September 17, 2013 08:13 AM UTC

The Return of Scooter McPlagiarist! (Election Pending)

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• by: Colorado Pols

According to the Grand Junction Sentinel's Emily Shockley today (story behind the paywall), former U.S. Representative, brief 2008 candidate for U.S. Senate, and 2010 GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis has announced a return to electoral politics–at a much lower level than before, seeking the seat on the Mesa County Board of Commissioners set to be vacated next year by term limited Republican Steve Aquafresca. McInnis will reportedly run against another Republican, former Grand Junction Mayor Gregg Palmer, among other candidates who may get in the race.

The Sentinel's Gary Harmon reported in July about McInnis' anticipated return to politics:

“I missed helping people out,” McInnis said of what prompted him to consider a return to elected politics.

We assume the people McInnis hopes to "help out" include fellow Republicans, but there are plenty of reasons they might think the best way for McInnis to help would be to stay away.

As our longtime readers remember well, McInnis lost the GOP gubernatorial primary in 2010 after revelations that a series of essays on water policy and history written for the Hasan Foundation and attributed to him were extensively plagiarized, including material directly lifted without attribution from articles written by a Colorado Supreme Court justice. McInnis' loss to unqualified minor candidate Dan Maes following his plagiarism scandal was a part of a wide-ranging breakdown for Colorado Republicans in an otherwise Republican wave year. It also allowed now-Gov. John Hickenlooper to skate through that election without having to make a serious effort.

The following year, McInnis escaped professional sanction by the state Office of Attorney Regulation, an outcome that was dubiously represented as "exoneration"–the defrauded party, the philanthropic Hasan family, certainly didn't consider McInnis "exonerated."

For our part, we consider the Ward Churchill amalgam we Photoshopped up in July of 2010 (above right) to be some of our very best work, and we look forward to breaking it out of cold storage–much like McInnis himself.