Poor Michael Bennet. It’s no wonder he thinks he needs a shill to hide behind before he will agree to a televised debate.

Bennet joined the doddering President Joe Biden for a political rally at the White House to promote their laughably named “Inflation Reducation Act” on a day when inflation went up to 8.3% from a year ago. This caused the stock market to fall by 1,200 points which ravaged middle class savings across the nation.

Those wild and crazy guys Biden and Bennet know when to celebrate!

Meanwhile, Bennet has agreed to only one televised debate with his rapidly rising Republican opponent, Joe O’Dea, who proposed at least three televised debates along with others across the state.

Bennet has already blown off the Grand Junction debate sponsored by Club 20, the Western Slope advocacy organization, which is probably understandable. If you had used your Senate seat to destroy oil and gas and mining jobs and to undermine agriculture in western Colorado you might have made the same decision.

Bennet has also rejected the KCNC-TV/CBS4 televised debate despite the fact political specialist Shaun Boyd is regarded as one of the most respected political reporters in Colorado by candidates and elected officials of both parties.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I am a Republican political analyst for CBS4 and work with Boyd along with my Democratic counterpart, the formidable Mike Dino, so I do have a clear bias.)

Bennet has accepted only one televised debate, which is sponsored by KUSA-TV/9News, the Denver Gazette, Colorado Politics, and KRDO-TV/Channel 13 of Colorado Springs.

I have nothing but respect for the professional journalists at the Denver Gazette, Colorado Springs Gazette, Colorado Politics and KRDO-TV and am honored to write a column for the Gazette.

But Bennet’s refusal to debate at CBS4, where he and O’Dea are guaranteed to get equally tough but fair questions from Boyd, raises an obvious question: why would Bennet reject CBS4 but agree to the 9News debate?

9News anchor Kyle Clark, to put it charitably, is not regarded as an unbiased journalist by most Republicans. Occasionally, he will take on a prominent Democrat such as the incompetent, blindly partisan Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who falsely accused her Republican opponent, former Jefferson County Clerk Pam Anderson, of throwing in with stolen election conspiracy theorists in order to win the Republican nomination. But by and large, Republicans consider Clark’s 9News program to be hostile territory.

Despite this Republican perception, O’Dea has accepted the 9News debate as he should have and as I knew he would. I have long been irritated by Republican candidates who avoid tough interviews or debates with journalists including some running this year. O’Dea, unlike Bennet, is not afraid to debate.

One of the common threads of the U.S. senators and governor whose campaigns I have managed was their willingness, indeed their passion, to go anywhere at any time to debate their opponents. This is one of the reasons why they won, unlike other failed Republican candidates over the years.

Rejecting CBS4 but accepting a debate cosponsored by 9News leads to one inevitable conclusion: Bennet believes Clark will act as his shill even as the other journalists ask tough but fair questions.

Whether this is true or not, Bennet himself has created this perception by rejecting CBS4 and accepting 9News.

Perhaps Bennet has put Clark in an awkward position, but Clark will have the opportunity to disprove this during the 9News debate by asking probing questions about Bennet’s failed record of more than 14 years in the Senate.

Make no mistake about it. Bennet is denying Colorado voters the ability to see two live televised debates in one of the most competitive, consequential Senate races in the nation. In short, Bennet is afraid and needs someone he perceives will act as his shill to protect him.

Bennet is proving why he never would have ended up in the U.S. Senate if he hadn’t been handed his Senate seat by a Democratic governor in 2009 — and then held onto it because of inept Republican candidates in 2010 and 2016.

Dick Wadhams is a former Colorado Republican state chairman who managed campaigns for Colorado U.S. Sens. Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, Montana U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, and South Dakota U.S. Sen. John Thune, all of whom debated their Democratic opponents several times.