You’d think that Ritter would have learned from George W. Bush: don’t ask for people’s suggestions unless you’re going to take them. It would have been better had he just manned up and admitted that Bennet was an idea he had all by his lonesome, instead of asking for people’s advice and then apparently ignoring it.

http://tinyurl.com/9yjy9y

“Colorado’s governor asked the public to suggest candidates to fill a U.S. Senate seat, and thousands replied by e-mail.

However, it’s unclear whether Gov. Bill Ritter seriously considered many of them.

In hundreds of e-mails released by Ritter’s office, Coloradans proposed dozens of people to fill the job of Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar, who has been tapped to become U.S. interior secretary.

Suggestions included state lawmakers, sitting and former U.S. House members, favorite relatives and a football star.

Not one of the e-mails made public through an open records request suggested the man chosen by Ritter: Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet.

Ritter, a Democrat, announced Jan. 3 he would appoint Bennet, a millionaire lawyer-turned-educator who advised President-elect Barack Obama on education policy. Bennet and Ritter then took a seven-city tour of Colorado to introduce Bennet to voters.

Some Democratic party insiders are scratching their heads over Ritter’s pick to serve the remaining two years of Salazar’s term.

“We’ve been just totally caught off guard,” said Tonia Gurnea, chairwoman of the Montezuma County Democratic Party. In an e-mail to an address Ritter set up to field suggestions, Gurnea picked former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff.

“It was kind of discombobulating” when Ritter chose Bennet, who has not held elective office, Gurnea said. “We thought we had this line of people and we took the time to look at them and think about it, and then out of the blue came this guy.”

Ritter’s suggest-a-senator address received some 3,300 e-mails.

Only about 10 percent of them were made public because of a state legal conclusion that the e-mails were job recommendations and therefore not subject to public review. Those made public came from folks who agreed to have them released.

Of that group, the largest number of people wanted Romanoff, followed by Colorado Springs Schools Superintendent Mike Miles, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic Senate nomination in 2004″

If Mike Miles can put up with the bullshit of another campaign, I’ll vote for him, just like I did last time.

Bennet’s big “achievement” is that he shut down a school that served poor black and brown kids. What a big man!

Can’t say I’m surprised on the Bennett decision, but I do think the democrats are going to be facing the consequences of their hubris soon. They are practically writing the Republican comeback story.