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Call it Scott McInnis’ mulligan. (That’s golf terminology for a do-over.) After his campaign for governor got off to a shaky start earlier this year—when critics questioned his campaign finances—the former Republican congressman has rebounded with his sights set squarely on Democratic Governor Bill Ritter.
McInnis kicked off a two-week, 28-stop tour of the state yesterday that took him to places like Vail Valley, where he riled a handful of potential voters about recent fee increases, writes the Vail Daily. “The people out there feel like they got nickel and dimed on this licensing stuff,” McInnis said.
On the west steps of the Capitol, he noted that Colorado is in “the worst economic shape it’s been in in a long time” and said his campaign comes down to three words: “jobs, jobs, jobs” (via the Denver Business Journal). “The military economic piece of the pie is huge,” McInnis said.
He is one of three in the GOP vying for the governor’s seat, including state Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry of Grand Junction and Evergreen businessman Dan Maes.
Penry, meanwhile, has fallen under the scrutiny of Colorado Ethics Watch, a watchdog group that filed an open-records request asking for e-mail records in connection to alleged misuse of state resources and e-mail lists for campaign spam, writes ColoradoPols.