Speaking in Edwards, Weiser blasts Bennet for Trump cabinet votes

Gubernatorial candidate and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, in an exclusive interview with the Vail Daily on Sunday, questioned the judgment of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet for voting in favor of Trump administration cabinet officials Weiser says are unfairly targeting Colorado.

Bennet, who’s battling Weiser for the Democratic nomination in this year’s governor’s race, told 9News on Friday that he now regrets voting in favor of Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, a Coloradan, but would still vote in favor of Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins.

“You asked me whether I regretted my votes, and I regret my vote about Chris Wright; I don’t think I should have voted for him,” Bennet told interviewer Kyle Clark when pressed on Rollins withholding SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits. “Yeah, I feel differently about the secretary of agriculture (Rollins).”

Weiser criticized Bennet both for voting in favor of Wright in the first place and for still supporting Rollins, who withheld SNAP benefits this fall in the government shutdown fight and is again seeking to withhold SNAP benefits from states such as Colorado that refuse to provide the personal information of beneficiaries.

In his role as state attorney general, Weiser has sued the Trump administration 49 times, including over SNAP benefits and the firing of federal workers such as wildland firefighters as wildfire season was ramping up last spring — a move he attributes directly to Rollins.

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“Brooke Rollins comes in, lies to Forest Service employees, cuts a lot of firefighters as fire season’s happening, in violation of the law. I had to go to court to get people their jobs back … and Michael Bennet says that was OK with him, she’s doing a good job, I would vote for her again, knowing what I know now,” Weiser said Sunday at The Bookworm in Edwards ahead of a town hall at Hovey & Harrison. “I don’t get that.”

Bennet told 9News he was able to get weekly meetings with Rollins during wildfire season to discuss wildfire readiness and that those meetings helped restore jobs and funding the administration pulled back early last year.

“I voted for the secretary of agriculture and up till now I stand by that vote,” Bennet said. “We were able to get the resources we needed in Colorado in the fourth worst fire season of our history.”

However, critics say staffing and funding shortages meant the U.S. Forest Service and other federal agencies lagged behind badly in wildfire mitigation work last year compared to the previous year — a matter of serious concern this year given the low snowpack and ongoing drought conditions in the West.

Wright, meanwhile, drew criticism from Colorado Democrats over the holidays by issuing an emergency order to keep the Craig Station Unit 1 coal-fired power plant open past its scheduled closure date — a move that its operator says will cost local ratepayers millions of dollars. Its closure is part of Colorado’s push to move away from fossil fuels to combat climate change.

“In the face of the level of urgency around climate issues and resilience, Michael Bennet saw his way to supporting Chris Wright despite what others were saying at the time, continues to support Brooke Rollins, whose actions I believe are indefensible on all three grounds I mentioned,” said Weiser, who has long sparred with Bennet over standing up to Trump. Weiser said he will sue the administration over Trump’s “energy emergency” declaration and that the state will challenge the order keeping Craig Station Unit 1 running.

“I have a sense of real urgency that we’ve got to call out these wrong actions and we’ve got to take, in effect, some control of our own destiny,” Weiser added. “The issues around firefighting are felt all around Colorado right now. We’ve got to do all we can for the feds to do their part and we’ve got to do more on our own. One of the things I called for is a chief resilience officer.”

Bennet is considered the Democratic frontrunner to replace term-limited Gov. Jared Polis given the Democratic lean of Colorado voters in recent election cycles. Weiser, former dean of the University of Colorado Law School, a former Justice Department anti-trust lawyer and former U.S. Supreme Court clerk, is also term-limited as attorney general.

Bennet said before voting for Wright, he spoke to many people in Colorado who knew the secretary and thought he would put the state’s interests high on his agenda.

“He is a profound idealogue and his ideology is at war with what Colorado is trying to do,” Bennet now concedes. “He agrees very much with Donald Trump’s ‘drill baby, drill’ strategy that is going to lead this country very much in the wrong direction with respect to climate and with respect to energy innovation.

“I believe, and it’s one of the reasons I’m running for governor, Colorado can actually lead all 50 states when it comes to (climate and innovation) but it’s going to be if we’re pursuing a set of policies that actually focuses on the future,” Bennet said. “Chris Wright is focused deep into the past and has refused to change his mind.”

Bennet blasted Trump’s veto of the bipartisan Arkansas Valley Conduit water project that would benefit a rural, Republican area of the state over what he says is federal retribution for the state keeping convicted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters in jail for 2020 election interference. Bennet was asked if he thought Interior Secretary Doug Burgum would stand up to Trump’s “campaign of retribution” over the Peters case.

“No, I’m not confident about that and we’ll have to continue to monitor that and assess that,” Bennet said.

Both Weiser and Bennet hope Congress will vote to override Trump’s veto of the Arkansas Valley Conduit, and Politico late Monday reported the House will vote on an override bill on Thursday with a good chance of passage. Its fate in the Senate is less certain.