April 21, 2010 11:24 PM UTC

BREAKING: Josh Penry to Manage Norton's Campaign

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• by: jaytee

(This is just…odd – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Jane Norton shakes it up by dumping campaign manager Norm Cummings and hiring… Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry with three weeks in the legislative session to go?

Colorado Senate Majority Leader Josh Penry is now campaign manager for GOP U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton. He replaces Norm Cummings, the campaign announced today. The move reported by the Denver Post “The Spot” blog minutes ago is both startling and unsurprising.

Penry is a popular figure among conservative grassroots voters here and he seems at very least to be disaffected with the state senate. He ran for governor last year before stepping aside in November for six-term Congressman Scott McInnis, for whom Penry worked for years as a staffer. Penry has been touring the state on and off with McInnis ever since and also waging what sometimes seems a campaign for McInnis from the senate floor, taking stabs at McInnis rival Gov. Bill Ritter, then Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, when his name was floated as a possible Democratic candidate for governor, and now Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who announced his candidacy in January.

Penry told the Post that he didn’t plan to resign from the Senate. He’ll be working both jobs. It’s not clear exactly what his credentials are to run a U.S. Senate campaign.