RSS
Home | Office Holder | Michael Bennet
|
|
|
Michael Farrand Bennet (born November 28, 1964) is an American businessman, lawyer, and politician. He is currently the junior United States Senator from Colorado, and a member of the Democratic Party. He previously worked as managing director for the Anschutz Investment Company, chief of staff to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, and the superintendent of Denver Public Schools. Born in New Delhi, 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. Acknowledging his work in Denver, Time magazine listed him among the nation's eleven leading educational activists in 2011. 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 re-elected in the 2010 Senate election where he defeated Republican Ken Buck. Now serving his first full term, he is the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Subcommittee on Conservation, Forestry and Natural Resources. |