June 14, 2010 11:49 PM UTC

Hickenlooper Wins Southeast Colorado

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• by: Colorado Pols

Miles of hinterland come off the table, and many sympathizers–reports the Pueblo Chieftain:

Hickenlooper, who owns a lot of property in Denver, said he was behind the ranchers in defending their property rights.

“In the end, it’s your property. So as far as I am concerned, I will come down every time on the side of the ranchers,” Hickenlooper said.

“The reality is that what happens here sets a pattern for the whole state right?”

Hickenlooper is running against Republican Scott McInnis, who supports the military’s position on site expansion…

Hickenlooper said he’s not anti-military and knows that the landowners are not either.

The Army has told ranchers and lawmakers that it would only obtain land from those who want to sell it.

But landowners on Sunday continued to stress the distrust they have with Army officials behind the proposed expansion.

All landowners in attendance said the Army promised in the early 1980s that no eminent domain would be used to expand the site but later changed their minds.

It’s our view that GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis made a calculated gamble, coming out early and stridently on the side of the military in the long-running battle over the expansion of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. At the time, McInnis was facing a serious primary challenge in the form of Josh Penry, and the military-friendly vote in El Paso County represented a potentially decisive constituency to win over.

It was a mistake–now that McInnis isn’t dueling with Penry for the state’s largest stronghold of conservative voters, his support for the Army over private landholders in southeast Colorado runs counter to fundamental property rights values that, for many conservatives, matter much more than genuflecting to the brass in Colorado Springs. Pinon Canyon is an issue that does not divide cleanly along partisan lines, and leaves McInnis in the stark minority.

Do we even need to mention that’s a bad place to be when running for office?