Dozens of protesters greeted arrivals at the campaign kick-off for U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet’s reelection bid on Sunday in Denver, demanding that the Democrat reconsider his stance on the contentious Keystone XL Pipeline and its potential effect on the climate.

“They’re selling us down the river to gain some sort of favor with the fossil fuel industry, and it’s the wrong direction,” said event organizer Robert Parker of the environmental group 350 Action. He waved a sign reading “We march for our grandchildren” as Bennet supporters arrived at the fundraiser held on the edge of downtown Denver.

At issue, said the Coaldale sculptor, were votes cast by Bennet supporting Keystone, a proposed conduit for crude oil from western Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast, long a flashpoint for activists on both sides of the climate change debate. Bennet was one of a handful of Democrats in the Republican-controlled Senate to vote in favor of building the pipeline, and his vote last month to override President Obama’s veto of the legislation only angered environmentalists even more.

“I was a big fan and supporter of Sen. Bennet when he ran last time – I have the highest hopes for him,” said Parker, who described himself as an active Democrat for as long as he could remember. “But he’s being lured by the dark side, all that money. He’s forgetting why he’s supposed to be there in the Senate. Climate change is what is going to define him. None of the other stuff is going to define him.”

Inside the Mile High Station nightclub, Bennet told some 200 supporters that his recent Keystone votes were an attempt to rise above the persistent “dysfunction” that grips Washington, D.C., and to preserve his credibility on more far-reaching attempts to control carbon pollution.

“Despite our differences some of us may have on the Keystone Pipeline vote,” Bennet said, “I am telling you that I will be in the leadership, where the action is, on caps on power plants and all the other climate stuff that we need to do. This was not an easy vote for me – by no means was it an easy vote. But, in my mind, it was a vote where I was guided by the facts, I was guided by the science, and I was not dragged back into the politics of Washington, D.C.”

The Bennet fundraiser collected $500,000, he told the crowd at one point. (Campaign officials said the event was closed to the press, although a recording of Bennet’s remarks was made available to The Colorado Statesman by a guest at the fundraiser.)

After being introduced by his Senate predecessor, former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Bennet told the crowd that he’d spent the last two days skiing in Vail. Before driving back to Denver, he noted, he’d had the opportunity to award medals to a veteran of the 10th Mountain Division, who had been captured by the Nazis during World War II.

“He had spent his life giving medals to people who deserved them and he was so busy doing that that he never got the medals he deserved himself,” Bennet said, including a medal for being a prisoner of war and one for being part of the occupation of Europe. Bennet had the chance, he continued, to pin those medals on the veteran’s chest in front of his grandchildren and other World War II veterans.

“When we were done – I’d already asked him how old he was, almost 91 – I asked him what he was doing tomorrow, and he said, ‘I’m going skiing.’ That is the Colorado way, and that’s why I’m running for reelection to the United States Senate,” Bennet said to thunderous cheers.

Bennet is facing what could be one of the closest U.S. Senate elections in the country next year, according to pundits and polling.

“We have an unbelievable legacy to fulfill as Coloradans, and that is the people that settled this state, the people that tunneled through 14,000-foot mountains, the people who bridged impassable streams, the people who taught school in prairie schoolhouses and in schoolhouses that clung to the sides of mountains – who had no patience for the dysfunction in Washington, D.C., no patience for the partisan finger-pointing that’s going on there, who are demanding that we approach these questions as they did, confident in the future and the sense that we are a very special place with very special people,” Bennet said.

Later, answering a question from the crowd, Bennet elaborated on his rationale for the Keystone votes.

“I think it’s ridiculous that the United States Senate is voting on this; I think it’s a question that should be left to the states,” he began. But after reading “article after article after article,” Bennet said, he was convinced that the tar sands, which hold the disputed crude oil, would be exploited whether the pipeline was built or not, “and therefore the net climate effects are zero.”

“It has not been easy,” Bennet continued, adding that he’s spent the last five years talking to environmental organizations asking them if they’d reconsider the symbolism of the pipeline but they decided against that. “I do believe I am in a unique position, having voted the way that I voted, to be able to defend the clean power provisions that I talked about earlier” and to protect Colorado lands.

Parker said he’d heard Bennet’s explanations and wasn’t buying it.

“We’ve been trying and trying to get him to understand what is going on,” he said after the rally. “He has a standard, pat letter about the Keystone pipeline, but the assumptions are wrong, the people he’s talking to are giving him faulty information. There’s a lot of things we can argue about, different political views – but this one is not up for discussion. The science is in, it’s overwhelming: we must address it and we must address it now. The Keystone pipeline is one little part of that, and he’s not paying attention to even that little part of it.”

To the contrary, Bennet said inside the event, his approach is one that can actually grapple with looming problems, including climate change, rather than getting bogged down in Washington gridlock.

“Here’s what I will tell you – and this is about Keystone – I can stand here today and say to you that in the last six years, there has not been one minute when I have contributed to the dysfunction that Ken Salazar talked about in Washington, D.C., and if you reelect me your senator, I promise you I will not contribute to it in the next six years,” Bennet told the crowd.

“We need a politics in this country that’s worthy of the aspirations we have for our kids and our grandkids, and, fortunately for me, I have the privilege to represent a state where it’s not complicated, because that’s how we do our politics,” he continued.

“We don’t vote for fossil fuel politicians,” reads a banner held by protesters outside a campaign event for U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet on March 8 at Mile High Station in Denver.

Photo by Ernest Luning/The Colorado Statesman

“Whether we’re Republicans or Democrats or independents, our focus is on the next generation and the generation after that, just like the focus of the pioneers who came to Colorado.”

Outside, protester Lauren Swain told The Statesman she’d wasn’t convinced.

“We’re tired of holding our nose and voting for Democrats that don’t represent our values,” she said after the rally. “I do not believe that the strategy of moving to the right will serve Democrats, I believe they will lose more elections. Bennet needs to vote with other Democrats who are opposing KXL, he needs to support our president opposing dirty energy projects, he needs to vote with other Democrats who are working hard to eliminate exemptions for the oil and gas industry. If he did those things, we could vote for him and support him.”

Parker said that the upcoming election was small potatoes in the scheme of things.

“He’s acting like the more he can be a centrist, the better his chances are of being reelected,” he said. “The election is not the point. Our survival as a species is the point. If he’s going to be a leader, he needs to get out and lead.”

– Ernest@coloradostatesman.com