Michael Bennet is the son of Wesleyan University president Douglas J. Bennet and Jewish Holocaust survivor Susanne Bennet.
The Democratic senator from Colorado attributes a significant portion of his outlook to his mother’s involvement in the Holocaust.
Colorado voters will send Democratic Sen. Michael back to Washington for a third term after the incumbent defeated his Republican opponent. Polls consistently showed that Bennet was ahead of his rival, Denver businessman Joe O’Dea, but as the race came to a close, it appeared that Bennet’s position was more precarious.
Michael Bennet’s Parents, Douglas J And Susanne Klejman
Michael Bennet was born to his father, Douglas J, and his mother, Susanne Klejman, in India.
Bennet’s mother, Susanne Klejman, is a Holocaust survivor and retired elementary school librarian. She was born in Warsaw, Poland, and immigrated to America with her family in 1950.
Susanne was separated from her parents for years during the Holocaust in Poland. During Thursday’s first Democratic debate of the 2020 election season, Colorado Sen. Bennet said he sees his mother in the migrant children being separated from their parents. However, Susanne has not forced her parents to hand her over to a network of Polish rescuers who escorted her out of the Warsaw Ghetto and kept her safe from the Germans.
She claimed she was still in diapers when the Germans occupied Warsaw and forced the Jews to relocate to the ghetto. At its peak, 400,000 Jews were crammed into a 1.3-square-mile area.
A few months before the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Susanne’s father contacted Polish Catholic friends and “arranged for a Polish policeman to take her.” Her family hoped her blond hair and blue eyes would help her pass for a Pole. Susanne recalled both she and her rescuer would have been executed if she had been identified as a Jew.
Susanne claimed her nanny pretended to be her mother, and she attended a covert school at a neighboring Catholic church. The priest and her playmates were unaware of her Jewish heritage and didn’t even care to ask.
Michael Bennet’s Father, Douglas J. Bennet, Is An American Politician
Michael Bennet’s father, Douglas Bennet, was a politician and college president from the United States. From 1995 to 2007, he served as the fifteenth president of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
Prior to that, he was the President and CEO of National Public Radio (1983-93) and the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs in the Clinton Administration (1993-95). Douglas also worked as an Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs in the Carter Administration (1977-79).
He also served as the President and CEO of the United States Agency for International Development under President Carter (1979–81). In the 1960s, he worked as an assistant to Ambassador to India Chester Bowles.
Bennet married Susanne Klejman of Washington, D.C., on June 27, 1959, and beared three children. However, the couple separated in 1995.
Bennet remarried Midge Bowen Ramsey, a vice president at National Public Radio, in 1996.
Michael Bennet’s Brother James Bennet Is American Journalist
Michael Bennet’s brother James Bennet is a senior editor for The Economist. Michael also has a sister named Holly, who has maintained her privacy.
The American journalist is also a writer in the Lexington column for the magazine. Before joining The Economist, He served with The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Monthly. From 2006 to 2016, he served as The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief.
He also served as The New York Times editorial page editor from May 2016 until his resignation in June 2020.
After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University, he started his career as editor-in-chief of The New Journal. In a civil ceremony in 2001, he married Sarah Jessup, with whom he has two sons.
James recently made headlines for testifying in the Sarah Palin libel case (Politico). Bennet testified that the editorial from June 2017 that she claimed was defamatory was written to confront liberals about the perils of extreme political rhetoric, regardless of its source.
Michael Bennet’s Three Daughters With Susan Diane Daggett
Michael Bennet married his wife, Susan Diane Daggett, on October 26, 1997, in Marianna, Arkansas. She is an attorney with the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund.
They live in Denver’s Congress Park neighborhood with their three daughters. She is recently in the news after a video of her suggesting Democrats defund the police “quietly” and making fun of the name of the Inflation Reduction Act went public.
Daggett, the law professor, was captured on camera discussing the Defund the Police movement and the Inflation Reduction Act by Accuracy in Media’s undercover reporters. Daggett concludes the video by expressing her hope that President Joe Biden will not run for reelection in 2024.
Michael Bennet Is An American Attorney From Colorado
Michael Bennet is an American attorney, businessman, and senior United States senator from Colorado.
He was appointed when Senator Ken Salazar was named Secretary of the Interior. He is a Democrat and has been the US senator since 2009. Bennet began his career as an assistant to Ohio Governor Richard Celeste. During the Bill Clinton administration, he served as counsel to the U.S. Deputy Attorney General after earning his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School and working as a law clerk.
In July 2005, Bennet was appointed head of the Denver Public Schools. Governor Bill Ritter chose him to take Ken Salazar’s place in the Senate after Salazar was appointed Secretary of the Interior in January 2009.
He defeated Republican Ken Buck to win the 2010 Senate election. He was re-elected to the Senate in 2016 and served as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s (DSCC) chairman for the 2014 cycle. He is currently competing in the Colorado Senate race in 2022 against Republican businessman Joe O’Dea.
Throughout the midterm election cycle, Bennet, a senator since 2009, held the lead in the public opinion polls. Fox News proclaimed despite the fact that the state has recently tended toward Democrats, the Colorado Senate race ended up providing the Republicans with an unexpected chance to pick up seats.
The outcome of the Colorado Senate race has not yet been made public.