in the 111th Congress for five days, until the appointment of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and he said he would seek election at the end of Salazar's term in 2010.
In his January 2011 article in Time titled "Shaking Schools Up in an Already Tumultuous Year", Andrew J. Rotherham said of Bennet: "If the federal No Child Left Behind Act is modified this year, or if anything else of significance happens in Washington on education policy, this Colorado Democrat will be at the center of it."
Bennet ran for election for a full term as senator from Colorado in the 2010 election. On September 16, 2009, former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff announced his campaign to challenge Bennet for the Democratic nomination. Bennet received endorsements from President Obama, U.S. Senator Mark Udall, and U.S. Representatives Betsy Markey, Jared Polis, and John Salazar of the Colorado congressional delegation. He raised $7 million and had a four-to-one cash advantage over Romanoff.
On August 10, 2010, Bennet defeated Romanoff in the primary and won his party's nomination. He faced Republican nominee Ken Buck. The campaign became one of the most expensive in the country, with the candidates spending a reported $15 million combined, and outside groups another $30 million. Bennet portrayed Buck as an extremist conservative opposed to abortion and direct election of senators, while Buck and the groups supporting him characterized Bennet as a big-spending liberal.