{"id":90586,"date":"2020-01-19T19:44:24","date_gmt":"2020-01-20T02:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/sen-michael-bennet-achieves-fundraising-goal-for-new-hampshire-primary\/"},"modified":"2020-01-19T19:44:24","modified_gmt":"2020-01-20T02:44:24","slug":"sen-michael-bennet-achieves-fundraising-goal-for-new-hampshire-primary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/sen-michael-bennet-achieves-fundraising-goal-for-new-hampshire-primary\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Michael Bennet achieves fundraising goal for New Hampshire primary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Democratic
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., shakes hands with people who attended a town hall meeting at Toadstool Bookshop, in Keene, N.H., on Dec. 20.<\/span>Kristopher Radder\/The Brattleboro Reformer<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Sen. Michael Bennet\u2019s presidential campaign has just hit its goal of raising $700,000 within a month to make Bennet competitive with other top-tier Democratic candidates in New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

The funds will go toward Bennet\u2019s TV and digital campaign ads leading up to the primary election.<\/p>\n

However, Bennet returns to Washington next week for the Senate impeachment trial, alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D.-Mass., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who are also running for the Democratic candidacy.<\/p>\n

Impeachment a distraction?<\/div>\n

Paul DeBell, a political science professor at Fort Lewis College, said because talking to people on the ground is such a key part of Bennet\u2019s strategy, breaking for the Senate impeachment trial could be a \u201closs of momentum\u201d that is \u201cparticularly tough for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Hudak, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said the impeachment inquiry will have \u201cvery little effect in terms of everyday Democrats\u201d for Bennet\u2019s campaign because he has not been participating in high-profile events like the debate in Iowa.<\/p>\n

Bennet has been endorsed by former school board leaders and state senators in New Hampshire, and he has even been endorsed by James Carville, the last Democratic campaign strategist to unseat an incumbent Republican president in 1992 with former president Bill Clinton.<\/p>\n

But given that Bennet is still polling at less than 1% in New Hampshire, those endorsements may not do too much to help his strategy there.<\/p>\n

\u201cLow polling means everything,\u201d and at this point, it means Bennet is no longer a real contender, Hudak said. But it has raised Bennet\u2019s profile, and a higher appointment, such as secretary of education, is a possibility for the senator given his background as a superintendent of Denver Public Schools.<\/p>\n

His presidential campaign has shown his \u201ceffective voice\u201d and gained the respect of Democratic colleagues across the country because he never resorted to attacking other candidates and put forward strong policy ideas, particularly regarding education, Hudak said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Opposite of Trump\u2019<\/div>\n

But as of now, the main message of Bennet\u2019s campaign is that he is the \u201copposite of Trump,\u201d in that he is not a celebrity politician, according to his TV ads in New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

His \u201cReal Deal\u201d economic agenda is a direct response to everything he has been hearing in town halls in New Hampshire and Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew Hampshire is a lot like Colorado, split evenly among Democrats, independents and Republicans. And what I\u2019ve heard in town halls in New Hampshire is the same things I\u2019ve been hearing from Coloradans for 10 years \u2013 they can\u2019t afford some combination of housing, health care, early childhood education or higher education,\u201d Bennet said.<\/p>\n

The main policy focuses of the Real Deal include rebuilding middle class families, ending childhood poverty and expanding education opportunities.<\/p>\n

He plans to tackle these challenges by increasing the minimum wage, passing paid family and medical leave and expanding the Child Tax Credit, which would cut childhood poverty by 40% in one year, according to his campaign\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

Despite his cogent and transparent policy ideas, \u201cthis wasn\u2019t the year and wasn\u2019t the message the Democratic Party was looking for,\u201d Hudak said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor most media, it is soap opera, stardom, not the person with the most detailed policy decisions,\u201d Hudak said.<\/p>\n

But his plans in education are plans other candidates will learn from, Hudak told the The Durango Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Bennet will continue with town hall meetings in New Hampshire on the weekends while the Senate impeachment trial kicks off in Washington on Tuesday, according to a news release from Bennet\u2019s campaign staff.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s Super Tuesday primary<\/div>\n

By the time Colorado\u2019s primary election comes March 3, there will be a much clearer idea of who the general election candidate is.<\/p>\n

In previous years, Colorado was largely ignored in the primary vote, but with a Super Tuesday primary, Colorado is likely to be a state the candidates are active in.<\/p>\n

An endorsement from Bennet, should he drop out of the race, would be \u201chighly sought after by top-tier candidates,\u201d Hudak said.<\/p>\n

Leslie Batchelor of Durango said she doesn\u2019t think Bennet has a chance of winning. She said he is not strong enough on climate change or gun control, and not progressive enough when it comes to health care.<\/p>\n

DeBell said he will be looking at the number of people who take part in the primary, especially considering it is the first Super Tuesday in Colorado, a day on which five different states will hold a presidential primary election.<\/p>\n

As for Bennet\u2019s place in the race by then, DeBell said \u201cwe will see.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senator heads back to D.C. next week for impeachment trial<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":90589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,29,25],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-90586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-u-s-sen-michael-bennet"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90586","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=90586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90586"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=90586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}