“[McInnis] is asking the people of Colorado to trust him, but he is proving to be completely untrustworthy,” ProgressNow Executive Director Bobby Clark told reporters. “He has clearly misrepresented his record on a number of occasions and he won’t tell us basic information, like where his money is coming from.”

McInnis told talk radio hosts months ago that he wouldn’t release his tax returns because he feared taking “a beating.” Candidates for office are not required to release returns but doing so is a long tradition and an act of good faith. In the case of McInnis, long an oil and gas lobbyist and a champion of the industry as a candidate for governor, the calls have particular relevance for voters and media concerned about conflicts of interest.

“I’m not going to invite myself to my own beating,” said McInnis. “I’m going to give what I think the people want, not what the Denver Post wants.”

That’s the question Clark said the ProgressNow petition and a recent survey, conducted for the group by Precision Polling, were attempting to address.

“This should be [a major] issue,” Clark said. “Candidates should provide basic financial information. It is a simple request. Candidates for state-wide office always do it. It is highly unusual to refuse to turn over [tax returns]. So it absolutely should be an issue. If we are going to have accountable government, we need to know that these people are representing us. We need to know what their financial interests are,. We need to know who they owe favors to. We need to see that complete picture.”

According to the Precision Polling survey, 74.3 percent of 500 randomly selected Coloradans said they thought McInnis should release his tax returns. The poll reported 82.2 percent of likely voters said McInnis should disclose the list of corporate and organizational boards on which he sits.

McInnis released partial tax returns earlier in the year– four years worth of partial data. His opponent, Democrat John Hickenlooper, released decades worth of full returns, carting up boxes of paperwork from his basement and speaking frankly with media about his financial history. McInnis released his partial returns to an attorney’s office where media could inspect them. McInnis told the Colorado Independent he was protecting the financial data of his law firm partners but accountants told the Colorado Independent that all of the information related to the partners in the firm, Hogan & Hartson, could either be redacted or left out altogether depending on the forms McInnis released.

McInnis didn’t address the ProgressNow ralliers Tuesday. Clark said the group would send the signature by email to the McInnis campaign office.

Inside the forum, McInnis called himself the “only candidate in the race who is a water expert,” an apparent deadpan reference to the 12 “water articles” McInnis authored for the conservative Hasan Family Foundation for $300,000. The commission has been mocked in the press as a boondoggle. The articles, called “musings” by the author, read like pared-down encyclopedia entries delivered as rambling snippets, for which McInnis was paid $2000 per page. Reporters, mainly Jason Salzman a media blogger and Colorado Independent contributor, had been asking McInnis and the Hasan Foundation to produce the articles for weeks. The foundation posted them just this week on its website.

Yet McInnis said government transparency was one of his main issues. He said customers of Xcel, the state’s largest energy provider, deserved a full accounting of the costs the state’s new 30 percent renewable energy standard would generate for consumers.

Hickenlooper held a 30 minute conference with the press before speaking at the forum, which was sponsored by 9 News and the The Denver Petroleum Club.

McInnis, who was scheduled to appear after his speech according to sponsors, failed to do so. Spokesperson Sean Duffy told reporters that his candidate was unaware of the press conference. He said McInnis left to attend another speaking arrangement.

[Flickr Photo via McInnis for Colorado]

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Edit note: The original version of this post reported McInnis spoke to Denver talk radio hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman about “taking a beating” on his tax returns. It was in fact the Northern Colorado Keith and Gail Fox radio show on which he discussed releasing the returns.

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“Does [McInnis] realize that 20 percent of his own electorate is Latino and they are in line to be profiled by the Arizona law if they travel just one state over,” Chandra Russo, communications coordinator for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, told the Colorado Independent. “We find it abhorrent to see Mr. McInnis support a law to profile immigrant Americans.”

Others believed it was partly a misguided campaign tactic, that McInnis like other Republican candidates here, is tacking right, being steered in effect by influential Tea Party groups in the state.

“This is just the latest example of Scott McInnis being to the extreme right of his party.” said Bobby Clark, deputy director of the progressive group Progress Now. “Many national conservatives are stepping away from this law and yet McInnis is embracing it.” Clark said it only highlights the need for the kind of comprehensive immigration reform policy his organization supports.

Colorado Democratic Party Chair Pat Waak wondered where McInnis has been on the debate until now.

“As a party we have recognized that this is a federal issue and that we need federal reform. I think that the Arizona law is seriously unconstitutional and I am just wondering where Scott McInnis was when we were passing immigration laws… I think [McInnis] ought to start explaining what he knows about immigration law, because it sounds like he doesn’t know very much about it.”

The Arizona bill requires officers to demand citizenship papers from and arrest anyone they suspect may be in the state / country illegally. The law also establishes a procedure by which citizens can report businesses they believe to employing illegal aliens. The bill states that race, ethnicity and place of origin can not be used as evidence in police arrests or citizen reports.

Waak said the law is counter productive. “It puts an unnecessary wedge between communities and the police who are supposed to keep them safe. It undermines America’s basic notions of fairness.”

Waak noted that GOP U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton, who has been caught out repeatedly catering to Tea Party voters, recently made statements similar to those McInnis made today about the Arizona law.

“The Arizona law is a natural reaction of states trying to solve a problem that the federal government has basically ignored for 30 years. Year in and year out, states have been forced to shoulder the increased costs associated with illegal immigration. If I’m elected as U.S. Senator, I will stand up for the rights of states like Arizona to protect their citizens from illegal immigration.”

Waak said she thought pandering to the “far right of the party” was not a wise campaign move.

ProgressNow’s Clark, on the other hand, saw the move as perhaps sincere and so a disturbing signal.

“If we are not careful, there are going to be more states like [Arizona], where irrationality and xenophobia take over and we end up with a patchwork of really awful laws,” Clark said.

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Scott McInnis (screengrab: 9 News)

Progressive online organization ProgressNow Colorado, for example, predictably jumped on McInnis’s reluctance.

“McInnis is thumbing his nose at a routine request for basic financial disclosures. On behalf of our network members and all Colorado voters we demand that McInnis come clean,” said Executive Director Bobby Clark.

The group is asking McInnis to not only disclose his tax returns but also to unseal his divorce papers and make available lists of clients he lobbied for and boards he was paid to sit on over the years, including while he was a member of Congress.

McInnis appeared on the Fox radio show apparently after having just read a Denver Post editorial published the same morning calling on him and fellow Republican Dan Maes to “follow Hickenlooper’s lead and agree to make their returns public.”

The Post argued that releasing income tax returns “shows that a leader who seeks the public trust is committed to transparency at all levels,” adding that “[t]ax returns show sources of income, chronicle any charitable giving, and reveal potential conflicts of interest, use of tax shelters and other valuable information.”

In a news story on the same day, the Post reported: “Since at least 1998, all but one Colorado major-party gubernatorial candidate – Republican Marc Holtzman – have released their tax forms to the media. And in the past 14 years, all major-party U.S. Senate candidates in Colorado have released their tax returns.”

McInnis, however, viewed the Post’s request as an intrusion and a set up.

“I’m not going to invite myself to my own beating. I’m going to give what I think the people want, not what the Denver Post wants,” McInnis told the radio audience. He said that there was no need for him to release his returns.

“I have made more disclosures on my financial background than any other candidate in this race and probably more than any candidate for a long time simply because of length of service.”

That of course was before Hickenlooper invited a small group of reporters to go through his returns with him, literally carting up boxes full of papers from his basement for outlets including the Colorado Independent to review.

Elsewhere in the Fox interview McInnis again said that the Post’s request was aggressive by design. “Keep in mind that it’s [the Denver Post's] job to make my job as uncomfortable as possible.” (See the Keith and Gail audio archive on the KCOL website, April 15, hour 4, beginning at 15 minutes 30 seconds.)

McInnis told the Fox hosts that he’d release records of his income, but as the Post pointed out, income tax returns reveal much more than just income. They would also reveal, for example, the compensation McInnis received for serving on the board of equity firm KSL Capitol Partners.

McInnis said releasing his returns would compromise the privacy of his family. He didn’t say whether he would simply release the portions of his returns that apply to his individual income.

McInnis said that it was the press and Democrats who wanted to see his tax returns, not the people.

“People don’t really care about what my brother and sister made or what that says on my income tax returns,” he said, adding later: “It’s rarely brought up by the average citizen on the street. ‘Gee, Scott, I want to know some of that information.’”

Of course, voters look to the news media to ask politicians to disclose information for review. Citizens “on the street” don’t usually have time to review twenty years of tax returns, much less lobbying records and possible conflicts of interest.

A transcript of the McInnis interview referenced above is available at bigmedia.org, the Rocky Mountain Media Watch website.

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Edit note: An earlier version of this post appeared at blogsite Colorado Pols.

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Dealership owner Phil Wolf is taking a second step into billboard controversy with the new sign. This September he donated two billboards at his dealership near Kipling and I70 to talk-radio host Peter Boyles and World Net Daily’s ‘birther’ campaign. Those boards asked “Where’s the birth certificate?” The new sign reads “President or Jihad? Prove It! Wake Up America! Remember Ft. Hood!” Obama is presented in caricature, wearing a turban.

“It is really an outrageous thing to compare the President to a Jihadist and invoke what happened at Fort Hood. It is just disgusting.” ProgressNow’s Bobby Clark told the Colorado Independent. He went on to say that his organization would be calling on their members and members of the community to boycott Wolf Automotive Group, which has four dealerships, including lots in Wyoming and Montana.

“We will defend anyone’s first amendment right to speak their minds but we also believe strongly that the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work unless we all participate. It is our right as citizens to respond to things like that,” Clark said.

From the Peter Boyles website

The billboard campaign comes after a week where conservative talk show hosts such as KHOW’s Peter Boyles railed against Muslims and after a YouTube called “Obama Admits He Is A Muslim” went viral, landing on rightwing blogs and websites, including the website for Boyles radio show. The video simply mashes clips of Obama speaking forthrightly and positively about his experience of Islam and Muslim culture, as though that in itself were some sort of admission or a form of treason. Boyles played the audio from the video throughout his program this week and directed listeners to his webpage to watch the video, where it is still posted beneath a caricature of a Muslim man whose turban is a lighted cartoon bomb.

“It can be tempting for people just to dismiss [the billboard]. Saying, ‘Well, it is Peter Boyles, he is going to love the attention,’” Clark said. “But we really believe that if you allow ideas like that to go unanswered, you provide passive approval of them. The perception can be created that, that is OK, that, that idea is reasonable– and it is not. When we stop being outraged by things like that then we are really in trouble in this country.”

The viral right-wing YouTube popular since the Fort Hood shootings.

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