DENVER—One day he’s on TV deriding Washington. The next day he’s standing in the White House Rose Garden watching the president sign a bill into law.
Is Colorado’s newest senator, Democrat Michael Bennet, an insider or an outsider? This year, as Bennet seeks his first election to a seat he was appointed to last fall, Bennet is sending both messages to voters.
In Bennet’s first campaign television ad, he stands in a simple brown coat in front of snowy mountains and refers to Congress as “them”—as if he’s not a member of Congress himself.
But the Democrat also sends campaign signals that he’s got the ear of top officials in Washington and can navigate the halls of power. President Barack Obama campaigned for Bennet last month, and on Friday, another White House insider traveled to Colorado on Bennet’s behalf.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan headlined a $250-a-plate fundraising luncheon in Denver for Bennet, former superintendent of Denver Public Schools. Afterward, at a visit to a Denver elementary school, Duncan said , “I feel so lucky to have him as a partner.”
In Bennet’s ad, though, the new senator portrays himself as an outsider in Congress.
“I’ve been in Washington for only a year,” he says. “But it didn’t take that long to see the whole place is broken. It’s time to give them a wake-up call.”
The day after the ad started airing in Denver and Colorado Springs, Bennet stood behind the president for a Rose Garden bill signing. In campaign mailers recently sent to Democrats, Bennet’s profile stands by Obama’s with a line that says, “Michael Bennet and President Obama are fighting to change a broken system.”
The mixed messages have become sticking points in the senator’s primary battle against former State House Speaker Andrew Romanoff. Both men are trying to seize on voter dissatisfaction with Congress by portraying themselves as outsiders and reformers—while portraying the other as an insider.
Bennet’s campaign sends e-mails deriding Romanoff as one of those “career politicians.” Romanoff dismisses Bennet’s incumbency because he has the backing of “a national political machine.”
The question is, whose messages will prevail with Democrats in a primary contest?
Some Bennet supporters don’t perceive a conflict.
“He is a true outsider—but with the political savvy to become a true insider, too,” said Noel Ginsburg, founder of Denver’s Intertech Plastics. Ginsburg is a board member of a Denver school fundraising foundation and came to know Bennet as superintendent.
Ginsburg described Bennet as “certainly a nontraditional candidate” but also said he has political chops of someone more experienced: “He has the knowledge to be a true partner with the administration.”
It’s a dichotomy Romanoff’s camp isn’t buying.
Bennet “has a problem with figuring out whether he’s running as an insider or an outsider,” said Romanoff’s spokesman, Dean Toda.
Bennet declined to talk at the school Friday about his campaign strategy. Outside, when a reporter asked about his performance in last week’s caucuses, which he lost to Romanoff, Bennet explained, “I’ve never run for office before.”
Bob Loevy, a political scientist at Colorado College, said the tactic of campaigning against an unpopular Congress is an old one. And this year, with public dissatisfaction with Congress running high, Loevy said it makes sense that both Democrats portray themselves as outsiders.
“The campaign literature says more about what the polls say about where Colorado voters are than the careers or qualifications of either candidate,” Loevy said. “Both candidates are running away from Washington.”
