July 21, 2022 11:55 AM UTC

Michael Bennet Up with First Ad of Cycle

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Bloomberg Government reports, incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet is out with his first television ad of the 2022 election cycle:

Bennet’s re-election campaign will start airing its first TV ad of the cycle Thursday morning in the Denver and Colorado Springs media markets. It’s a $600,000 media buy…

…In an interview Wednesday on Capitol Hill, Bennet said the ad served as “an acknowledgment that there’s a lot of self-serving behavior here.”

“There are a lot of legitimate frustrations that people in Colorado and across the country have with the way this place works or doesn’t work,” Bennet said. “I share those frustrations.”

Here’s the full ad, featuring what has become almost a requirement for major political campaigns in Colorado: Put the candidate in what we’ll call a “recreation casual” outfit and make him walk around on a mountain trail somewhere:

Kicking off the General Election with an ad focused on barring Members of Congress from trading in the stock market might be a bit of a surprise given that this particular issue hasn’t been in the news all that much, but this is a concern that polls well with voters across the political spectrum. It’s also part of a larger narrative — one that Bennet has always used in his political campaigns.

Since his first campaign for Senate in 2010, Bennet is often portrayed as something of a political outsider who is pushing back against corporate influence and the revolving door of elected officials becoming lobbyists. It’s a message that works for him, which is why you always hear Republicans trying to smear Bennet as a creature of Washington D.C. insider politics.

Republican Joe O’Dea will eventually respond with his own TV spot featuring the candidate hiking around in the wilderness, but he needs to build up his warchest first after his June Primary battle with Republican Ron Hanks.