Mile high stakes in Colorado Senate race

For decades, Colorado has been a leading indicator of American politics, mirroring the national shifts from right to left, from Republican to Democratic.

It's a state that has elected liberal senators such as Gary Hart and Tim Wirth, only to supplant them with conservatives like Wayne Allard and Hank Brown before Democrats recaptured their seats in recent years.

Bill Clinton carried the state in 1992 (but not 1996). Colorado went for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 then served as the location for Barack Obama’s nominating convention and part of his march to the White House in 2008.

Intense interest

The Buck-Bennet contest is the nation's No. 1 senate race as measured by the outside independent spending it has attracted. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, nearly $6 million has been spent by groups such as American Crossroads to defeat Bennet and $5 million to sink Buck, most of that spent by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Both candidates faced primary challenges. Bennet defeated his primary opponent, Andrew Romanoff, the favorite of some progressives. Buck is the Tea Party- and Dick Cheney-supported candidate who beat establishment hopeful Jane Norton in the primary.

Buck told The Denver Post in July that he’s running "because I'm mad, because I think what's going on in D.C. is wrong. The lurch to the left has taken us down the wrong path." His closing argument in debates goes like this: "We protested when the government ran up trillions of dollars of debt, we sent e-mails when they were about to pass the health care bill … we pleaded with them to please secure our borders so that we would be safe — and you know what: they heard us, but folks, they ignored us. And on Nov. 2, they will ignore us no more.”

Appointed to fill the Senate seat held by Ken Salazar (who was tapped by President Obama as his Interior Secretary), and on the ballot for the first time ever, Bennet has found Colorado's political terra firma shifting once again. He and three of the state's Democratic House members appear to be in some danger of losing.

Coloradoans 'want the same thing'
Bennet voted for the stimulus plan, Obama's health care overhaul, the auto industry bailout, and the "cash for clunkers" program to stimulate car buying. Facing a Republican tide, Bennet has adopted a "can't we all get along" theme. He’s also running as the anti-Washington incumbent.

No stranger to Washington
For a man who is trying to get a six-year term back in Washington, Bennett often sounds as if he hates the place, portraying the capital as a den of misguided ideologues and clueless bureaucrats.

But Washington, D.C., is the place where Bennet grew up, attended prep school (elite St. Alban's), lived when he had a job for two years in the Clinton Justice Department and worked for the past two years as a senator.

People in Washington, D.C., Bennet said in the Grand Junction debate, "don't diagnose the problem and say, 'let's figure out the solution.' They find a solution that some lobbyist brings them … and then say 'here's the solution to a problem that may or may not exist.' No one here that runs a business does it that way. … And my whole career has been outside of politics until I was in this job, and I never approached my work that way."

Despite his disparaging talk about Washington, Bennet is steeped in a family tradition of public service and politics.

He was born in 1964 in New Delhi, where his father served as an aide to the U.S. ambassador. Bennet's father later served as an aide to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, an assistant to two Democratic senators, staff director for the Senate Budget Committee, a State Department official and president of National Public Radio.