U.S. Senate

The U.S. Senate is one of two chambers in the federal legislative branch. Senators are able to propose and vote on legislation, and bills must pass both the House and the Senate to have a chance of becoming law. Senators have a few specific responsibilities House members don’t, most notably the power of “advice and consent” to confirm Presidential nominees for positions including Supreme Court Justices and federal court judges, along with secretaries and top-level officials in key federal departments. Senators confirm treaties, and as we saw in 2019-2021, the Senate is the chamber that holds official trials which could result in the removal of a person from office, in case the House passes Articles of Impeachment.

Every state in the Union gets two Senators, and they are elected to six-year terms with no term limits. The candidate with the most votes wins the seat, and it is not required to reach 50% to win.

Michael Bennet, Democratic

Michael Bennet

Michael Bennet was appointed to Colorado’s U.S. Senate vacancy in 2009, and won re-election for full six-year terms in 2010 and 2016. He defeated current U.S. Rep. and then-District Attorney of Weld County Ken Buck in 2010, and defeated El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn in 2016. Bennet ran for President for a period of about nine months during the 2020 election cycle, but dropped out of the race in February 2020 before the Colorado presidential primary election.

Outside of the Senate, Bennet’s life experience includes serving as the Superintendent of Denver Public Schools, working as managing director for the Anschutz Investment Company, serving as Chief of Staff for former Mayor of Denver John Hickenlooper, and working for the former Democratic Governor of Ohio Richard Celeste. He earned a bachelor of arts degree from Wesleyan University, and a juris doctor degree from Yale Law School. After law school, he worked as a law clerk, as an associate to Washington D.C. attorney Lloyd Cutler, and worked as Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton administration.

Today, Bennet serves on the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, the Senate Committee on Finance, and the Select Committee on Intelligence. He also chairs the following subcommittees: Conservation, Forestry and Natural Resources; Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure; and serves on the following subcommittees: Commodities, Markets, Trade and Risk Management; Rural Development and Energy; Taxation and IRS Oversight; and Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy.

Key Votes: Since Georgia voters elected Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in January 2021 runoff elections, the partisan balance of the Senate has been 50 Democrats, 50 Republicans. It’s considered a Democratic majority since Vice President Kamala Harris is the official tiebreaker vote. This narrow advantage has also given Democrats an opportunity to pass some major pieces of legislation, and Bennet’s vote has been part of what made these legislative and judicial advances possible.

In the past few years, Bennet has:

• Voted to confirm our newest Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
• Voted against Trump-era Supreme Court nominees Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch, although Bennet’s vote wasn’t enough since Republicans had a majority in the Senate and held the Presidency.
• Voted to remove Trump from office in formal Senate trials twice, after the House passed Articles of Impeachment.
• Voted for the following major bills: Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act, American Rescue Plan Act, PACT Act (strengthens health care and benefits for veterans and their survivors), CHIPS and Science Act, and Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
• At least 82 Article III federal judges, not including Supreme Court Justices, have been nominated and confirmed in the Senate since President Joe Biden took office. None of these were close enough to require a tiebreaker from the VP, but there was a 50-49 vote, three at 49-47, and one at 50-47, and Bennet voted in favor of all of them.

Impeachment: In short, the House is able to pass Articles of Impeachment, and if they pass the House, the Senate can hold a trial to decide if a person should be convicted and removed from office. Bennet has twice voted to convict President Donald J. Trump in a formal Senate trial, though it takes a two-thirds vote in the Senate to convict and there weren’t enough votes to remove Trump – even after the insurrection on January 6, 2021.

Bennet released a statement following the second trial in early 2021, saying in part: “In my view, his egregious refusal to accept the results of a lawful election and his intimidation of election officials were sufficient to warrant conviction. In the end, he stopped at nothing, inciting a mob to attack the Capitol to overturn the lawful election of President Biden, putting American lives, principles, and democratic institutions at mortal risk.”

Legislative Priorities: Bennet has been in the Senate since 2009, but has only been part of a Democratic “trifecta” (control of House, Senate, and the Presidency) in 2009-10 and 2021-22. It is not always easy to pass federal bills with any sort of a partisan leaning or controversy without majorities, but this has also been additionally complicated in the Senate because of issues including filibuster/cloture rules and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decisions to delay taking left-leaning bills up for a vote. Bennet was the primary sponsor of at least 13 bills that have been signed into law, plus he’s been a co-sponsor of many bills that were enacted.

Congress does pass many bills that some of us might consider relatively minor, at least compared to bills with giant price tags like the American Rescue Plan Act. This one is just for illustration, but Bennet sponsored the West Fork Fire Station Act of 2017, which provided for the conveyance of a Forest Service site in Dolores County, Colorado, to be used for a fire station. Earthshaking? No, but certainly beneficial for the people of southwestern Colorado.

Readers can find a list of bills Bennet has sponsored at this link. But for the purposes of this guide, it might be more informative to look at Bennet’s legislative priorities and policy platforms than to go through a list of smaller bills that he carried through the legislative process.

Child Tax Credit: Bennet has been a leading voice for years in trying to expand the federal Child Tax Credit CTC, which can help parents make financial ends meet. This linked story from Colorado Public Radio might give readers a more personal understanding of how the CTC helps parents, and how a temporary expansion of the CTC lifted an estimated “40 percent of poor kids to above the poverty line.” The existing CTC of a maximum of $2,000 per child is still in place, but the American Rescue Plan Act allowed a temporary expansion of up to “$3,600 per child 5 years old and under, and $3,000 per child ages 6 to 17, with the amount falling for higher-income households.” The expansion lasted for six months.

“Here we had a case where tax cuts for working people and poor people weren’t [extended] and Congress went home. And I think it’s a disgrace,” Bennet said in the CPR story.

Firearms Safety: Bennet voted in favor of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, and gave the following statement in advance of his vote: “I think we need to show them, and the young people that are here today, the young people that are living all over America, that we aren’t so broken that we can’t respond to one more massacre of kids at a school.”

Bennet has recently introduced the School Shooting Safety and Preparedness Act in the Senate, which would in part call for data gathering on school shootings to help guide policymakers of the future as they grapple with this horrible part of modern American life. Bennet also supports increasing the age for buying semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21, universal background checks, banning bump stocks, and limiting ammunition magazine capacities.

Abortion: Bennet supports the right for people to terminate a pregnancy, and supports federal legislation to protect those rights including the Women’s Health Protection Act (HR 3755), which has passed the House but not the Senate. In mid-September, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina announced a proposal for a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, and Bennet released the following statement: “The nationwide abortion ban introduced by Senate Republicans is completely outrageous. It would affect every state, defying the will of Colorado voters and the majority of the Americans who support reproductive freedom.”

Tax Policy: Bennet voted against the Trump-era “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA)” that in part provided significant tax cuts for higher-earning Americans. He supports reversing the TCJA, though as of September 2022 the law remains in effect, saying that “trickle-down economics” have not helped the lower or middle classes. Bennet voted for the recent Inflation Reduction Act, which in part includes a 15% minimum tax on the country’s largest corporations, according to the Denver Post.

Climate: Bennet voted for the Inflation Reduction Act as mentioned above, and the bill includes tax credits for energy efficient commercial buildings, new energy efficient homes, and electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure. He also voted for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which included financing for carbon capture technologies, protecting the electric grid, and developing a national charging network for electric vehicles.

Health Care: Bennet has announced his support for a public option health care plan called Medicare X, which would work within the health care exchange network to offer families, individuals, and small businesses low-cost health insurance choices. He has introduced a bill in the Senate called the “Medicare-X Choice Act of 2021” (S. 386), but as of September 2022 it had not moved out of Senate committee. He has also introduced the Affordable Insulin Now Act with Sen. Warnock, which would requires many insurance plans to cap patients’ out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 per month.

Is Bennet a Centrist?

It’s not always possible to classify a politician by political identity, especially when they have to deal with multiple issues and might have nuanced opinions. For one illustration, I’m including this left-to-right chart from govtrack.us, with Bennet’s “ranking” shown with the purple triangle. Readers might notice that he’s sort of on the right edge of the middle of Democrats – not as left as an AOC-type legislator, but also not a Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema (Sinema is the Democrat farthest to the political right in this chart).

Campaign Website: https://michaelbennet.com/

Joe O’Dea, Republican

Joe O’Dea {Photo by Jeffrey Beall}

Joe O’Dea, Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in 2022, is a long-time businessman who is making his first run for elected office. He founded a small concrete paving company in 1986, and incorporated this company using the name it bears today, Concrete Express Inc., in 1988.

Today, Concrete Express is a “full-service heavy highway civil contractor” offering services for projects including roads and bridges, waterways, utilities, and site development. The website konaequity.com says the company has $41,295,000 in annual revenue, and has 181 employees. O’Dea and his wife Celeste also own event venues in Denver, such as the Ironworks venue on Larimer Street.

O’Dea was one of two Senate candidates who qualified for the Republican primary ballot through the State Assembly process. He proceeded to defeat State Representative Ron Hanks in the primary election by 55.5% to 45.5%.

Since O’Dea has never held elected office, he doesn’t have much of a public voting record, so I’ve reviewed his website and media statements to help illustrate his policy stances. As of late September, his campaign website is somewhat scant on policy statements, but here are a few of the top points:

• Reducing the national debt: He points out that the current debt is $28 trillion, which works out to about $225,000 for every U.S. taxpayer. He says this is “saddling our kids and grandkids” with debts that can only be paid for with “huge tax increases.”
• O’Dea said he signed the “U.S. Term Limits Pledge,” and he said he has promised to serve only two terms in the Senate.
• He called the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan a “foreign policy blunder of epic proportions.”
• According to O’Dea, the U.S. is losing its cities to “homelessness and crime,” partially because “the political elite” won’t stand with police and first responders.

Abortion: O’Dea’s campaign has attempted to portray him as moderate on abortion, and it might be possible to view him as not as extreme as certain other Republicans running for office since he has said he does not support a blanket ban on all abortions. However, a letter posted on is website says he “strongly supports a nationwide ban on late-term abortion, a nationwide ban on taxpayer funding for abortion, a nationwide parental choice requirement, and will fight any attempt to make religious hospitals perform a procedure they object to.”

The Colorado Sun reported in August that he voted for the 2020 Colorado ballot measure Proposition 115, which would have outlawed abortions after 22 weeks of gestation except in cases of rape, incest, or conditions that threaten the life of the mother. The proposition would have also criminalized physicians who perform abortions after 22 weeks. In the Colorado Sun story, his campaign said he wasn’t planning to pursue abortion legislation if elected, but would use a 20-week threshold to guide whether he would support a bill. In mid-September, the Denver Post reported that he would not support Sen. Lindsey Graham’s proposal to ban abortions after 15 weeks.

Firearms Safety: O’Dea opposed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that was passed in Congress this year and signed into law. “We’ve got plenty of laws on the books already,” he said during a Colorado Sun primary debate in June.

He did an interview with KOA radio host Ross Kaminsky, and said “maybe they should” look at requiring potential semi-automatic weapons purchasers to be at least 21 years old. In the interview, he said he did not support expanded background checks, magazine capacity limits, or increasing age limits for weapons purchases across the board. He said he believes people should have the right to defend themselves with firearms, and said addressing mental health issues was a higher priority for him than passing new gun laws.

Elections: O’Dea said during a February Republican Senate candidate forum in Ft. Lupton that he did not believe the 2020 election was stolen. This was a position contrary to two of the other seven Republican Senate candidates running at that time, while three did not answer the question directly.

Energy: He shared policy statements with Fox News in 2022, including this statement on energy: “Let’s unleash American innovation and modernize permitting so we can modernize our grid and bring more clean energy online like wind, solar and nuclear. Let’s also get pipelines moving. Let’s get natural gas permits on the Western Slope and across the United States, along with LNG terminal permits, in the review process and approved and open new markets for our natural gas in Europe and Asia.”

Crime and Security: Again according to Fox, he supports actions including: better securing the border between the U.S. and Mexico – including work on the border wall; hiring additional law enforcement officers; and cracking down on drug cartels and the fentanyl market.

Campaign Website: https://www.joeodea.com/

Brian Peotter, Libertarian

Brian Peotter of Broomfield is the Libertarian Party’s nominee in the U.S. Senate race. He ran unsuccessfully for Broomfield City Council in 2021, and a Daily Camera story on the race listed him as a “project manager.” For a brief run-down of his policy positions:

• Freedom from Federal mandates, and emergency powers. All Americans must have freedom of movement and person.
• Inflation: The printing press is the problem. Spending more than we have requires us to financialize our debt.  I will audit the federal reserve, cut spending below income, and push for market based interest rates.
• Gun Rights: When the second amendment was proposed, our founding fathers owned cannons. Americans have rights, not permissions. The right to own weapons of war, shall not be infringed. It is an act of war to disarm any American.

As a writer, I don’t normally care a great deal about significant others in political races, but the Colorado Times Recorder has reported on what I believe to be a significant piece of information regarding Melody Peotter – who is also a candidate for the Colorado Senate District 25 seat in 2022.

According to the story, Melody Peotter lists Lindell Management (yes, Mike Lindell of MyPillow) “as her employer on her personal financial disclosure form.  Lindell funds Cause of America, the national conspiracist organization Lindell modeled upon the Colorado-based U.S. Election Integrity Plan (USEIP), and he told Reuters that he pays other election-focused employees through Lindell Management…Peotter was one of the original members of USEIP. Founder Holly Kasun added Peotter and her husband Brian to the organization’s Basecamp communication platform on Nov. 28, 2020, the same day it was created.”

Campaign Website: https://www.peotter.com/

Tijani J. Cole, Unity Party

Tijani J. Cole, Unity Party candidate for U.S. Senate, has not held elected office but ran unsuccessfully for the Colorado State Senate as a Democrat in 2016 for the Senate District 23 seat.

According to Ballotpedia, he is originally from Denver and earned a bachelor’s degree from Colorado College in 1987, a law degree from the University of Denver in 1990, a graduate degree from the University of Denver in 2001, and a Ph.D. from Colorado College in 2010. Cole’s professional experience includes serving as a professor, college president, high school principal, district court magistrate, municipal court judge, reserve police officer, and deputy state public defender. He is a member of the American Judges Association, the Boulder Bar Association, American Football Coaches Association, and he is a certified law enforcement officer.

For a brief run-down on his policy positions from his campaign website:

• Energy: I plan to partner with our Oil and Gas companies and other industries to increase jobs and protect our natural resources for years to come. I truly believe that there IS a way to provide safety to our communities, respect local control and work together for common sense solutions.
• Transportation: I will lead the fight for better transportation via mass transit and improving roads.
• Education Reform: We must find ways to improve quality with the funding we have and reduce the over testing of our students. We must make education more easily accessible to more non-traditional populations.
• Climate: Climate change is real. Pollution is real. Energy production is real. Clean water needs are real. Ignoring these areas poses not only economic problems but serious health hazards to everyone on the planet.
• Higher Education: Higher education must be affordable and available to all. An educated population enhances every aspect of American life. Education broadens the mind.

Campaign Website: https://www.tjcoleforcolorado.com/

Frank Atwood, Approval Voting Party

Frank Atwood of the Approval Voting Party (AVP) has not served in elected office, but this is not his first time running. He was a 2016 AVP candidate for president, and in 2020 he was the AVP’s Vice Presidential candidate in Colorado and Vermont. Previously, Atwood was a 2014 Libertarian candidate for Congress in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District.

According to his campaign website, after graduating from high school, Atwood served in the Army, was awarded a Purple Heart in Viet Nam, earned an engineering degree, and worked for the Navy for 25 years. In 2008, he said he was introduced to William Poundstone’s book Gaming the Vote, Why Elections Aren’t Fair (and What We Can Do About It).  Since then, he has been actively advocating for a single issue: Approval Voting.

Campaign Website: https://www.approvalvotingparty.com/frank-atwood/

Richard’s Take

I support Bennet, not by any means a surprise, but this race ought to be a no-brainer for anyone except a partisan Republican or staunch conservative. Bennet had deep experience in finance, education, and administration even before becoming a Senator, and he’s now had about 13 years direct experience in the job he’s running for.

O’Dea is a first-time candidate, with admirable experience in running his own business but not much else to offer that’s truly relevant to this job except conservative positions. Selections of his public statements to date might reflect that he’s not really ready to walk onto a stage as one of 100 Senators operating in what used to be called “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” Still, the story of the self-made businessman O’Dea running against Bennet – an admittedly privileged East Coast attorney from an Ivy League school – could make for a great narrative if the stakes weren’t so high.

Supporters will claim that O’Dea is a centrist, and that might have seemed a defensible position when comparing him to his outspoken opponent in the GOP primary Ron Hanks, but most of his positions are conservative across the board, even if not purely conservative on a few issues. He may actually have some nuanced viewpoints, but whether what seems to be his campaign strategy of trying to paint himself as moderate is for real or for show, what really matters is how O’Dea would vote as a Senator if he should be elected.

Control of the U.S. Senate is a big deal, and the partisan balance stands at 50-50 right now. We can only guess as to how some of the other key Senate races will go this year, but one seat can literally determine the balance of power. If Dems lose the Senate, it’s completely possible that Mitch McConnell would regain the Senate Majority Leader’s seat. McConnell has already said that it’s unlikely Biden would get another Supreme Court nominee appointed if that becomes the case. Hopefully Americans and Coloradans are starting to catch on about the power of other federal judgeships below the SCOTUS level, especially when hard-core partisans are appointed, and that’s also at stake in this election.

Losing the Senate would also more than likely mean the defeat of liberal/progressive bills, and that’s with or without the filibuster. McConnell was known to sit on liberal/progressive bills and try to delay binding votes in the Senate when he was Majority Leader, and it worked for him so there’s no reason to believe he would do anything differently with another stint in power.

And it’s not impossible that Republicans might take control of the U.S. House this year. I’m really not trying to use scare tactics here, but if that happens bills sponsored by Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert might stand a chance of passing the House. If you’re concerned about that possibility, at the bare minimum you ought to do your part to make sure Bennet wins and Democrats control the Senate, so if bad bills come over from the House they could be defeated. Plus, probably every Boulder-area progressive or liberal ought to be a little more concerned about helping Yadira Caraveo win in the new Colorado 8th Congressional District, compared with some of the things we’re frankly wasting precious time on at this troublesome stage in American history.

Please don’t mess around with this Senate race. There’s far too much at stake to cast a protest vote, to vote for a minor-party candidate, or to avoid voting.