geeky
Bennet was born on November 28, 1964 in New Delhi, India. His father served as an aide to Chester Bowles, then the U.S. ambassador to India. His mother is a Jewish Holocaust survivor who was born in Poland and emigrated to the United States with her family in 1950. Her parents survived imprisonment in the Warsaw Ghetto. His father ran the United States Agency for International Development under President Jimmy Carter, and alsp served as President and CEO of National Public Radio and Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs in the Clinton Administration. His grandfather Douglas Bennet was an economic adviser in Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration.
Bennet grew up in Washington, D.C. At the time his father served as an aide to Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Bennet suffers from dyslexia, which delayed him a year in elementary school. He served as a page on Capitol Hill and in 1987 Bennet earned his B.A. degree in history from Wesleyan University. He later earned his J.D. degree from Yale Law School, where he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal. From 1988 until 1990, before attending 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[16] and as an associate to Washington, D.C. attorney Lloyd Cutler. He later served as Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General during the Bill Clinton administration.
After briefly living in Montana, he moved to Colorado in 1997 and 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. He later worked for fellow Wesleyan alumnus John Hickenlooper, who was elected mayor of Denver. 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. The Denver Post said of his time in that job, “Bennet has been a force—pushing reforms and steering the state’s second-largest district to a culture of success.” But he was criticized for persuading the Denver Board of Education to enter into a 30-year, $750 million financial bond transaction with variable interest rates. As of 2010 the school system paid $115 million in interest and other fees, at least $25 million more than it originally anticipated.
On January 3, 2009, Bennet was named by Colorado Governor Bill Ritter to fill the seat in the United States Senate vacated by United States Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on January 20. Bennet ran for election for a full term as Senator from Colorado in the 2010 election. He received endorsements from President Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats and faced Republican candidate Ken Buck in one of the most expensive campaigns in the country. Bennet won by 851,590 votes (48.1%) to 822,731 (46.4%).
Bennet was reelected to a second term on November 8, 2016, defeating the Republican nominee, El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn. Bennet received 1.36 million votes, 156,248 more than Glenn. He received 31,780 more votes in Colorado than Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who won the state in the presidential election.
In the Senate, Bennet sits on the following committees and subcommittees in the 115th United States Congress: Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Subcommittee on Commodities, Markets, Trade and Risk Management, Subcommittee on Conservation, Forestry and Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Rural Development and Energy, Committee on Finance, Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight, Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy, and the Select Committee on Intelligence.
As of 2010 Bennet had earned a "C+" rating from the National Rifle Association for a mixed record regarding his votes for gun rights. In 2012 Bennet joined then Colorado Senator Mark Udall in asking for stricter gun control, in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. After the shooting, Bennet said, "In Colorado, we support the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, we support the ability of people to hunt and recreate and to protect their families and homes, and we want to keep the wrong weapons out of the hands of the wrong people." In response to the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, Bennet demanded universal background checks regarding gun sales and described the shooting as domestic terrorism.
Bennet supports same-sex marriage, stating "Marriage is a fundamental right that same-sex couples deserve to enjoy, and now they will have the same rights and opportunities that the law grants to Susan and me." He voted in support of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. In November 2009, when the bill was still working its way through Congress, Bennet said that he would support health care reform even if it meant losing the election. He is opposed to Bernie Sanders's push for "Medicare for All".
In September 2009 Bennet cosponsored the DREAM Act which proposed amending the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 by giving residency to immigrants enrolled in higher education programs or serving in the military. In 2013 he was a member of the Gang of Eight, a bipartisan group of four Democratic and four Republican U.S. Senators who introduced comprehensive immigration reform legislation. After President Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Bennet worked with a bipartisan group of Senators to provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers with stronger border protections. Bennet was one of 17 senators to sign a letter to United States Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen demanding that the Trump administration take immediate action in attempting to reunite 539 migrant children with their families.
Bennet was one of the handful of Democratic Senators who have supported construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, voting for it in 2013, 2014, and 2015. He has expressed opposition to Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt questioning Pruitt's decision to repeal the Clean Power Plan.Bennet is a cosponsor of the SAFE Banking Act, which would provide marijuana businesses access to banking services.
On May 2, 2019. Bennet officially declared his intention to run for president during an interview on CBS This Morning. He currently ranks in 14th place among Real Clear Politics' aggregate polling numbers, with 0.6% support.