{"id":37386,"date":"2022-11-08T20:24:55","date_gmt":"2022-11-09T03:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/michael-bennet-elected-to-his-third-u-s-senate-term-as-colorado-voters-reject-republican-joe-odea\/"},"modified":"2022-11-09T03:24:55","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T03:24:55","slug":"michael-bennet-elected-to-his-third-u-s-senate-term-as-colorado-voters-reject-republican-joe-odea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/michael-bennet-elected-to-his-third-u-s-senate-term-as-colorado-voters-reject-republican-joe-odea\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Bennet elected to his third U.S. Senate term as Colorado voters reject Republican Joe O\u2019Dea"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Democratic
Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet responds to a question during a televised debate with Republican challenger Joe O'Dea on Oct. 28, on the campus of Colorado State University in Fort Collins. (David Zalubowski\/The Associated Press)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

GREENWOOD VILLAGE \u2013 Colorado voters sent Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet back to Washington for a third six-year term Tuesday, rejecting Republican Joe O\u2019Dea, a first-time candidate and Denver construction company owner.<\/p>\n

Bennet was leading O\u2019Dea with 55% of the vote to O\u2019Dea\u2019s 43% as of Wednesday evening. The Associated Press called the race about an hour after the polls closed.<\/p>\n

In Montezuma County, O\u2019Dea led Bennet 55.02% to 41.86% in a preliminary tally. In La Plata County, Bennet led 59% to 38%.<\/p>\n

If Bennet, who was appointed to the Senate in 2009, serves his full term he will become Colorado\u2019s longest-serving U.S. senator in the century since state legislatures stopped selecting senators.<\/p>\n

Republicans hoped O\u2019Dea, a moderate who distanced himself from former President Donald Trump and even once donated to Bennet, could pull off an upset in Colorado, where President Joe Biden won in 2020 by 13 percentage points.<\/p>\n

National political observers mused all summer that O\u2019Dea, who ran a campaign focused on the economy and Biden\u2019s unpopularity, had a real chance, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell even called O\u2019Dea \u201cthe perfect candidate.\u201d A parade of big-name Republican politicians visited Colorado to stump for O\u2019Dea.<\/p>\n

There were signs Democrats were worried about O\u2019Dea, too. They spent millions in the Republican U.S. Senate primary in support of O\u2019Dea\u2019s rival, state Rep. Ron Hanks, an ardent 2020 election denier.<\/p>\n

But for all the positive talk, national GOP groups never really came to O\u2019Dea\u2019s financial aid, leaving the candidate with the tall \u2013 and very pricey \u2013 task of trying to both introduce himself to voters and make a case against Bennet.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know what, sometimes fundraising counts,\u201d O\u2019Dea told reporters on Monday as he dropped off his ballot in Greenwood Village, brushing off the lack of national GOP support. \u201cBut when the message is about working Americans here in Colorado, that\u2019s what counts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The results Tuesday indicate the money did make a sizable difference.<\/p>\n

\"U.S.
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, left, and Joe O\u2019Dea. (Bennet: Chase Woodruff\/Colorado Newsline O\u2019Dea: Courtesy of Sage Naumann\/O\u2019Dea campaign)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Democratic groups outspent Republican groups in the Senate race nearly two to one. And while O\u2019Dea gave his campaign nearly $5 million, including $2 million in the final weeks of the race, he couldn\u2019t keep up with Bennet\u2019s campaign fundraising machine.<\/p>\n

Bennet, who didn\u2019t self-fund his campaign like O\u2019Dea, spent more than $20 million, including at least $8.5 million on TV advertising.<\/p>\n

Democratic groups injected nearly $16 million into the race. Bennet had support from LCV Victory Fund, a conservation group; 53 Peaks, a super PAC funded by the dark-money nonprofit Majority Forward, which is affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat; Giffords PAC, which works for gun violence prevention; and a PAC run by the National Association of Realtors.<\/p>\n

Many of the TV ads run by pro-Bennet groups attacked O\u2019Dea\u2019s stance on abortion \u2013 that the procedure should be banned after 20 weeks of pregnancy and only be allowed later in cases of rape and incest or when a mother\u2019s life is at risk or a fetus isn\u2019t viable.<\/p>\n

The ads were targeted at voters like Ruby Clyburn, a 21-year-old Democrat who lives in Rifle and cast her ballot Tuesday in Glenwood Springs. She said the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s decision earlier this year to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 precedent guaranteeing a minimal level of abortion rights, was very concerning. She said it was at the top of her mind when she voted in this election.<\/p>\n

Clyburn, who works as a server at the Smoke Modern Barbecue restaurant in downtown Glenwood Springs, said she spent a significant amount of time researching candidate positions on women\u2019s rights and only voted for those who she felt had a strong record on the issue. (She declined to say who she specifically voted for.)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just scary right now what\u2019s going on with women\u2019s rights,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Political action committees supporting O\u2019Dea, by comparison, spent about $8.6 million.<\/p>\n

Most of O\u2019Dea\u2019s super PAC support came from the American Policy Fund. That group received $1.25 million from the Senate Leadership Fund, the well-funded PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. American Policy Fund also received $4 million from Wyomingite Timothy Mellon, grandson of banking tycoon Andrew Mellon; $1 million from investor Paul Singer; as well as money from several Colorado contracting companies and their owners.<\/p>\n

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the other deep-pocketed national GOP group that works to elect U.S. senators, didn\u2019t spend much in Colorado, however.<\/p>\n

Left mostly to his own devices, O\u2019Dea on the stump blamed Bennet for inflation and labeled the senator as ineffective.<\/p>\n

And the message worked for some voters. Karla Murphy, an unaffiliated voter from Aurora, attended an O\u2019Dea rally at JJ\u2019s Place in Aurora the night before the election.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s high gas prices, high groceries and all our energy costs are going up,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a Republican and Democrat thing, it\u2019s survival for the middle class.\u201d<\/p>\n

But ultimately, O\u2019Dea never led Bennet in any public polling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always run these races like I\u2019m 20 points behind,\u201d Bennet told reporters as he cast his ballot a week before Election Day. \u201cThat\u2019s how we won in 2010, in a really tough year. And we won in 2016, another tough year. And I think that\u2019s how we\u2019re gonna win this year as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a developing story that will be updated.<\/em><\/p>\n

Colorado Sun reporters Chris Outcalt and Elliott Wenzler contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bennet, a Democrat, serves his full six-year term, he will become Colorado\u2019s longest-serving U.S. senator in the century since state legislatures stopped selecting senators <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,266,28,29,869,1509,25,1566,1621],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-37386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-public-officials","tag-state-elections","tag-u-s-sen-michael-bennet","tag-u-s-senate","tag-voting"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37386"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=37386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}