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July 12, 2009 08:50 PM UTC

Consensus: Penry Rocks McInnis With Superb Campaign Roll-Out

  • 41 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

As the Grand Junction Sentinel reports:

Long-drawn-out political campaigns generally pull families apart, but Josh Penry is hoping his bid for governor will bring his family together.

Penry has now traveled regularly over the Continental Divide to Denver as a state representative, now a state senator, for five years. While he’s been a legislator, his family has been 250 miles away in Grand Junction.

In the coming months as he pursues the Republican nomination for governor, he’ll travel the state, but not alone.

Penry, his wife, Jamie, son, Chase, 7, and daughter, Emma, 3, gradually will pull up stakes and move to Denver as his bid proceeds.

“We are in,” Jamie Penry told a crowd of some 200 supporters Saturday morning at the old Mesa County Courthouse, confirming her husband’s bid to challenge Democrat incumbent Gov. Bill Ritter.

Read similarly positive coverage of Josh Penry’s campaign launch in the Denver Post, watch him featured tonight on KDVR Fox-31. Note the conspicuous absence of unhappy terms like “gaffe,” “Canadian mountain,” or “call to investigate.” And for all the clue you need on what Penry has in store for his former mentor-cum-opponent for the state’s highest office, from the AP wire story:

[Penry] said he spoke with McInnis about running for governor.

“He made it clear that he was looking at the race,” Penry said. “I told him I understood that it was his last shot, [Pols emphasis] but that I would make my own decision.”

Translation: step aside, old man.

And this weekend, Penry delivered that message with all the electrifying thrill of returning the opening kickoff for a touchdown, if you’ll excuse us for employing the sort of Penry-friendly football analogy you’ll be hearing way too much in this race (watch for this). Didn’t he?

Comments

41 thoughts on “Consensus: Penry Rocks McInnis With Superb Campaign Roll-Out

  1. I think Ritter could take McInnis because McInnis looked like he was going to do the traditional GOP approach of keep shooting yourself in the foot. And he’s clearly clueless about the web.

    But Penry is good. We’re all amazed that there were no mistakes in his rollout but it was more than that – it was quite good. Excellent speech.

    And emailing bloggers what mountains were on his website when it first went up – he understands the web.

    This not good. Especially with all the recent Ritter mis-steps. Not good at all…

  2. So Penry didn’t fumble in a way that makes press all over the country like Scooter, and now he’s the Joshuassiah? That’s a pretty low bar, don’t you think? I’d hate to be a Republican right now.

    Penry is a fringy Tea Party wackadoo Janet Rowland mold extremist and the general election will bury his career. Until then, 1st and goal!

  3. I understand that McInnis is perceived as a centrist in polling, and Penry gets the right wing wacko label and that polling therefore shows McInnis can beat Ritter if anyone can.  Also understand that Wadhams is no fan of Mc Innis.  The weird thing to me is that if there were more moderate Republicans, ala McInnis – though I don’t pretend to know if he really is a moderate – there would be more Rs in government.  

  4. As reported by The Daily Sentinel:

    In what appears to be Peny’s agreement with his mentor, Scott McInnis, after McInnis said he was booted out of the Republican Party nomination for the U.S. Senate seat when Colorado Republican power brokers handed the nomination to Bob Schaffer and while echoing fellow Republican Muhammad Ali Hasan’s statement when he said,

    “I hate those fucking kingmakers, I am not going to listen to those fuckers.”

    Penry now says,

    “The days of the Republican Party holing up in a smoke-filled room in the Brown Palace Hotel and picking its nominee are over.”

    As if anyone needed more evidence of Penry’s me-me-me ego driven politics, Penry now says he will abandon Mesa County and SD7 to move to Denver in a carpetbagger effort to garner the attention he so desperately wants.

    Please, Josh, if you want the attention of Denver “kingmakers”, if you fancy yourself that rat king lemming leader, as your fellow R’s call you, if you want to be that perpetual slimy career politician, please resign your senate seat so that we may find effective representation here, instead of paying for an infinite campaigning politician’s insatiable self-serving ego.

    Lets see.  Penry does not like the Colorado Republican Party Chairman’s way of doing business, he does not believe that his mentor would be the best choice for governor, he has pissed off fellow R leadership resulting in his getting his moniker of “lemming leader” hung around his neck and Democrats, Independents and moderate Republicans do not like him.  Is he hoping that somehow his small out-of-state contingency of hydrocarbon company backers will fix the election for him?  Is Penry counting on the contracting and waning white dwarf base of R extremists to fulfill his desires? Good luck with that.

    “The public has grown contemptuous of a political process that seems

    endlessly pre-occupied with the next election cycle – it’s called the permanent campaign,

    and the public is permanently sick of it.”
    –Colorado’s widely known hypocrite and permanent flimflam man, Josh Penry

    1. I don’t mean this in a snarky way at all, but you really seem to have in in for Penry.  

      Other than the fact that he’s a Republican, is there anything specific you could point out to me that you dislike about him so?

      1. Give it up, you will not succeed in making this about me.  I’m not running for anything. Penry is.  I oppose Penry the same way you oppose President Obama.  I oppose Penry’s failed Senate leadership. I oppose Penry’s deception concerning O&G activity.  I oppose his statement that he would not have opposition to Janet Rowland’s desire for creationism being taught in public classrooms. I oppose his pork barrel ballot initiatives funded by out of state O&G money.  I oppose his useless fillerbusters. I oppose his “off-the-record” attacks on journalists. I oppose his failure to provide a viable state budget plan and as evidenced above, I oppose his hypocrisy. If you need more, you’ll just have to click on my handle and read till your heart is content.  End of conversation.

        1. Like I said, I was curious about specific issues, and you’ve given me some.  I wasn’t looking to ambush you on anything.

          Remember, I supported President Obama until he started making some of the decisions he made.

  5. The messiah is here!  

    In all seriousness, the Penry camp did a great job on the announcement and for all the folks that want to call him the “lemming king” and dismiss him as representing the fringe—you’re delusional.  He’s a shoo-in to win the primary and will give Ritter more than his run for the money.  He’s far more polished than he is given credit for and understands how to message for the masses.  

    I’m with David, Penry scares the crap out of me.

  6. I think the Association of Realtors should be ashamed of themselves for allowing a GOP primary event to be held at their headquarters. I didn’t think they took a postition until after the primary elections. They should be ashamed of themselves and I think every Realtor should be concerned.

    1. Stick to your assigned task of running the (cough) 5 (cough) 27.  

      Plus, you forgot a “all hat, no cattle” reference in your post.  

  7. Is this really no country for old men?  McInnis is not that old, certainly not McCain-old.  I would have thought that Penry would stay away from discussions of age and experience, given that he lacks both.  Perhaps Scotty can take a play from the great Ronnie Reagan (!) and publicly promise not to make an issue of Penry’s youth and inexperience?

  8. But the question remains, does he deserve to be Governor?

    I have an open mind.  I want hard information.

    Shills will do what shills do, which is to promote their candidates. I hope that at least one of them tells me what Penry has ever managed.  Because a whole damned state is a big thing to manage.

        1. I was just commenting that people have been elected to higher offices than Governor with little management experience.

          I don’t know that it can be used as a salient argument, post-Obama.

            1. It was a huge point, scored in my favor.  One of the greatest arguments ever put forth in a political discussion.

              I’m waiting by my computer for you to email me for political advice any moment now.

  9. Down to the typeface and the weird little “sun” emblem in his “2010” logo. It mimics the Obama sunbeams.

    He’s doing what a Pub will need to do to have any viability in 2010 and beyond. Whether it’s enough to disguise his fundamental far-right positions, remains to be seen.

    Penry may end up being a gift for Ritter, because a lot of disenchanted Dems and union members will skedaddle back to the fold and begin working for Ritter once they learn how extreme Penry is.

    1. Exactly. It’s a gamble that Obama prepared the way for a similarly inexperienced but inspiring young candidate, and it remains to be seen whether Penry exudes the calm competence that got Obama through so many muddles. But you’re exactly right, it’s quite deliberate and it’s their best chance. Also note, Penry will battle McInnis from the Obama vs. Hillary playbook.

  10. Is not an acceptable practice on this blog. We were forced to delete many comments in this thread after another such attempt, and we will ban accounts involved if we see it happen again.

    If you are really this obsessed with the identities of people you see commenting here and insist on telling the world who you imagine they are, start your own blog to do so. Our community depends on people feeling comfortable to speak their minds without the threat of retaliation from anyone, this includes you.

    1. It started to sound in here kind of like the people in Grand Junction who still speculate over who the characters in Dalton Trumbo’s novel Eclipse (his book based on that town) are.

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