November 11, 2009 07:34 PM UTC

Spin Control Fail: Penry's Endorsement That Wasn't

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• by: Colorado Pols

The first word Monday of gubernatorial candidate Josh Penry’s withdrawal from the GOP primary came, as you all know, from the Washington Post–not a local source. And the word from the Washington Post was unambiguous on a key point:

Colorado state Sen. Josh Penry (R) plans to end his gubernatorial campaign and endorse former Rep. Scott McInnis (R), [Pols emphasis] according to two sources familiar with his thinking.

It’s a funny thing about how the news of Penry’s withdrawal leaked. Penry claims it was a number of days premature, asserted that the news was leaked Monday before his meeting with opponent Scott McInnis had even concluded, but oddly blamed the leak on some anonymous “yahoo.” But you would think that “some yahoo” would have picked up the phone and called, say, Gary Harmon at the Grand Junction Sentinel or Jessica Fender at the Denver Post, wouldn’t you? Why would your first call with breaking gubernatorial race news be the Washington Post, of all places?

And as it turns out, this “yahoo” got a critical detail wrong in his leak–the part about Penry endorsing McInnis. As the Durango Herald reports today:

Josh Penry’s exit from the governor’s race did not happen the way his rival Scott McInnis had hoped.

Penry made it official Tuesday and dropped out of the Republican primary, but he refused to endorse McInnis.

Penry blamed “some yahoo” for leaking news of his withdrawal to the on Monday, before he was ready to go public. The Post story also said Penry would endorse McInnis, but Penry pointedly refused to take that step Tuesday afternoon when he released his public statement…

So what happened here, folks? Well, it’s pretty clear that the McInnis campaign was either the direct source of this leak to the Washington Post, or one degree of separation removed. Obviously, it was the McInnis campaign’s intention to get ahead of the story and spin it desirably–after all, wouldn’t you do the same thing?

Except for one small problem: they told a lie. And in the context of what looks like a coordinated effort by wealthy Republican insiders to force Penry, the base’s clear favorite, out of the race, this misinformation planted in the Washington Post makes McInnis look really, really bad. No responsible reporter should print anything he “leaks” in the future without verifying the hell out of it.

The biggest question remaining is whether or not the Republican rank-and-file is paying close enough attention to what’s happening to push back. In its way, this brutish clearing of the field for McInnis stinks much worse than anything done by insiders on behalf of Senate candidate “Puppet Jane” Norton–which, if you recall, was still enough to agitate the base into full-scale rebellion.