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August 05, 2009 05:25 PM UTC

McInnis' "Shadow Campaign" Too Clever By Half Once Again

  • 12 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

From the Colorado Statesman:

Months before Scott McInnis announced his campaign to unseat Gov. Bill Ritter in 2010, the former congressman spent more than $13,000 of the donations made to his federal leadership Political Action Committee to solicit support for the Colorado Republican Party, according to an analysis by The Colorado Statesman of campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission on Friday, July 31.

McInnis, who represented the 3rd Congressional District from 1993 to 2005, used $13,399.97 from The Western Way Leadership PAC to fund two mailings promoting the Republican Party. The first letter, mailed in March, and the second, mailed in May, went to an undisclosed number of Colorado Republicans.

“The first letter was asking Colorado Republicans which direction they thought the party should head,” McInnis campaign spokesman Sean Duffy told The Statesman on Friday. “The second, in May, was a letter to promote what the party had done.”

…The Western Way PAC, which McInnis established in 2000, had nearly $750,000 cash on hand at the end of June. In addition to what it spent on the two mailings, the PAC put out $45,553.86 for clerical work, cell phone service and legal fees, with $11,400 of that going to charitable contributions during the first six months of 2009…

“Sarah Palin Tweets and wants to write a book. Scott McInnis uses what resources he has to tell the GOP that Scott McInnis cares about the GOP,” [CSU professor John] Straayer said. “Aside from the question of using old campaign money for this, I see it as pretty standard stuff.”

According to The Statesman analysis, McInnis’ PAC was somewhat inactive during the months leading into the 2008 election. Other than clerical, banking and charitable donations made mostly to Western Slope organizations and Mesa State College, The Western Way gave only one political donation in 2008 – a $10,000 expenditure to the Western Heritage 527, which is led by McInnis campaign advisor and former D.C. staffer Mike Hesse. [Pols emphasis]

You’ll recall word of these letters from Scott McInnis first surfaced in April, contributing to already escalating speculation about McInnis’ “shadow candidacy” and compliance with election law.

Putting aside questions about the law, which most of our readers understand is shot through with enough loopholes to make compliance a semantic technicality, the real problem with this is the way it looks–it’s obvious that this letter from McInnis’ PAC was intended to benefit McInnis personally, not to genuinely assist the party with anything. And the fact that Western Way PAC spent over five times as much money during this electoral off-year as they did in all of the critical 2008 election cycle is about as clear an indicator as you could ever ask for of why this PAC exists–couching it as money spent “on behalf of the Republican Party” is an almost insulting pretense.

Given the rather unfortunate disclosure related to McInnis and ‘our 527’ that exploded into the news just a couple of weeks later, with all the calling cards of a high-level red-on-red hit, we’d say somebody well placed in the Colorado Republican Party agrees.

UPDATE: Really was an awful lot of money spent for an off-year, wasn’t it? These newly-filed expense reports for McInnis’ PAC might be legally problematic after all, pending expository homework that seems to be busily underway.

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12 thoughts on “McInnis’ “Shadow Campaign” Too Clever By Half Once Again”

  1. Didn’t McInnis tell the Denver Post he was funding everything out of his own pocket?

    The fluff mailings pro republican will be answered with some lame lawyers brief, but McInnis has $2,000 in gas and travel expenses that he also funded from this Federal PAC.  Are we to believe the travel was to promote the Party that his great friend Dick Wadhams is building?

    Also, didn’t the famous 527 call reference a poll?  Who paid for that?  If he paid for it personnally, it should have been disclosed on the July state report.  

    Why would you take on this headache to launder $15,000 out of your Federal PAC?

    Not too bright.  

  2. April 7, 2009 McInnis Rents a Car in Grand Junction.

    April 7, 2009 McInnis shows up to give a campaign speech at the Denver Metro Young Republicans Legislative Reception (see below)

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/3…

    This is a crystal clear violation.  He used Federal PAC money to pay for travel expenses (car rental, gas, etc.) related to his campaign for Governor.  

    1. How many days did Western Way PAC have this rental car you reference?  Looks like they spent over 500 bucks on it.  Where else did he travel that week with his PAC-funded rental car?  Other campaign events, perhaps?

      Any reporters interested in calling this douche bag and asking him what his schedule was that week?  

        1. to have to login three times with three different user IDs to post three different things?

          Thanks for putting all the sock puppets in a row like that though. Nice job.

  4. McInnis’ 527 machine was partially fueled by the oil-and-gas industry in last year’s Garfield County commissioner elections.

    McInnis’ Western Way $10,000 donation to the Western Heritage 527 in 2008 supported the commissioner candidacies of two Garfield County Republicans, Mike Samson and incumbent John Martin. By the way, another big Western Heritage donor ($20,000) was Paul Rady, the chairman and chief executive officer of Antero Resources Corp.

    Antero happens to be the oil-and-gas company that will be going before Martin and Samson for approval to drill 200 natural gas wells within the Battlement Mesa PUD.

    Special interests flooded the last Garfield County election with money and mud, and they could change the shape of local elections to come. Ed Sands, chairman of the Garfield County Democratic Party, said he believes Democrats running for key positions in the future will find themselves squaring off against a pile of oil and gas money again.

    “I think you can expect to see [Garfield County Commissioner] TrГ©si Houpt, if she chooses to run again, to be targeted with the same kind of techniques,” he said. “Probably even more intense and more vicious.”

    It is interesting that last year McInnis told the Aspen Daily News: “If you ask me tomorrow if we should shut down 527s and put a reasonable limit on campaign contributions, I’d say ‘yes’ in a heartbeat.”

    Obviously, McInnis didn’t make this a 2010 campaign pledge.

  5. McInnis was elected in 1992 and stepped down for the 2004 elections, so he served from 1993 until 2005.  They got both dates wrong.  Nice fact-checking, idiots.

    1. The dates in the story have been changed and a correction note has been placed at the bottom of the online story. Thanks for the correction Colorado@Yale.

      Jason Kosena

      The Colorado Statesman

      1. Do you plan on reporting about McInnis’ campaiging for Governor (mostly the travel expenses) with his federal PAC money? Seems like a no-brainer.

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