July 12, 2009 08:50 PM UTC

Consensus: Penry Rocks McInnis With Superb Campaign Roll-Out

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• 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?