By admin 
A Democrat younger than age 50.
That’s the only hint U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet has provided as to who he would appoint to fill his seat in Washington should he be elected Colorado’s next governor — which will effectively be decided in about a week.
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If Bennet beats Attorney General Phil Weiser in the Democratic gubernatorial primary June 30, he will in all likelihood be elected governor in November. Republicans haven’t won a statewide race in Colorado since 2016, and the last GOP candidate for governor lost by nearly 20 percentage points in 2022.
That basically means a vote for Bennet in the primary is also a vote for a new senator come 2027. But despite that political reality, Bennet has refused to shed light on how he would pick his replacement, who would serve until at least early 2029.
A Democrat under 50 years old but older than 30, the required minimum age to serve in the Senate, narrows it down to about 500,000 Coloradans, according to the state’s voter registration statistics as of June 1.
“There is nobody on the shortlist,” Bennet said at a debate with Weiser in May. “I think we have an incredible bench in Colorado of young talent.”
In a statement, Bennet’s spokesperson said “Michael has not discussed a Senate appointment with anyone.”
Despite his unwillingness to discuss his thinking on a potential Senate replacement, Bennet — whose campaign declined an interview for this story — said from the moment he launched his gubernatorial bid that he would pick his successor if elected.
That’s a conscious choice. He could resign from the Senate should he win the governor’s race and give Gov. Jared Polis the power to select Colorado’s next senator.
(Polis is the only person Bennet has said he wouldn’t appoint to the Senate, after the governor commuted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters’ prison sentence. Though at age 51, Polis wouldn’t have met Bennet’s criteria.)
But Bennet wants to handpick his successor.
“I believe that if I’m elected governor, I will be in the position to pick the replacement,” he said when he launched his campaign in April 2025.
Colorado, like most states, requires that the governor make an appointment to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy. Bennet’s current Senate term ends in 2029, so whoever he would pick to replace him would have to run for reelection in 2028 to retain the seat and stay in the Senate beyond then.
State law doesn’t give Colorado’s governor much direction on whom to pick or how. For instance, the appointee can be someone registered to any political party.
At a Colorado Sun forum earlier this month, Bennet would not commit to picking a woman and/or person of color to replace him in the Senate if he’s elected governor. Colorado has never had a woman senator nor a Black senator, and Bennet could change that by appointing one of the state’s two Democratic U.S. representatives who also meet his age requirement — Joe Neguse of Lafayette and Brittany Pettersen of Lakewood.
“I will commit to selecting someone who is less than 50 years old, which is desperately needed. The last thing we need is one more person to die on the floor of the U.S. Senate,” said Bennet, who is 61.
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No one has ever literally died on the floor of the U.S. Senate, though hundreds of senators have died while in office. There is, of course, no guarantee that anyone Bennet picks to replace him in Washington wouldn’t go on to die while in office — on the floor of the Senate or otherwise.
“I honestly haven’t thought about it — I don’t know,” Bennet said of his thinking when pressed during a 9News debate with Weiser. “What I have thought is that it would be excellent to have somebody in this job who is under the age of 50.”
In a written statement, Jordan Fuja, a spokesman for Bennet’s gubernatorial campaign, said “right now, his focus is on talking with voters and building the coalition needed to tackle Colorado’s cost-of-living crisis and deliver real results as governor.”
While Bennet may not be thinking about it, many others certainly are.
During a campaign stop with U.S. Rep. Jason Crow in Englewood last week, Crow — who has endorsed Bennet’s gubernatorial bid — arrived first. While he was greeting attendees, a woman joked that she was voting for Bennet in part because she wants the congressman to get Bennet’s Senate seat.
“No comment,” Crow, who is 47, said slyly.
Bennet denied during the 9News debate that he was choosing to select his Senate replacement as a way to persuade Colorado Democrats to get behind his gubernatorial bid.
But many younger elected Democrats in Colorado have done just that, including Crow, Neguse and Pettersen, as well as Denver Mayor Mike Johnston. They’ve all been mentioned in private conversations among Democrats about who Bennet might pick to replace him.
Neguse, 42, and Pettersen, 44, meet Bennet’s age criteria, while Johnston is 51 and therefore out of the running.
Weiser had said if he was in Bennet’s shoes, he would have resigned from the Senate to run for governor.
“That would have been the right thing to do,” Weiser said.
Bennet was 44 when he was appointed to the Senate in 2009 by then-Gov. Bill Ritter after Democrat Ken Salazar was tapped by President Barack Obama to lead the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Before that, the last person appointed to the U.S. Senate from Colorado was Republican Eugene Millikin, who was appointed in 1941 by Gov. Ralph Carr to fill the seat of Democrat Alva B. Adams, who died of a heart attack while in office.
At the time Bennet was appointed, he was superintendent of Denver Public Schools and was considered a dark-horse pick.
“It’s a difficult thing to do to appoint a United States senator,” Ritter told The Sun last year.