August 03, 2009 06:26 PM UTC

Penry Westword's "Schmuck of the Week"

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• by: Colorado Pols

Joining primary opponent Scott McInnis in receipt of Westword’s ignominious ‘prize,’ Kiernan Maletsky writes:

This week’s shmuck is state Senate minority leader Josh Penry of Grand Junction. He’s also gunning for Bill Ritter’s Governor job, and the short version of the past few weeks’ convoluted saga of schmuckitude is that Penry cares a lot more about his political future than his constituents. (Which makes him exactly like every other politician, which makes every other politician a shmuck. Which means we’re probably right about this one).

It’s tough to decide where to begin, really. Early July — when the Feds started looking at a disposal cell south of Grand Junction as a storage facility for thousands of tons of mercury — seems a good a time as any. It seems pretty clear that to store mercury in the cell would blatantly abuse the intent of the facility, which was to store uranium mill tailings from the city’s past. The facility was approved on condition that it not be used to store hazardous materials. Like mercury.

Citizens of Grand Junction were understandably miffed at the government’s proposal, but the city’s elected officials in Denver were oddly silent. Protest came from the Capitol, eventually, from Penry and Ritter and everyone else. But Penry seems less interested in keeping mercury out of his city than finding ways to attack Ritter, even though they’re both fighting for the exact same thing.