GOP gubernatorial primary gets interesting: McInnis slammed for plagiarism

With the August 10th primary election just around the corner, Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis has been hit with charges of plagiarism.

The Hasan Family Foundation paid McInnis $300,000 in 2005 and 2006 to write a series of articles on water rights. Now the Foundation is demanding all payments be returned after McInnis admitted that portions of the articles submitted under his name were plagiarized from a 1984 article by Gregory Hobbs, now a Supreme Court justice.

McInnis blames a research assistant for the folly.

Scott avoided answering questions about exactly how much of the article he wrote, but insists that a research assistant selected the plagiarized content. When asked who wrote the articles published for the Hasan Family Foundation under the name Scott McInnis, the former U.S. congressman and 2010 candidate for governor answered in vague terms:

“Well, I had staff assistance and I edited the articles, they went in under my name.” McInnis continued, “Well, I edited them but I didn't run them through a check to see if they, I mean, from our expert, Rollie, you know he's an expert in water for three or four decades. So I took what he said at face value.”

The Foundation took a hard line against McInnis in a statement released by Chairwoman Seeme Hasan on Tuesday:

“If indeed Mr. McInnis was working with a 'research advisor,' it was never brought to our attention, nor authorized. The work that the Foundation hired Mr. McInnis to do was to be done solely by Mr. McInnis, and not in concert with anyone else.”

Possible political motivations for the timing of the Foundation’s accusations date back to this year’s Colorado GOP Assembly.

The Hasan Family Foundation released these plagiarism accusations through the Denver Post earlier this week, forcing McInnis to come clean on his sloppy partial authorship.

Not coincidentally, a member of the Hasan family entered into the 2010 race for state treasurer late last year. Ali Hasan, son of Hasan Family Foundation founders Malik and Seeme Hasan, was favored to finish strong in the assembly, but was instead routed by fellow Republican candidate JJ Ament. McInnis refused to endorse any candidates in that race, despite his close relationship with the Hasan family and the fellowship extended to McInnis by the Foundation in 2005 after he left Congress.

The Foundation took the fight to their website on their Fellowship Page in a carefully worded denunciation of McInnis' work as a senior fellow.

Maes gains ground on McInnis for GOP nod

Underdog opponent Dan Maes, who trailed McInnis in recent gubernatorial primary polling by as much as 28 points, stands to gain ground as a result of the controversy. Maes is an Evergreen businessman who surprised pundits by forcing a primary when he narrowly beat McInnis in voting at the GOP State Assembly.

Despite that assembly victory and McInnis’ plagiarism foible, Maes continues to face long odds in the larger Republican voting pool represented by primary voters.