U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet announced his candidacy this past week but it was difficult to discern what he is running for.

He is allegedly running for governor in 2026 but his speech was almost totally focused on fighting the national policies of President Donald Trump. Someone unfamiliar with Colorado politics could easily think he was declaring his candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

There was virtually nothing said about specific Colorado issues that will fall on the next governor with one exception.

Sen. Bennet declared he wanted to “reform” Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights law, otherwise known as TABOR. “Reform” is a smokescreen for wanting to take away the right of voters to approve tax increases under TABOR by gutting the limitations on spending by state and local officials.

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TABOR has kept Colorado fiscally sound since its passage in 1992 but those restraints have vexed free-spending Democratic legislators and governors for the past 33 years. They have worked overtime to find ways around TABOR such as classifying tax increases as “fees” but voters have largely rejected statewide initiatives to undermine and kill the law.

Bennet is not the only Democratic candidate for state office who seems to be solely motivated by deep hatred of Trump and his policies.

The other candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, term limited Attorney General Phil Weiser, has turned his office into the equivalent of a western regional outpost of a partisan Democratic law firm in Washington, D.C. solely focused on joining lawsuits against the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, all three Democratic candidates for attorney general are doing somersaults over each other trying to be the toughest, anti-Trump candidate who will continue the legal assault policies of Weiser.

At least former House Speaker Crisanta Duran and Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty have admirable records of public service unlike the blindly partisan, unaccountable, and incompetent Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who apparently wants to destroy yet another statewide office after eight shameful years.

The most dangerous place to be in Colorado is between Griswold and an MSNBC camera where she spends most of her time trashing President Trump when not undermining 64 county clerks, or chasing off professional staff, or trying to cover up the illegal release of election equipment passwords by her office.

The only other specific action Sen. Bennet said he would take as governor would be to grab the power to hand select his successor in the Senate.

Rather than resigning from the Senate immediately after the election so Gov. Jared Polis can appoint a new senator for the final two years of his term, Bennet said he would not resign until he is inaugurated as governor so he can make the appointment.

Allowing Gov. Polis to make the appointment in November after the 2026 election would empower the new senator to get a staff and office in place well before the new Congress begins in early January 2027. Apparently Sen. Bennet’s insatiable appetite for the power to appoint his successor overrides any consideration for what is best for Colorado’s representation in the Senate.

That appointment could also be used as a weapon to coerce Democratic leaders who aspire to be appointed to support him in the primary. The crowd of Democratic elected officials who stood behind Sen. Bennet at his announcement looked like an appointment beauty pageant.

Sen. Bennet’s rather curious focus on national politics during his announcement stands in stark contrast with previous governors.

Gov. Bill Ritter ran on building a “new energy economy” in Colorado. Gov. Jared Polis focused on education and all-day kindergarten.

Gov. Bill Owens, the only Republican governor to be elected in the past 54 years, ran on an agenda to cut state taxes, reform education, and improve highways without raising taxes.

Then-President Bill Clinton was not popular in Colorado in 1998 but Owens focused on state issues and spent no time attacking the Democratic president. 

But the anti-Trump obsession of Democratic candidates is grounded in a brutal reality for Colorado Republicans. Recent polling indicates Trump’s approval rating in the state is as low as 38% and his disapproval rating is as high as 58%. Trump lost Colorado to then-Vice President Kamala Harris by 11 points just last fall.

While he is considered the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, who will ultimately be elected as governor due to Colorado’s Democratic tilt, Sen. Bennet is not exactly a political juggernaut. Recent polling shows he only has a 45% approval rating while 31% disapprove of him. For someone who has been a senator for the past 17 years, these are very soft numbers.

In a state that is clearly in decline on so many fronts, the question is how long voters will be tolerant of statewide candidates like Sen. Bennet who bask in anti-Trump rhetoric while offering no real proposals except for killing TABOR.

Dick Wadhams is a former Colorado Republican state chairman who managed campaigns for U.S. Sens. Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, and Gov. Bill Owens.  He was campaign manager for U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota when Thune unseated Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle in 2004.