June 12, 2006 08:00 AM UTC

Beauprez Gets Hammered in Post

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Denver Post ran a profile on Republican Bob Beauprez yesterday that was devastating on a number of levels. Colorado Lib runs down the negatives well, but in general, Beauprez ended up looking like someone who had no clear plan or direction about what he wanted to do as governor, and the Post ran down a number of instances where he publicly contradicted himself. The article also talked about how Beauprez has said that he would put?his?party over the interests of the people.?Beauprez clearly doesn’t have a real message yet, and he’s not going to be able to coast along on charm and attack ads in a statewide race like he did in his two congressional races.

It also didn’t help that the Post pointed out Beauprez’s apparent connections to the Russian Mafia – connections that he denied first on Colorado Pols.

After winning re-election in 2004, Beauprez and his wife traveled to Israel to attend the Jerusalem Summit, a conservative conference where he gave a speech saying the U.S. and Israel were “bonded in blood” after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Echoing many in the neoconservative movement, he criticized the United Nations’ involvement in Middle East peace talks as “dysfunctional” and asserted Israel’s right, like that of the U.S., to defend itself when attacked.

The $21,226 tab for the trip was picked up by the conference’s sponsor, the Michael Cherney Foundation.

According to FBI and Interpol reports quoted in Fortune magazine and elsewhere, Cherney – also known as Mikhail Chernoy – took over much of Russia’s aluminum industry through alleged embezzlement, money laundering and murder. The Center for Public Integrity calls him a “reputed mobster” targeted in investigations throughout much of Western Europe, Russia, Israel and the U.S., but never convicted of a crime.

Beauprez failed to report the trip within the 30 days required by Congress, instead filing the disclosure six months later.

“We screwed up. We just plumb forgot,” he says.

But in an online interview last summer, he said, “I did not accept money from Michael Cherney or his foundation.”

Hey, where’s the love for Pols? That online interview was a Q&A here at?Colorado Pols.