Gubernatorial candiate Scott McInnis has said he’s knows “a little something” about Colorado water issues, which is partly why he says he got a $150,000 fellowship from the Hasan Foundation to write an “a series of in-depth series of articles” on Colorado water. McInnis’ campaign hasn’t commented on the articles or released them.

Yet, we’ve seen little digging by reporters into his views and record on water issues generally, much less the Hasan articles.

Barry Noreen, in a great column in today’s Colorado Springs Gazette, dug into one local water fight and highlighted an apparent flip flop by then Congressman McInnis on a water issue related to the so-called Southern Delivery System.

Noreen writes that some believe McInnis’ decision on the SDS issue was influenced by his future employer, Hogan and Hartson. A McInnis spokesman has said this is untrue, but there’s seems to be quite a bit of anger about this issue in Colorado Springs (See below.).  

Noreen wrote about “life-long Republican” and former Colorado Springs city councilman Dave Sarton who claims McInnis didn’t keep a promise to back federal funding for a project related to the Southern Delivery System:

Sarton and others have suggested that one such “concern” is that McInnis was on his way to a job as a lobbyist for Hogan and Hartson, a lobbying company (see my blog) that had been hired by Pueblo Chieftain publisher Bob Rawlings to fight the water project. Viewed from that angle, it looks like McInnis was beginning to represent his future employer when he was still supposed to be representing the people who elected him.

“That is an unfair and untrue accusation,” Duffy said.

McInnis campaign refused Noreen’s request to speak with the candidate, so reporters should ask him about it in person, next time McInnis passes through Colorado Springs, especially in light of today’s blog post by Sean Paige, a member of the Colorado Springs City Council and a former editorial page editor at the Colorado Springs Gazette. Paige wrote, in part:

My interest in the matter stems partly from what happened back then, which still sticks in my craw, but in part from a more recent event. About 5 or 6 months ago I attended a small meeting — a briefing for McInnis on details of the Southern Delivery System — where Sarton confronted the candidate on the issue. I saw a side of McInnis (who I had heard was something of a hothead) that wasn’t flattering. Sarton raised the issue respectfully and tactfully, from my perspective. McInnis nearly exploded. I thought for a second he was going to get up off his chair and get in Sarton’s face (I was sitting between them). Red-faced and enraged, he yelled at Sarton, saying that he never wanted to hear anyone ever again say that Scott McInnis screwed Colorado Springs.

I have a bit of the Irish myself (though I prefer to think of it as “passion” or “intensity,” rather than a temper), and I’ve worked around some tightly-wound politicians in my day. But I’ve never seen anything quite like the “intensity” I saw in McInnis — in a situation that might easily have been defused with a little diplomacy or humor. I considered rising to Sarton’s defense as the tirade subsided, but I was sitting (as mentioned) within swinging distance of McInnis. A donnybrook would have put a damper on an otherwise informative meeting.

McInnis eventually screwed his head back on his shoulders but he still refused to take any real ownership of past actions. Instead of getting a coherent explanation, or an apology for a misjudgment that might be understandable if put in context, Sarton was effectively ordered to shut up, stuff it and never say anything bad about Scott McInnis again.

Maybe the reason McInnis won’t release the water articles that he claimed to have written during his Hasan Family Foundation fellowship has something to do with this issue. It’s just idle speculation, I know, but what else can we do besides speculate, given that McInnis’ campaign won’t comment at all about the articles? That’s why a journalist should ask should him about them. Or the task might fall to a pseudo-journalist, like KHOW’s Craig Silverman, because McInnis is not making himself available to Noreen–and is in the habit lately of rejecting interviews with The Denver Post. But Dan Caplis said Monday that McInnis always makes himself available for the Caplis and Silverman show.

Yes, I know, a lot of you are thinking that conservatives always get a free ride on conservative talk radio.

But it’s not always so on KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman show, as you know if you listened in yesterday during the 5 p.m. hour (at 12 minutes 30 seconds on the podcast).

Craig grilled Scott McInnis about McInnis’ statement on the show that he was “thrilled” with the outcome of Republican State Assembly on Saturday. It made great radio, if you want to listen to the entire interview here, or you can read the partial tanscript below.

I liked Silverman’s follow-up question, after McInnis made his thrilled remark. “But Congressman,” Silverman said, “really, are you going to tell us that it’s a great day at the assembly to lose to an underfinanced person who has no history of running for anything in Colorado, a stranger to most people?”

You might say that the Caplis and Silverman show doesn’t really count as conservative talk radio, due to the presence of center-right Silverman, and you’re right to a degree. But if you add Silverman’s conservative positions, which are many, to Caplis’ all-rabid-righty all-the-time talk, you find that the show adds up to be mostly conservative talk, disguised as a right-left dialogue.

Still, the show is unpredictable, thanks mostly to Silverman, as you see in the exchange below.

Silverman: It had to be disappointing for you driving off and realizing that the assembly that told you to get to the church on time was also saying, in effect, Dan Maes you’re out choice to be the Republican nominee for governor.

McInnis: Well, Craig, that’s not what they said at all. And I think you’re a little mistaken there. The way you lose in a convention is if you get under 30 percent. What you want to do is be able to get over 30 percent, which means that the Republican Party that went to the convention validated your message and said, ok, you have enough support within our party to take your message statewide. So we actually were thrilled. I mean, look, you could be driving away from there under 30 percent-

Silverman: But Congressman, really, are you going to tell us that it’s a great day at the assembly to lose to an under-financed person who has no history of running for anything in Colorado, a stranger to most people? Here, you’re so well-known. You can’t even tell us you would have preferred that he’d didn’t get to 30 percent and you could be running alone focusing all your time and attention on John Hickenlooper? I mean, how do you expect us to buy your, hey-it-was-a-great-day-for-Scott-McInnis line?

McInnis: Well, first of all, I’m not selling Craig, so I’m not expecting you to buy. And the fact is, clearly, you lose if you’re below 30. If you’re above 30. I mean, if I were the other side, I’m sure as they walked into the locker room, they said, “Man, dog gone it, we got to fight him now.”

When someone gets $150,000 from the Hasan Family Foundation to write a series of in-depth articles, you’d think journalists, being writers themselves, would want to see what was written.

Especially if the writer is Colorado gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis.

Yet, as far as I know, no Colorado journalist has asked McInnis to see the fruits of his writing labor.

I wrote previously that when Craig Silverman and Dan Caplis had McInnis on their KHOW talk-radio show, McInnis said he wrote a “series of in-depth articles on water” when he was a senior fellow at the Hasan Family Foundation. But the hosts didn’t ask to see the writing on this big CO issue. The foundation’s attorney told me that McInnis could release the articles if he wanted to, but McInnis’ spokesperson didn’t have time to get back to me last week.

So I’ve continued to try to fill in the journalistic gap and locate the articles.

First, I emailed Craig Silverman and asked if he’d make up for his interview lapse and ask McInnis, next time he’s a guest on Craig’s talk-radio show, if he’d make his water articles public.

Silverman emailed me back that he appreciated my suggestion, but he wouldn’t commit to asking McInnis about the water articles.

So I moved on.

My friend heard a rumor that Pueblo Chieftain publisher Bob Rawlings might have helped fund McInnis’ work on the articles…-or at least he might know where his writing is.

“I don’t know anything about that, Jason. I’m sorry,” he answered. “I’ve very involved in water issues but I haven’t funded any studies for Scott McInnis.”

Have you ever seen any articles he’s done on water?

“Well, I’ve never heard of them, but my memory isn’t as good as it used to be,” Rawlings said. “Our water guy here [at the Chieftain] is Chris Woodka, and I think probably he’s the best one to answer your question.”

So I called Woodka, who’s a well-known water wonk, but he’d never heard of articles by McInnis on the topic.

Woodka told me that John Orr is one of the few people  who reads more arcane stuff about Colorado water than he does.

I knew about Orr, because he’s the writer and editor of the highly regarded Coyote Gulch blog, a regular stop for most everyone who tracks water issues in Colorado.

“I don’t have any recollection of a water series by him so it may have been before 2003 when I started paying close attention to the issue,” Orr told me. (McInnis was a Hasan fellow from 2005  to 2007.) Neither had Orr seen any single article by McInnis.

Orr suggested I try Loretta Lohman, editor of Nonpoint Source Colorado.  She had never seen anything, either. Neither had the head archivist at Colorado State University’s Water Resources Archive.  Nor the Water Congress. Nor the editor of the High Country News.

I tried the Colorado River District, which has this slogan on its homepage: “Protecting Western Colorado Water since 1937.”

Perfect, I thought.

The receptionist put me in touch with Jim Pokrandt, Communication & Education Specialist. He’d never seen any articles by McInnis and neither had his colleague, Manager of External Affairs Chris Treese.

But Pokrandt told me that McInnis had been a keynote speaker at the CO River District’s annual seminar in Grand Junction in 2005. McInnis’ expenses had been covered by the Hasan Family Foundation, but, unfortunately, no written record of his speech was available, he said. However, he found the title of McInnis’ keynote address: “Washington in the rear-view mirror.”

Maybe this formed the basis for something in depth?

If so, it seems odd that none of the water experts mentioned above know about it. In talking to the various water experts I contacted, it became clear to me that it would be quite strange for McInnis or any serious researcher to write a stealth paper on Colorado water, not to mention a stealth series. It seems like Colorado water researchers and policy people consult each other on the technical details of this complicated topic.

I emailed the McInnis campaign, asking again for a response or to see the articles, and heard nothing back.

So I left hoping that Craig Silverman finds his inner journalist and queries McInnis about this, since Craig is the guy who’s apparently come closest to asking McInnis about it.

Or The Denver Post should push for an answer from McInnis, since a Post story first introduced McInnis’ $150,000 in Hasan income into the campaign debate. And, of course, The Post has taken the lead among news outlets in trying to get all of the gubernatorial candidates to disclose their income tax records for public review.