The knock on Michael Bennet is that if he is Superman, it’s only because he has leaped over his own resume in a single bound.
His move to Denver in 1997 came after holding four different jobs in his four years out of Yale law school.
He landed a plum job crunching spreadsheets for a Republican billionaire after admitting in his interview that he was bad with numbers.
He was picked as chief of staff by a Denver mayor who didn’t even know what a chief of staff was supposed to do.
He was named superintendent of Denver schools having never worked in education.
And then, passing over several entrenched politicians faster than a speeding bullet, Bennet was tapped as U.S. senator, when his wife, Susan Daggett, said “never in a million years” did she imagine him running for office.
Bennet’s father calls it extreme adaptability and attributes it to the Wesleyan way. And Douglas Bennet, the former president of storied Wesleyan University, which tops national lists of the best schools, should know.
Liberal arts graduates from Wesleyan are taught to reach beyond what they already know and learn what they need as they move along, said the elder Bennet.
“This may be a Wesleyan prejudice,” Douglas Bennet said, “but you don’t need to walk in with that skill.”
And Wesleyan grads tend to stick together, leading to a well-founded impression that Michael Bennet is a super hero of networking.
Bennet’s rise through the public ranks in Colorado didn’t come without some wandering in the wilderness, figurative and literal. Four different stints as an East Coast lawyer soured him on the legal trade. After meeting Daggett, a fellow Yale Law grad, Bennet was happy to chase her to Montana, where she worked in environmental law.
While she toiled long hours, Bennet plied his woodworking hobby and fixed up old furniture for their cabin. They hiked, fished and talked about which city to raise future children in: Bozeman? Seattle? Washington, D.C.? Bennet was adamantly a “no” on the last one, though he’d grown up there, Daggett said in an interview.
Daggett landed a job in Denver with the Sierra Club’s legal arm, and Bennet followed in 1997. He promptly called some high-level Wesleyan names. His father pointed him to fellow grad John Hickenlooper, at that time an increasingly successful brewpub owner.
Hickenlooper largely ignored Bennet’s queries at the time, wondering why a hotshot Yale Law Review editor would want to make beer. But another Wesleyan contact was Alan Dachs, an alumnus and trustee, an investment company executive and a nationally connected businessman.
Dachs wrote Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz, Daggett recalled in an interview with the blog Firedoglake. From there, Bennet has said, he flubbed the Anschutz interview entirely on his own. He told Anschutz he knew little about numbers, let alone Anschutz’s massive empire of railroad, telecommunications and oil interests.
Anschutz hired Bennet anyway and told him to go to night school to brush up on business. At a recent campaign event at Metropolitan State College of Denver, Bennet told students he returns to Auraria with nostalgia for his “scurrying from one end of campus to the other” between accounting classes.
Bennet soon worked on an oil deal for Anschutz that would become a model: Finding a troubled company in bankruptcy proceedings, using Anschutz money to buy up the company’s bad loans on the cheap in order to take control, and restructuring with less debt in order to find a profit. He did it with Anschutz’s collection of Regal movie theater chains, as well, making millions in the process.
Bennet’s Democratic primary opponent Andrew Romanoff tried to make an issue of Regal’s bankruptcy, layoffs and huge payouts to Bennet and other managers.
By 2003, Bennet had made a belated connection with Hickenlooper, who decided to move from restaurants to a run at mayor. Bennet, former Gov. Roy Romer counsel Cole Finegan, attorney Al LaCabe and others became Hickenlooper’s “kitchen cabinet.”
As Hickenlooper’s election looked certain, Bennet asked him who would be his chief of staff. “What’s a chief of staff do?” Hickenlooper responded.
“He explained it to me,” Hickenlooper said. “I said I’d probably have to get somebody from out of state with those skills. He said, ‘You must not think very highly of me.’ I said, ‘You would never leave; you’ve got $7 million (not yet vested at Anschutz that) you’d have to walk away from.’ “
Bennet’s response, Hickenlooper said: “You never know unless you ask.”
That began a relationship that remains as close as a brotherhood, friends say, despite Gov. Bill Ritter passing over the better-known Hickenlooper to choose Bennet for the empty Senate seat last year. Hickenlooper held his second of two recent fundraisers for Bennet on Friday.
Bennet took the job, left millions on the table with Anschutz, and walked into City Hall telling everyone they had to cut their budgets. Bennet caused a stir during the campaign with back-of-napkin calculations showing that Denver faced a $50 million funding gap.
“We all understood how this would come across,” said Finegan, who became city attorney. “We tried to convey that we thought it was a privilege to work for the city. There was a lot of hope, a lot of excitement.”
Perhaps the stickiest challenge for Bennet was helping lead negotiations with unions over wage cuts and discipline issues. Hickenlooper tangled with safety unions over pay raises and other contract issues in 2004 and 2005. The administration, meanwhile, was under intense pressure to rein in police with tighter oversight after several high-profile citizen shootings.
Bennet and Hickenlooper had been together in City Hall for about a year when Denver schools superintendent Jerry Wartgow let the mayor know he’d be leaving. They kicked around names of possible replacements, and Hickenlooper mentioned Bennet.
“Who’s Michael Bennet?” Wartgow responded.
And when Hickenlooper broached the idea to an unknowing Bennet, the future senator knew enough to realize his education resume would look mighty thin to a picky school board.
“His reaction,” Hickenlooper said, “was, ‘WHAT?’ “
Michael Booth: 303-954-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com
Michael Bennet
Age: 45
High School: St. Alban’s School, Washington, D.C., 1983
College: Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., 1987
Law School: Yale Law School, New Haven, Conn., 1993
Key jobs held: Associate lawyer at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering; special assistant to the U.S. deputy attorney general; special assistant to the U.S. attorney, district of Connecticut; managing director, Anschutz Investment Co.; chief of staff to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper; superintendent of Denver Public Schools; appointed U.S. senator in January 2009.
