McInnis in hot seat

An excerpt from a Rocky Mountain Independent article - read the rest of the article HERE.

In the hot seat

Recent bad press for McInnis in Denver media hasn’t helped improve that brand. The congressman has been criticized over how he’s spent the $1.3 million that was in his campaign account when he left Congress in 2004, and for hiring his wife, Lori, to manage it. At the time, a McInnis staffer said the congressman would distribute some of the money to charities. But according to news reports, he put most of the money into a new political action committee called Western Way Leadership, and has already used some of it to promote the GOP.

A brouhaha occurred over the matter last week when McInnis appeared on KHOW-AM (630) talk radio’s Caplis and Silverman show. There, Dan Caplis, a Republican, asked McInnis about the issue, prompting a heated exchange that had Caplis calling McInnis “silly” and saying his handling of the matter was “beneath the office” he’s hoping to win.

In an interview with the RMI a week earlier, McInnis interrupted a similar query into the matter, saying:

“Let’s stop right there. I’m sensing a little male chauvinism here. If my wife was here, she’d say, ‘Because I’m a woman I shouldn’t be paid for my job?’ My wife was fully employed. It was perfectly legitimate. It was her job. This, again, is our political opponents trying to make hay out of this,” McInnis said.

“Take any of my opponents and ask them what they’ve ever done to help the cause of cancer. Take any of my opponents and ask them what they’ve ever done with Girls on the Run. Take any of my opponents and ask them what they’ve ever done with Catholic Charities. You might as well take that little gotcha thing off the table.”

Penry’s response?

“Those are things he’s going to have to explain,” he said. “We could spend a lot of time doing the tit-for-tat on those things, but that demeans the importance of this election. I assume the Fourth Estate will ask him those questions.”