This interview took place on Jan. 20, 2026 and the below full transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. The broadcast report aired Jan. 25, 2026.
BRETT FORREST
Take me back to your decision to run for governor. I believe it was April last year, your official announcement. So, ultimately, what made you decide to take a step back from the Senate and go for the gubernatorial position?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
I think this is a moment in our country's history and in Colorado's history when we need strong leadership at every level, and I feel like Colorado is a place that really can be a model for the rest of the country, a model in terms of dealing with the affordability crisis that we have in our state.
So, many people feel like their kids aren't going to be able to afford to live here. We've got to address that problem.
Having a growing economy that's thriving and making sure that people actually have good jobs here in Colorado, I think we've lost a step or two on that, making sure our education system is actually preparing people for the economy they're going to inherit, and I kind of have an unusual set of experiences.
I've spent time working at the highest level in business in the private sector. I was superintendent of schools in Denver for years and then three terms in the Senate.
It's an unusual set of experiences to bring to a set of challenges where I think we've got to work together to solve a bunch of problems that most other states haven't yet addressed.
BRETT FORREST
And you entered this race after Attorney General Phil Weiser. Did you have any discussions with him before you decided to step in as well?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
We talked three times before I got into the race, and I've known him since before we even moved, both of us moved to Colorado.
For me, this race is not about me and Phil (Weiser). It's about families all over Colorado who just feel like unless we change things, unless we figure out how to make housing more expensive, childcare more expensive. They're really worried, and healthcare... less expensive.
They're really... worried that their kids are not gonna be able to build a life here. That's what I think is... critical, And I think I bring a set of skills here that are gonna be useful to people.
BRETT FORREST
Can you share what Phil's (Weiser) response was when you told him you were going to jump in the race as well?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
Well, he said to me that he always thought he would have a primary in that race. He didn't think it would be with me, I think is what he said.
But I think we're all, all of us, no matter what party we're in, no matter what part of the state we live in, I think we're all grappling to make sure that we leave something to our kids and our grandkids that we're proud of, that we've turned over an economy that's working, that we've turned over a democracy that's working, that we're figuring out how to get through this chaotic period of time in our history and find a way to start to collaborate again instead of just having the kind of conflict and chaos that we've been having.
I have an unbelievable amount of confidence in the people of Colorado.
I've spent more time in every corner of the state than I think any elected official in generations, and I hope to be able to bring that set of experiences, which I think is every bit as valuable, maybe even more valuable than the experience that I've had on the Senate floor.
BRETT FORREST
In your first answer, I can't remember exactly how you phrased it, but you said Colorado seems like it's taken or fallen behind or taken a couple of steps back on some key issues. ...Are you critical of the job Jared Polis has done as governor in that regard?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
...I just think there's more for us to do. I feel like we've lost a step. Colorado used to be known as a place where we were welcoming business, where business could thrive. I think there's a lot of questions among businesses, large and small, about whether that's true anymore.
And I think we can turn that around. I think we can make Colorado as a place people want to be. It's a place where people want to live and work, but we've got to send a signal out that we want to do that.
We have the most amazing aerospace industry in America. We have the most amazing space industry in America. We've got an incredible energy sector, both traditional and clean. And we've got unbelievable levels of innovation that comes out of the universities that we've had.
I just spent three hours a couple of days ago with founders of tech companies who are mostly graduates of CU and CSU in this case, talking about how important it was for them to found their companies here in Colorado.
We want their companies to stay in Colorado and if I can be an advocate for cutting red tape to make sure that those businesses feel like they're being responded to, if I can be a champion for Colorado's private sector economy as the governor, I want to be able to do that, and I think... we've lost ground on that.
BRETT FORREST
I did a story with the Colorado Chamber last year just about how many regulations there are in the state. So is that something you'd address? How would you go about addressing it?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
Everywhere I go, I'm saying let's cut red tape, cut red tape, cut red tape. And it's not just businesses that feel this way.
It's small, it's local governments and county governments who feel like stuff gets passed out of the legislature without people thinking about the unintended consequences of what they pass.
And I've spent my life working in business. And at the local level, I was a school superintendent. I know what it feels like to have someone else's maybe well-meaning idea, but unfunded liability showing up..., in my case, in our schools and our classrooms.
And I think we need to address that. And I hope that on the first day that I am governor, I'm going to be able to say that we're reducing regulation already in the state.
BRETT FORREST
Going back to Governor Jared Polis, what would you say he's done well in his leadership role for the state, but then what would you say he hasn't done well?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
I would say what he's done well is expand early childhood education and expand kindergarten. We haven't gotten as far as I hoped we would, but I think those are really important steps forward.
...He's a smart guy, but his focus is not really on building coalitions, on going out and listening to other people's ideas, no matter where they are in the state. I've spent my entire career stealing other people's good ideas. I've had a checkered career where I've had to do that.
I was not an expert in business when I went into business; I was not an expert in education when I went there. I was not obviously an expert in politics or the Senate when I went there.
But, I've learned a lot that if you engage people, if you ask people what's working well, what's not working well, how should we think about some things like TABOR, and the funding of education in Colorado, you're going to get one answer in red, rural Colorado than you are in blue, urban Colorado.
I recognize that, but I think we all know that we rise and fall together in this state, and I think we can be a beacon for the rest of the country when it comes to questions that people may be facing in other places, but have less capacity to work together.
I think we've got a huge capacity to do that. And I think that I would be a governor that does provide that kind of collaborative spirit in a way that we really haven't seen for a long time in Colorado.
BRETT FORREST
In terms of TABOR, last week, Democrats in the legislature said they want to somehow readdress it. Obviously, Colorado voters have the ultimate say in that, but what's your take on TABOR? Do you agree with the legislative Democrats in needing to rework it in some way?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
I do think we have to rework it in some way, but in some way is the question, and I've said that we absolutely should not change the fact that Colorado should have the right. If we're going to increase taxes, it should be Colorado's right to vote on that.
But, there's a lot of room to have discussions about how we want to collect revenue, keep revenue, fund the important functions that government supplies. I can tell you, when I'm in red parts of the state, people say to me, we love being in a low tax state.
Actually, a lot of people say that in blue parts of the state, too. But in both those places, people also say we can't afford to pay to keep teachers here in Colorado. We're losing our teachers to Wyoming and to other states, New Mexico, where they can pay a higher salary.
We can't continue to do that and expect to fulfill the commitment that we have for the next generation.
So, I think we want to be a low tax state and we don't want bad government, but we also want to make sure that we're able to fund teaching in ways that are competitive with other places.
At the same time we've got this affordability issue which really is our crisis. I want people 10 years from now to be able to say we know our kids are going to be able to afford to live here and that's not just government.
When I think about housing, for example, we talked about red tape. We have to build more housing in Colorado. We have to build more starter homes.
We have to give people a chance to be able to, including seniors, the chance to be able to move out of homes they've been in, and all of that is sort of gummed up in the process that we have now.
I think we can show the country that we can build more housing, reduce costs for people, I hope to (be in) a place where nobody has to spend more than 30% of their income on housing.
And that too is a business issue because in El Paso County and lots of other places, folks that are thinking about coming to Colorado but they don't because the housing costs are so high their employees can't move here. We've got... a business issue as much as anything else.
BRETT FORREST
So the affordable housing issue, I mean, that's something the legislature keeps addressing or trying to address session after session. They're focusing on it again this session. So what ideas do you have that maybe they're not implementing right now?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
I really don't think we've begun to scratch the surface. What we– and whatever we do, in my opinion–is not going to be one command - control - one size fits all–from Denver or from the governor's office. That will never work. What we need is a collaborative spirit among the cities, the county, the towns, the counties.
Business. Because the private sector is going to have to be a big part of this too. And the state government, to be able to say we're going to streamline regulations, we're going to make it easier for people to build, we're going to make it easier for people to build more quickly. We're going to be able to hopefully create businesses in Colorado, making manufactured homes that then can be placed near where people work instead of having big transportation or adding to people's commutes.
And I really do think a focus on starter homes is very, very important. I've been telling people all across Colorado, you can tell me you're the most conservative person in Colorado or the most progressive person in Colorado, if our kids can't afford to live here, it doesn't matter. And it truly does not matter.
I believe we have a moral obligation to ourselves, to the people who did all the work to give us the opportunities that we have now, to turn that over to the next generation, and we're not going to do it by just coloring inside the lines, and frankly we have been coloring inside the lines, I think when it comes to creating the kind of velocity we need to be able to build the increased housing that we need to build over the next 10 years, especially for workers, especially for workforce housing.
BRETT FORREST
And I want to read a quote from your campaign announcement because I think it's still relevant today. So you know this is nine months ago or however many months but you said specifically “Our state's budget is in crisis.” And since then it seems to have gotten worse.
So in what way as governor would you expect to be able to address these budget shortfalls, deficits, we keep seeing. One's from the federal bill, but we keep seeing it statewide too, right?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
Well, part of it is the TABOR question you were asking earlier. It's going into–realize that we had a political settlement 40 years ago called “TABOR.”
And our kids, in my opinion, and our teachers are still in some sense fighting the fight. We're asking them to fight with one hand tied behind their back because of the constraints that we have now. I'm not an advocate for bad government. I think that if we're going to spend money we need to know that we're getting results and I think that's very important too as we have this debate.
But at the heart of that fiscal challenge is our healthcare system and the projected increases in Medicaid costs for Colorado are 9% a year for the next 10 years. The state of Colorado has tried to solve that problem one year at a time, one year at a time, one year at a time, backward looking. I think we need to look over the next 10 years and say to ourselves, what kind of healthcare system are we actually going to have? How do we drive costs down? How do we create a set of incentives and disincentives so people are taking better care of themselves and so that the outer end costs of chronic care are reduced.
We live in the richest country in the world, but we spend twice as much as any other country in the world on healthcare and we don't get better results. I think Colorado can really lead on that and this is one of the reasons that I ran. I mean I have spent part of my career turning billions of billions of dollars enterprises around in the private sector. And then I took on–with Hickenlooper, John Hickenlooper–the city and county of Denver when we were facing serious fiscal challenges. And then when I took over the Denver Public schools, it had been in the red for years and years and years, and we were able to drag it out of that position and begin to make it work again.
So these are issues I feel very comfortable with and I, and I do think it's very important that whatever we decide to do is something that reflects the consensus view after we battle it out and battle it out and battle it out, the consensus view of people living all over our state because the only way, the only way we're going to make the change that matters and the only way we're going to keep it is if there's a general view that we're heading in the right direction. And I think that's really important.
BRETT FORREST
Colorado voters elected you a senator, sent you to Washington to serve as senator, but if you win the governor's office, you know, you'll still have part of your term to go. So, in a sense, do you feel like you're abandoning those voters who had sent you to Washington to work on their behalf in that job?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
I don't. I–look, my voters, my constituents, Colorado, the 6 million people that live in Colorado, whether they voted for me or whether they didn't, I owe all of them a moral trust. That's what I've always believed.
And that's what I believed in the years that I was a school superintendent. That's what I believed in the time that I've been in the Senate. I think I have the opportunity to bring a totally different set of experiences to the challenges that we're facing right now, a totally different style of leadership than a lot of other people have presented.
And I think that's what the voters are going to think too. I have shown up over and over and over again in places where people are never ever going to give me 20%, more than 20%, of the vote. Or 30% of the vote.
As a member of the Ag Committee, for example, I've worked incredibly hard to support our farmers and ranchers all over the eastern plains of Colorado and over the western slope. Most of them may never vote for me, but they know they can trust me. I think they know that I've worked with them and for them, and that I have never been one of those politicians who thinks the job is about them. That's not how I look at it.
The question for me is how do I best serve the moral obligation I feel to my own children and the kids that I used to work for in Denver and the kids all over rural Colorado whose parents want exactly the same thing as the parents in Denver want for their kids, but are divided by a politics that is not getting the job done on education, on healthcare, on the economy generally.
And so I would say quite the reverse. I think people–I feel very grateful to have had the positions that I've had, and I think grateful to have the opportunity to try to serve Colorado in a different way.
BRETT FORREST
And to be clear, if you aren't successful in your gubernatorial bid, you'll finish out your term. Would you anticipate running for Senate again?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
I think I am going to win. But the answer is yes. If I, if the voters decided differently, then I would stay there and continue to try to provide the public service that I provided. Just do it in a different way.
BRETT FORREST
And have you given any consideration on who you'd appoint to the Senate?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
I have not, and I've not had a single conversation with anybody about that, even people who called me and said they want to be considered. Or if they want to, I said that is all premature, that's not a conversation that we should be having, and I don't think it's a conversation we should be having.
You know, I called my mom, who's still alive. She’s really an amazing person. Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1938, part of a small Jewish family that was all mostly destroyed, but she and her family survived. And they came to the United States and rebuilt their lives. They follow, she follows politics. And I called her to tell her I was doing this, and she was–she said she was very disappointed on some level because she likes the angry speeches I give on the floor of the US Senate. But I said, look, I think there's more for me to do at this moment. And I think she's come around.
BRETT FORREST
Speaking of your speeches on the floor, you kind of serve, in your own way, as an attempted check on President Trump and his administration right now. So do you feel you're giving up that chance to try to combat what the administration's doing-- on a federal level -- if you're becoming the governor?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
No, no. The opposite of that. To back up a minute, when I was watching that terrible debate between Joe Biden–well, it depends on your point of view–my point of view, with that terrible debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, I was on the phone with our three daughters. They weren't at home, but they were watching it with me.
And about 10 minutes into it, my oldest daughter, Caroline, said, What the F— Dad? And she was right because it's her life that this is about. It's the next generation this is about.
I was one of the first Democrats nationally to say that the Democrats were going to lose in a landslide if Joe Biden were still on the top of the ticket. And I've been very clear all along the way about my own disappointments with the Democratic Party. So I blame Donald Trump for many, many things, but getting elected is not one of those things. That was a failure of the Democratic Party.
And I actually believe the answer to that is not going to come from Washington DC. I think the answer to that is going to come from the American people, deciding that we don't want a politics of chaos, deciding that we don't want a politics of division, deciding that we can actually come together in this exercise in self-government and build opportunity for people, that we don't have to live in a perpetual gilded age where all the benefits go to the people at the very top.
That's not necessarily a Democratic view of the world, but if Donald Trump has been elected in large part because of the economic uncertainty that people feel in Colorado, the idea that our own kids won't be able to live in this state, I think the place to do that work is here. And by the way, I only think “fighting” Trump, I don't think that's important. It is important, but it's not the most important part of the battle.
The battle is to be able to give a forward-looking vision that says we're all in this together and we can do a lot better than just being at each other's throats, which I believe we shouldn't live in a country where we have a president who's sending benefits to red states and not to blue states or vice versa.
We shouldn't have a president, I don't think, that doesn't believe in the rule of law. And he thinks that we should have a totally unconstrained foreign policy where might makes right. I just don't agree with that, but I think those are all in a sense, symptoms of the broader economic challenges that we face. And again, I think Colorado is so well situated to be a beacon for the rest of the country.
BRETT FORREST
Thinking of what's happening in Minneapolis with the ICE deployment there, it's not far-fetched to see something similar happening to Denver or here in Colorado, and you know, we see how Governor Tim Walz has been handling that. He's now under investigation by the DOJ. So if you were the governor of Colorado and a similar situation happened here, how would you address such a circumstance?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
I think first of all, it can't be tolerated. We are a nation of laws and I think, to me, it's horrifying to see masked agents in the cities in Minneapolis and to see American citizens being killed in situations where that should not have ever happened.
And I think most Americans share my view. I think most Americans believe we shouldn't have mass law enforcement, whatever you think about immigration, I think that's true. And so, I hope that as governor I'll be able to join with other governors around the country that want to push back together on that kind of behavior. I hope someday it's not just Democrats but Republicans as well who say, you know what, it violates our sense of what this democracy is supposed to be about, to have armed agents basically occupying the city streets of this country.
There's a long, long history of strong men in democracies turning their armies–in the old days, they used to talk about how they turned their armies on Rome and they're marching on Rome.
And we're in a situation now where we've got our own National Guard in American cities. We've got ICE enforcing what? The fraud statutes in Minnesota? That's a completely ill-advised thing for us to be doing. And I think that President Trump is going to lose support for those policies. I think it's going to be critical, if he comes to Colorado, that we stand up and that we push back and that we stand up for our commitment to democracy and the rule of law.
BRETT FORREST
Turning to some other kind of relevant news of the day topics. Tina Peters. Based on my conversations with Governor Polis last week, I get the sense he might commute her or lessen her sentence of some sort. Would you do something similar if you were a governor?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
I wouldn't. I think that that's his decision to make. He's the governor, but since you asked me, I wouldn't. That's the advice that I've given him. I just think that it is in this case, and the facts as I understand them, it would be sort of submitting to Donald Trump's lawlessness. And I think that breeds lawlessness. And people believe that you don't have to follow the rule of law, that even in a case where somebody's been convicted by a jury of their peers as Tina has been, and I think she should have to serve her sentence just like anybody else.
BRETT FORREST
And do you not feel her sentence was too harsh? Because–
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
It's not for me to–I don't think that's for me to judge. I think that's the jury, the judge, the prosecutor. Jared Polis has an opportunity to reflect on that as he pursues his prerogatives as the governor, but you asked me what I would do, and that's my answer.
BRETT FORREST
The president also denied federal funding for the Elk and Lee Fires and the flood disaster. So my question to that is, would it be worth pardoning or commuting the sentence for Tina Peters-- so that Colorado residents of Colorado can get that?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
I don't think so because I don't think the President of the United States has any right to ask that. The Constitution of the United States sets up our system of federalism, and under that system of federalism, Tina Peters was convicted by a jury of her peers. This is not something that Donald Trump should be able to withhold things from the state of Colorado because he doesn't like that outcome. That is a corrupt outcome. That's not a commitment to the rule of law.
So that's why I see it differently. That's different to me than a garden variety negotiation or any other negotiation, because I think that in a sense, he's using brute force to try to get what he wants. And I think if you capitulate to that, it just brings more brute force and–either to Colorado or to other places–and I don't think that's the system that we were reraised on or the system we were meant to preserve for the next generation of Americans. I don't think that at all.
BRETT FORREST
Another obviously escalating situation is Greenland. You know, putting your Senate hat on. What's your take on the whole Greenland situation, especially in light of President Trump's text to the Norway officials that was revealed this week?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
My take is that it is creating confusion and uncertainty and it's pissing a lot of people off that are our friends and I'm not sure that's helpful to our economy in the long run. I don't think that's helpful to our national security.
I don't think we need to own Greenland. We have, by the way, it's not just Greenland that's important. Iceland is important. There are Russian submarines. I'm on the Intelligence Committee. There are Russian submarines that are coming through that part of the North Atlantic regularly. That's not a secret, but it's not like we're not on the case. It's not like people aren't situated to deal with that.
And I don't think owning Greenland is going to help us with that. And I see no reason to antagonize our allies any more than we have. Look, Donald Trump made some progress on the question of whether NATO was contributing, and the European countries, were contributing sufficiently to NATO. I think that I'm grateful that he pushed on that. I'm grateful that they're doing more to support our collective defense, but I disagree with him on Greenland.
And I have disagreed with him over and over again on Ukraine, where I think those guys really are the tip of the spear when it comes to the West, when it comes to democracy. They have fought and died for democracy in ways that nobody else has in modern times, and they have succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. They have earned our support. We're not doing them a favor. They're doing us a favor. They're doing Europe a favor as well. So I wish you were more focused on that and less focused on Greenland.
BRETT FORREST
What do you have to say about the president's veto of the Arkansas Valley Conduit and how he denied us the disaster relief as well. Do you feel these are retributions against us?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
I do. I do. I think it's obviously true. I mean, I don't, you don't need me to say it. He said it, you know, when he took Space Command away, which is something I have fought for for years, got it taken, brought back to Colorado after Donald Trump took it away the first time, to see him standing in the Oval Office and say the reason–these are his words, you can look them up–the reason he's taking away Space Command had nothing to do with our national security. It was because he didn't like the voting system in Colorado. By the way, the voting system in Colorado is one of the finest voting systems in America. I can't find anybody in Colorado, no matter what part, that don't share that view.
Obviously, Donald Trump had a different view, but it's not right for the president to take away something like Space Command for a reason like that instead of for national security.
On the Arkansas Valley Conduit, clearly it was in response to his anger about Tina Peters. And Jack Kennedy promised the Arkansas Valley Conduit in 1960. He came out to Pueblo to do it. The very first bill I ever introduced as a member of Congress had to do with the Arkansas Valley Conduit.
And now we got to a place where Lauren Boebert and I got it. She got it through the House unanimously. I got it through the Senate unanimously. You can almost get nothing through those places unanimously.
And Donald Trump just out of anger took it away from 50,000 people who have spent generations just trying to have clean drinking water for their families, and I think it's an outrage. It's a freaking outrage. We shouldn't have a president who does stuff like that, and that has nothing to do with his being a Republican. I think that's who Donald Trump is.
BRETT FORREST
This kind of goes back to my other question about–do you get a sense you could fight those issues better as governor than as a senator?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
I do. I just do. I think that this is, I think this is a moment where–we have these moments in American history where the fight comes from the states and from local communities.
But as I said earlier, I think the fight is only part of it. I think of the fight is not just the fight against Donald Trump.I think it's a fight for our kids’ future. It's a fight to make Colorado more affordable. It's a fight to have an economy that actually when it grows, grows for everybody, not just the people at the very top. It's a fight for affordable healthcare. It's a fight to make Colorado a business leader in this nation rather than following. All those things are a fight, and I think we're running out of time.
And if we don't fight this fight now, 10 years from now, maybe the average house in Colorado is going to cost, instead of $650,000, $1.5 million dollars. Maybe instead of childcare costing $20,000, it's going to cost $40,000. We just cannot live that way.
I have town halls all the time when, especially women, it's not always women, are bursting into tears because they say, ‘Michael, we thought we were going to have a family. We can't have a family because of the cost of raising a kid here. Or we had one kid, we'll never have another kid.’
When my wife Susan and I moved here, that would have been the farthest thing from our minds, and we've raised three daughters here in Colorado. I want my daughters to live here in Colorado. They may not want to live close to me, but I want them to live in Colorado. And I want the next generation to know that they can build a home in Colorado, and today they don't feel that way.
BRETT FORREST
We're sitting in Colorado Springs, El Paso County, pretty big red bubble on the Front Range. So what policy would you–or how would you try to gain support from constituents here who typically don't vote for Democrats?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET
I would say that first of all, part of it would be running on my record of supporting the bases that are here, supporting the community here. I'm going to the Chamber later today. The people there and I know each other. We've worked together over a long period of time. The fight for Space Command is one that we've waged together, and the fight for all kinds of things–water.
We've had a long history, but I just would say that I think that I agree, as I said earlier, that I think that we've got too much red tape. I think that we have become less business friendly than we need to be. I think that Colorado Springs and El Paso County are facing a lot of the challenges that the rest of Colorado is facing. I think we're better off together solving those challenges. The answer in El Paso County may never be exactly the same as in Denver or in Grand Junction or in Durango or Alamosa. I believe that.
I don't think command and control answers work terribly well, but I think we all have a shared commitment to make sure that our kids can live here. I think we all have a shared commitment to the idea that we have to have a good education system that's preparing people well, a healthcare system that's not another drain on families creating misery instead of giving people a happy life.
So I think there's so much for us to agree on. I also think we are way past patience with the kind of division in DC and, in some weird sense, I've seen what that future brings, and what that future brings is chaos. Like a permanent game of shirts and skins where nothing ever actually gets done. Everybody blames the other side for not doing it, and that is not what we should do here. And I see some tendencies in that in our political world, but I don't think the people of Colorado want that in their next governor.
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