Michael Bennet
Michael Farrand Bennet (born November 28, 1964) is an American businessman, lawyer, and Democratic politician. He is the senior senator from Colorado. He became senior senator when Mark Udall was defeated in the 2014 election. Bennet previously worked as managing director for the Anschutz Investment Company, chief of staff to then-Denver mayor (and current Colorado Governor) John Hickenlooper, and the superintendent of Denver Public Schools. Born in New Delhi, India, he is the son of Douglas J. Bennet, a former State Department official and college president. In high school Bennet worked as a Senate page on Capitol Hill. After graduating from Wesleyan University he worked for Ohio Governor Richard Celeste. He went on to receive his law degree from Yale Law School, where he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal. He worked as a law clerk and later as Counsel to the U.S. Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton administration. Bennet worked for six years with the Anschutz Investment Company in Denver. As Managing Director he led the reorganizations of four distressed companies, requiring the restructuring of over $3 billion in debt. As chief of staff to Mayor Hickenlooper, he worked on balancing budgets and negotiating collective-bargaining agreements. He became superintendent of the Denver public school system in July 2005, where he revised a merit pay proposal with the support of local teachers. As one of President Barack Obama's early advisers on education issues, Bennet was speculated in late 2008 as a frontrunner for Obama's United States Secretary of Education. He was instead appointed by Governor Bill Ritter 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 where he defeated Republican Ken Buck. Now serving his first full term, he served as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) for the 2014 elections.