The reelection campaign for U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet has released a second television ad in the Denver and Colorado Springs metro areas that began airing Thursday.

The ad, titled “Long Ago,” touts Bennet’s effort to make it easier to refinance student loan debt and bring down monthly payments.

The message of the ad will likely resonate well with many viewers, because so many Coloradans — like so many Americans — are either taking on student loan debt or slogging along somewhere on the long road to paying it off.

“We are 800,000 Coloradans,” say the people featured in the ad. “Many of us went to college long ago. But we’re still carrying $21 billion in student debt.”

It’s the second installment in a series of ads planned for the spring that aim to reintroduce Bennet to voters and promote him as a practical-minded problem solver on gridlocked Capitol Hill.

“I’m fighting for a law that would allow people to refinance their student loans, just like you can a car loan or a home loan,” Bennet says in the new ad, looking directly into the camera. “Every Coloradan deserves a chance to go to college — and every graduate should have more to look forward to than a lifetime of debt.”

Bennet’s first ad began running April 7. It was a light take about his success heading off a proposed FDA rule that would have prevented brewers from selling spent grains to farmers as cattle feed.

“Senator Bennet knew that made no sense,” says a Fort Collins brewery worker. “So (Bennet) stepped in and stood up for Colorado.”

The Bennet campaign reportedly has spent more than half a million dollars in the state’s two largest broadcast markets this year, and the campaign has a lot more to spend. At the end of last quarter, Bennet reported $6.7 million cash on hand.

This early in the contest, that kind of cash will be tough to compete against.

The Republican field vying for Bennet’s seat has narrowed since the state’s April 9 party convention, but five candidates of more than a dozen are still campaigning in the race. Two of those so far have officially made the June GOP primary ballot.

El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn won nearly 70 percent of the delegate vote at the state convention. And the secretary of state’s office confirmed this week that former Colorado State University athletic director Jack Graham submitted more than the required 10,500 valid signatures he needed from around the state to make the primary ballot.

Primary candidate Robert Blaha, a wealthy finance-industry entrepreneur whose petition signatures are still being vetted, aired a single ad during a Broncos playoff game in January.

Blaha has posted three additional videos online — one that’s an extended version of the January ad, another that’s an online ad railing against the Washington lawmaker-lobbyist circuit and one that’s simply Blaha announcing his endorsement of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz for president.

— john@coloradostatesman.com