February 16, 2010 06:32 PM UTC

Wait, McInnis Might Lose?

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• by: Colorado Pols

A very interesting column today from the Grand Junction Sentinel’s former editor Denny Herzog–slowly, it dawns on red country that the gubernatorial race is not what it was last Christmas:

Polls last week had McInnis four points behind Hickenlooper. Just three months ago, when Ritter was still in the race, McInnis enjoyed an eight-point lead.

When I talk to my conservative friends in Mesa County, they can’t understand that. In fact, they act genuinely astonished at the notion that Scott McInnis could lose an election…

This is not an endorsement of either McInnis or Hickenlooper. It’s merely some observations about what I think may be a failed campaign unless it changes direction quickly. The election is not that far away. And a few thousand people in Mesa County who know McInnis won’t put him in the governor’s mansion.

A friend who watches politics more closely than I do told me last week that the 2010 version of Scott McInnis is not the same as the campaigner of the 1990s. Then he was the happy warrior, glad-handing and back-slapping with the best of them.  He was always a bit of a grandstander, but he wasn’t an angry man. That, my friend said, has changed…

When he isn’t berating Democrats, he pounds away at his seemingly one idea: Jobs. And more jobs. But he has yet to tell us in detail just how he proposes to create these mythical jobs.

Just as he failed to tell us how he would have cut the state budget. He had plenty of opportunities to second-guess the cuts Ritter made, and he took advantage of them. He also had plenty of chances to tell us what cuts he would have made. He never did.

There are some broad statements in his “Platform for Prosperity” about reforming government and preventing tax increases, but no specific recommendations for cuts. The closest he came was in a Daily Sentinel story a few months ago, when Penry was still a primary opponent. The most specific idea he had was to bring back a bunch of people who used to run state government, who know how to do things more efficiently. That’s a bad idea on so many levels that it’s not worth serious discussion. Since then, McInnis has said he really won’t know until he’s sitting behind the governor’s desk.

It won’t be long before the Hickenlooper camp puts McInnis on the defensive…