Scott McInnis has been positioning himself for a political comeback since at least last year. Note that in October, McInnis prematurely pissed on the GOP's grave by publicly predicting that Bob Schaffer would lose to Mark Udall in the U.S. Senate contest -- and adding that he could have won the seat. But his stealth campaign for the 2010 governor's office brought him into the crosshairs of organizations such as Colorado Ethics Watch, which repeatedly rapped him for refusing to make the run official. He finally did so yesterday, and in the wake of this move, ProgressNow Colorado, another liberal organization, rushed out a press release praising CEW and branding McInnis as "McLobbyist."
Sound familiar? Republican senatorial candidate Wayne Allard twice beat Democratic rival Tom Strickland in part because conservatives successfully stuck Strickland with the tag "lawyer-lobbyist." Dems bellyached plenty about that at the time, but it was inarguably effective -- just as they hope a variation of it will be against McInnis. Expect to hear a lot of "McLobbyist" yap in the weeks and months to come.
Read the ProgressNow press release after the jump:
ProgressNow Colorado Congratulates Colorado Ethics WatchEthics watchdog group publicizes campaign law violations, forces "McLobbyist" to file
DENVER: After learning that former Congressman Scott "McLobbyist" McInnis silently filed papers to run for governor of Colorado yesterday, ending weeks of speculation and allegations of campaign finance law violations from both sides of the aisle, the founder of ProgressNow Colorado, the state's largest progressive advocacy organization Michael Huttner released the following statement:
"We were pleased to hear this morning that Scott 'McLobbyist' McInnis has decided to stop misleading the people of Colorado and start complying with the law. Republicans and Democrats have united in recent days to demand that McInnis stop playing games in order to avoid proper campaign finance disclosures.
"The credit for this goes first and foremost to Colorado Ethics Watch, who doggedly followed up on McInnis' many slip-ups and forced McInnis under threat of an embarrassing investigation to file his papers. Everyone who believes that no politician should be above the law owes Ethics Watch a debt of thanks for holding McInnis accountable."
