Between President Joe Biden’s historic decision to end a reelection bid and an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, national politics this summer have been anything but normal.
Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet’s concerns about Biden’s campaign prospects earned him national and local headlines, but some of his and fellow Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper’s other work this summer hasn’t received the same attention.
To catch up on this work and get a feel for the senators’ plans for the rest of the term, The Durango Herald sat down with both senators in early August. While they have specific Colorado priorities, some of their plans are intertwined with broader Democratic goals, including pushing Vice President Kamala Harris to a victory in November.
Even without decade-defining events like those of this summer, the heightened partisanship of a presidential election typically splatters into the halls of Congress months ahead of November.
This summer, the legislative body shifted into a campaign mode several times, with party leaders promoting legislation and scheduling votes that highlighted campaign issues for their party’s presidential candidate. Additionally, some key discussions and votes get stalled until after the November election, when parties will know if they have majorities in the next session or not.
Bennet and Hickenlooper, both Democrats, aren’t immune to this partisan phenomenon. Some of their key policy goals came to the floor this summer, only to fail after getting caught up in the political whirlwind of campaign issues.
For Bennet, this came with the recent vote on a major tax bill including an expanded child tax credit, a policy he’s championed for years. Despite knowing it was unlikely to pass the 60 votes needed to advance, Democrats forced the vote right before August recess in order to be able to criticize Republicans for killing the bill.
For Hickenlooper, this happened earlier in the summer when Senate Republicans blocked both the Right to Contraception Act and, soon after, the Right to IVF Act.
Ahead of the vote on the Right to IVF Act, he had spoken on the Senate floor about how he and his wife were able to use IVF to have their child after being told their chances to conceive naturally would have been one-in-a-million. Standing next to a picture of his 1-year-old son, he called attempts to restrict IVF and other fertility treatments “un-American.”
Republicans decried the bill as a political stunt, noting how it had been sent to the Senate floor just 10 days after its introduction, an extremely short amount of time compared to most other legislation. Hickenlooper said he thinks these policies will pass in another session of Congress when partisan campaigning cools down.
Republicans put forth another bill that would have banned Medicare funding to states where IVF is banned, but Democrats blocked it over certain specifics in the bill.
For now, though, the presidential race remains at the forefront of local and national politics.
After endorsing Harris almost immediately after Biden announced his departure from the race, both senators echoed the sentiment across the Democratic Party as enthusiasm swelled around then-presumed Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris: hope.
Bennet, who had shared concerns that Democrats could “lose the whole thing” if Biden continued his reelection bid, said the Democratic Party is now in “much better shape” for Congressional races, too.
“I think it's very exciting to feel the energy, especially among young people in Colorado and across the country as they contemplate a race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump,” he said.
Bennet said he believes Democrats were initially on their way to losing not just the presidency, but in the Senate in the House. Today, he views things differently.
“I think we're in much better shape in the House than we were. We’re probably in better shape in the Senate. And I think it's going to be close, and it's going to be a hard race, but I think Kamala Harris has a real chance to win,” he said.
Hickenlooper also said he could feel the difference in energy across the Democratic Party in the week after Biden’s decision to drop out.
“In Colorado, the energy’s off the charts,” Hickenlooper said. “People are very excited about volunteering, raising money, all those kinds of things that you do through elections.”
He also believes the party’s newfound vigor will carry through November, saying Harris is a “force of nature” who will continue to bring that energy by not letting anyone tell her which issues to address.
“She wants to take us forward,” Hickenlooper said. “The contrast is Trump wants to take us backwards. MAGA wants to go backwards.”
Bennet pondered how Democrats can keep up this energy through election day in November, saying he thinks Democrats have to remember to “take nothing for granted” and know what’s at stake in the election. He also said he thinks most people know what’s at stake, but some feel hopeless about whether politics will improve.
“I think that a lot of people look at it and say, ‘it's just a mess,’” he said. “I mean, I hear that all the time, but I think that what we have to do is make sure people understand how hard it has been to make change, not as an excuse, but to inspire people to do the work that they need to do, really to make a difference here.
Even with the presidential election overshadowing almost anything else, both Senators continue to work on their own legislative priorities.
Hickenlooper said he hopes to keep climate change at the forefront of the conversation and see a permitting reform bill keep moving forward after it passed out of committee on July 31. The Energy Permitting Reform Act, the result of around two years of discussions between parties, aims to enhance the nation’s ability to build out power lines and develop both renewable and fossil fuel energy sources.
“Climate change is still the greatest inherent threat. An inherent threat, like climate change, is something we have no excuse not to address,” he said, adding that the bill will help reduce carbon emissions by five to seven gigatons.
He admitted that he’s not a fan of all the bill’s provisions, but he values the moment of compromise, something that seems increasingly rare in national politics these days.
“The permitting bill contains components that I find not good, I think potentially could be harmful, but the overall bill, both sides had to compromise,” he said. “And I think that's what makes a democracy so successful, is … everyone's at the table should have a voice.”
Hickenlooper saw several of his bipartisan bills pass via the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee this summer, potentially setting them up for Senate votes later on. Among these was the VET AI Act, which would set up guidelines for third party audits for AI technology testing and development.
Hickenlooper also said a bill related to apprenticeships remain a long-term priority for him, though those bills may not move until next year.
“Getting the kids who really aren't interested in going to college, getting them out into the world, getting them some life experience and work experience, while they're still in high school, is a very powerful, foundational shape to build,” he said.
Environmental issues are also of concern to Bennet, who hopes to keep fighting to keep conservation issues in a five-year farm bill. That bill, in which over three-fourths of it typically goes toward funding for nutrition programs, is facing an uphill battle to pass before the session ends, with neither the House nor the Senate Committee on Agriculture having released drafts yet.
“We've spent a lot of time, over many years, getting the conservation title increased by billions of dollars, both for forestry and for soil health,” he said. “And we've done that as part of the infrastructure bill, as far as the inflation Reduction Act. I don't want to see that go away. And there are people that are trying to take away some of this conservation law and use them for other things in the Farm Bill. So we're going to have to fight that out over the next few months, I suspect.”
Bennet added that his responsibilities on the Senate Agriculture Committee, including on the farm bill, have helped him get to know rural areas of Colorado more and better represent voters’ interests, whether they voted for him or not.
He said people in elected offices don’t last very long, and for good reason.
“They take for granted the people in Colorado that don't vote for them,” he said. “I would say more specifically for me, being on the Agriculture Committee has been really important to me because it's put me in rural Colorado over and over and over again. … That's the first committee I joined when I became a Senator. Didn't know anything about agriculture, but I knew how important this is to the state, and it's the only committee (from that first year) I'm still on.”
Kathryn Squyres is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez and a student at American University in Washington, D.C. She can be reached at ksquyres@durangoherald.com.
