November 18, 2010 08:47 PM UTC

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce: McInnis Speaks

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

Folks, we are obliged to note for the record that scandalized GOP ex-gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis has resurfaced in the pages of today’s Denver newspaper.

Now, we’ll start with the obvious irony of McInnis

1. Choosing to come out of hiding to the Denver paper, the same newspaper he erroneously blames for his self-destruction, and

2. Apparently only allowing himself to be interviewed by business columnist Penny Parker, entirely bypassing the paper’s newsroom.

Both of those details positively ring with the kind of self-inflicted misery McInnis experienced on the campaign trail up through his primary defeat in August. McInnis blames the Denver newspaper for the plagiarism scandal that sank his candidacy, asserting that they hammered on the case “day after day” without merit, but that’s poppycock. The Denver paper didn’t discover this plagiarism, they were tipped off–as were other media outlets who were all simultaneously moving on the story when it broke on the Denver paper’s blog. What’s more, the most damage done to McInnis over the story was not even done by the Denver newspaper, but by 7NEWS investigator John Ferrugia’s interviews with McInnis’ research assistant Rolly Fischer.

What this means is that McInnis, just as he blamed friendly radio hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman for his on-air meltdown over charitable donations, or the Denver paper for making an issue of his refusal to release his tax returns, continues to point fingers outward instead of contemplating how he puts himself in these politically disastrous situations over and over. Seriously–when the Denver paper devoted nearly a week of glowing front-page coverage to “McInnis Unity” and the “Platform for Prosperity,” with Mike Rosen and Vince Carroll tripping over each other in a rush to slather McInnis in sycophantic praise…was that a paper out to get him? It’s not like we have an interest in defending the Denver newspaper or anything–this is just totally absurd historical revision. We were all there, too.

As an epilogue, McInnis promises Parker that he’s going to “clear his name” in the coming weeks. We’ll be very interested in seeing that, since we’ve been over the original materials thoroughly as our readers know, and we don’t know of any way to explain what happened in a way that might un-destroy McInnis’ political career. As we exposed in our original posting the night the story broke, the plagiarism that occurred here was both far too extensive to be accidental, and littered with minor changes to the prose that prove it was a deliberate act.

We really don’t understand why McInnis is bringing this story up AGAIN when it was long since dead, unless it is some sort of attempt to get back his old job at Hogan Lovells (about which managing partner Cole Finegan tellingly refused to comment). McInnis will never be taken seriously again as a candidate for higher office in Colorado, and not just because of this scandal. As we wrote before, McInnis’ political career is history because of five little words: He lost to Dan Maes.

But for the sake of argument, let’s say that McInnis is able to cajole Rolly Fischer on 7NEWS again to take the fall for everything–this is the best-case scenario for McInnis we can envision. This would still mean that McInnis submitted plagiarized writing that he falsely claimed was his own–the Hasan Foundation has repeatedly noted this as a principal deception, beyond the simple fact that the work product itself was fraudulent. The bottom line is that there’s no rehabilitation possible here, because exonerating McInnis on one piece of the scandal implicates him in the other.

Certainly the press will be glad to cover, especially on slow days, McInnis’ insistence that there is more to this story. But that only hurts McInnis.