The Sunlight Foundation’s Party Time blog reported Tuesday that Gardner, the Republican candidate for Colorado’s hotly contested 4th Congressional District, will be the beneficiary Thursday of a $1,000-a-plate luncheon in Washington co-hosted by BP lobbyist Dan Meyer.

Rep. Cory Gardner

“Amidst the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, a series of public relations foibles, and public outrage against BP, the company’s lobbyists are continuing to work the Washington circuit,” the blog notes, adding that Meyer – now with the Duberstein Group – was assistant to the president for legislative affairs under George W. Bush.

In a tight contest with incumbent Democrat Betsy Markey and fresh off a stink over his canceled fundraiser featuring firebrand conservative U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa – who keeps insisting President Obama is a racist – Gardner would seemingly want to stay out of the fray for a few days.

Taking money tied to BP doesn’t seem like the best way to do that, especially when the district you’re trying to represent includes some of the most intensive drilling activity in the state in Weld County (although it should be noted BP doesn’t drill there – just builds massive wind farms). BP does, however, have a big footprint in southwestern Colorado.

Gardner has a long history of shilling for the O&G industry. He helped set up the industry Astroturf group Western Skies Coalition – aimed at using extractive energy funding to take back the Colorado Senate in 2008 – and proudly signed WSC’s “Energy Action Plan” pledge.

He rarely misses a chance to demonize Democrats for over-regulating the industry and killing high-paying if cyclical jobs in the various gas patches around the state and Western Skies or some other such industry front may yet rear its hydra-like heads in the upcoming mid-term elections. So maybe a BP fundraiser in D.C. makes perfect sense.

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State Rep. Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, reportedly stood in for State Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, who would not attend Monday’s event but did participate in a conference call in support of the bill with Gov. Bill Ritter over the weekend.

HB 1365 is a key part of Ritter’s ongoing reformation of the state’s energy landscape via his “New Energy Economy.” The bill seeks to position Colorado as a proactive player on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and Front Range haze ahead of looming federal climate change legislation and tighter enforcement by the EPA.

The bill has the support of the state’s largest power-producing utility, Xcel Energy, as well as officials from the natural gas sector, but coal industry representatives say it’s a slippery slope to higher electricity prices and the loss of jobs and revenues in their sector.

Penry has long been at odds with Ritter over environmentally tougher natural gas drilling regulations he claims have cost the industry jobs in his Western Slope district, but he supports this bill on the grounds that it will boost the industry and cut down on smog. He refuses to acknowledge the potential climate change benefits.

McNulty was part of Penry’s plan to use energy issues to reclaim key state Senate seats in 2008 using a nonprofit astroturf group called the Western Skies Coalition. That group has resurfaced lately as possible platform for GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis.

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Josh Penry

But it’s also worth noting Penry, a frequent critic of Ritter’s “New Energy Economy,” was not quoted in a release Tuesday from the governor’s office touting the Colorado Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act, which will require Xcel Energy to mothball or retrofit several of its coal-fired power plants on the Front Range so they use cleaner-burning fuel.

Several natural gas industry representatives were quoted in the release, including the head of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA), because most of the retrofitting would involve conversion to natural gas, which burns about 50 percent cleaner than coal but can be more expensive and sees greater price fluctuations. But Colorado is much more of a gas state than a coal state, and Penry’s Western Slope is gas central.

Co-sponsor Penry did, however, talk about the bill with the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, telling veteran political reporter Charles Ashby it’s a “game-changer,” not only for natural gas production on the Western Slope, but for air quality on the Front Range.

Still, the former gubernatorial candidate stopped short of lauding the bill’s potential benefits in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and getting the state out ahead of looming federal climate change legislation or U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations limiting those emissions under the Clean Air Act.

“They’re going to convert about 900 megawatts of coal-fired power production in aging plants in the Denver area to natural gas,” Penry told Ashby. “It is a tough issue in part being driven by major haze issues, but for natural gas and for the industry and all the jobs, it increases natural gas production in the state by about 15 percent, so it’s a big deal.”

Penry also told the Sentinel he was able to make sure the bill will “focus more on jobs than on carbon reduction, saying that should be its real focus.”

COGA President Tisha Conoly Schuller clearly got the memo, keeping her quote in the Ritter release focused on jobs: “The natural gas industry is poised and ready to contribute to Colorado’s clean energy mix with abundant, local natural gas resources. This bill provides the opportunity for Colorado to use a natural gas infrastructure that is in place and operating below capacity to create jobs and increase state and local tax revenues.”

COGA is suing to overturn Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission drilling regulations passed by the legislature last spring and backed by the Ritter administration that put more emphasis on air and water quality, public health and wildlife habitat. Penry has been a frequent and strident critic of those new regs, calling them a job-killer on the Western Slope, despite the fact that any job-killing has been the work of the recession and its impact on gas prices.

“Those protections against drilling are just vital, just critical, and that’s one reason we as a conservation community were so excited to support them and worked so hard for their passage, because we just have to make sure natural gas drilling is done right and that there are just some places it’s not appropriate to drill, period,” Pete Maysmith, executive director of Colorado Conservation Voters, told the Colorado Independent.

Penry, a former congressional staffer for GOP gubernatorial frontrunner Scott McInnis, backed a political nonprofit group called the Western Skies Coalition in an effort to win back lost GOP seats by spinning Republican state Senate candidates to seem more green.

“Any time you get an odd bedfellows coalition of interests together like this people are going to have different interests and different motivations and that’s often what can lead to exciting and diverse coalitions and really important policy,” Maysmith said.

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McInnis leaving messages (McInnis for Governor)

Before he had even filed his paperwork to run for governor, the former six-term GOP congressman from Colorado’s Western Slope left a voicemail for a potential campaign contributor referring to a 527 group set up by Republican political operative Sean Tonner.

Late last year, McInnis campaign director George Culpepper resigned, later phoning a Montana newspaper to tell them he still supported McInnis but quit to “form Western Skies, a political strategies organization based in Colorado.”

Tonner, president of the conservative lobbying firm Phase Line Strategies, in 2008 registered the Western Skies Coalition, a 501(c)4 nonprofit “dedicated to promoting issues that make our nation great.” Western Skies drew criticism from the left for trying to “green wash” Republican state Senate candidates in ad campaigns during that election cycle that painted them as pro-environment.

“We’ve got Sean Tonner on board. Sean’s doing our 5-uh, or a 527,” McInnis said on the infamous voicemail first posted on the Complete Colorado website in April of 2009. “We’ve got lots of support in the oil and gas industry.”

Luis Toro, director of Colorado Ethics Watch, said candidates rarely acknowledge any connection to 527 groups – political organizations named for a section of the IRS tax code – or 501(c)4 nonprofits because it’s considered a coordinated expenditure and therefore a campaign donation that can violate contribution limits.

“Candidates generally never want to coordinate with these outside groups, and it was really kind of a shocking statement for those of us who follow these things to hear a candidate on a voicemail even to someone he thought was a supporter saying, ‘Sean Tonner’s running our 527,’” Toro said.

In 2008, the Western Skies Coalition was linked to a veritable who’s who of Republican politicians and political operatives with deep ties to Colorado’s oil and gas industry, including former Gov. Bill Owens and state lawmakers Josh Penry and Cory Gardner. The group promoted the Energy Leadership Action Plan Pledge, which called for a more “balanced” emphasis on oil, gas and coal.

“[McInnis] said Sean Tonner is setting up our 527, so maybe he was talking about Western Skies,” Toro said. “And then when his former campaign manager [Culpepper] quits or leaves and goes to run that very same organization, that’s a red flag, so we’re certainly going to be watching this closely.”

None of the lawmakers involved with the group and contacted by the Colorado Independent would discuss its funding sources, but it reportedly raised nearly $400,000 in its stated pursuit of “removing limits on new oil and gas exploration, restructuring the burdensome requirements placed on energy production in the United States and supporting the research of renewable energy.”

McInnis, an attorney for a Denver law firm that does extensive work for the oil and gas industry, has been campaigning on a platform that would roll back Gov. Bill Ritter’s more environmentally stringent oil and gas drilling regulations. He also has provided lip service to the renewable sector, but, like Penry and Gardner, is a staunch opponent of Ritter’s “New Energy Economy.”

Western Skies was briefly inactive but filed an annual report in August of 2009 and is now listed under the business section of the Colorado Secretary of State’s website as a nonprofit corporation in good standing.

In a press release announcing the formation of Western Skies in late 2007, Tonner announced former Gov. Owens, also a former oil and gas lobbyist, and former U.S. Secretary of Education and George H.W. Bush drug czar Bill Bennett would serve on the executive committee. Tonner is Owens’ former chief of staff, and Owens’ daughter, Monica, works for Phase Line.

“I thought [McInnis’s 527 voicemail] was especially shocking, and from a longtime congressman who’s run lots of campaigns it just seemed like one of those, Really, did he just say that? kind of moments,” said Pete Maysmith, executive director of Colorado Conservation Voters.

“It certainly indicates [McInnis] and the folks on his team are thinking along those lines; otherwise I don’t know why it would come out of his mouth. So does it make us go, Hmmm, that’s something we need to be on the watch for? Absolutely. Of course.”

McInnis spokesman Sean Duffy did not return calls requesting comment; Culpepper could not reached for comment; a phone number listed on the Western Skies website has been disconnected; and a message left for Tonner at Phase Line Strategies in Highlands Ranch was not returned.

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The story of The Pledge and exactly what Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, signed or didn’t sign during a Club 20 debate in 2006, as first reported by Colorado Confidential (our predecessor), has been building for four days.

In the latest twist, the Denver Post weighs in with an actual return call from Penry, who dubs us a “left-wing blog” producing “total fiction” like a story accusing him of conspiring with George Bush to cause the recession.

Don’t recall that piece … must have been on ColoradoPols.

The Post piece, though, also offers this interesting tidbit: “Penry said Wednesday he thinks he wrote a note on the pledge to the effect of ‘great prop’ or ‘great gimmick.’”

Does that apply to oaths of office and other solemn vows he signs his name to? Was the Western Skies “Energy Leadership Action Plan Pledge” a gimmick as well?

The source of the pledge offered at the Club 20 debate, Penry’s Democratic opponent Dana Barker, said he’s still trying to hunt down the original signed document. As he recalls, the wording may have been more about fulfilling the full four-year term, which Penry has said he will do even as he seeks the governor’s office in 2010. The intent of the pledge, though, according to Barker, was to elicit a promise from Penry not to run for a higher office and to give constituents in SD7 his undivided attention.

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On Thursday, a conservative Web site called The Complete Colorado posted a link to an audio file of what an accompanying story claims is McInnis leaving a voice mail for a potential supporter in which he mentions GOP consultant Sean Tonner being on his team and doing a 527 issues committee on his behalf. McInnis confirmed the message was his to the Denver Post.

According to Colorado Ethics Watch, which Thursday announced it was launching an investigation, McInnis may be breaking Colorado election laws by coordinating campaign activities with a 527, as well as soliciting contributions and spending money without first registering a campaign committee with the Secretary of State.

McInnis, who did not return a message seeking comment, enraged some in the state Republican Party when he told The Colorado Independent in October that he would have been able to beat Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, who at the time was leading Republican contender Bob Schaffer by wide margins in most polls.

McInnis said the more conservative members of the state party derailed his own candidacy for the office, with Republican Party chairman Dick Wadhams handpicking Schaffer. McInnis said his more moderate views would have attracted a broader base of voters.

Wadhams and later former Gov. Bill Owens fired back that McInnis had his chance but withdrew for personal reasons and was further dividing the party by trying to rewrite history.

Tonner, as president of the Highlands Ranch-based GOP consulting group Phase Line Strategies, has a lengthy track record of working behind the scenes for oil and gas companies on political campaigns. Last April he registered as a Virginia corporation the Western Skies Coalition, which amassed a massive campaign war chest to back energy-friendly state Senate candidates and to combat severance tax increases on the ballot.

Owens, a former oil and gas industry lobbyist, was listed on the board of the Western Skies Coalition. In the voicemail message, McInnis reportedly says he has the support of the oil and gas industry in his gubernatorial run, and that Owens’ daughter Monica and wife Frances are on board as well. Monica Owens, also an employee of Phaseline Strategies, worked on Western Skies Coalition campaigns with Tonner.

Allegedly funded by big oil and gas money, WSC pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into television ad buys portraying state Sen. Shawn Mitchell (R-Broomfield) and Republican businesswoman Libby Szabo as alternative-energy backers despite records to the contrary.

WSC, with ties to former oil and gas lobbyist and Republican Gov. Bill Owens, was reportedly founded with the mission of reclaiming key Senate seats in a bid to reclaim a Republican majority in 2010.

Mitchell fairly easily defeated Democrat Joe Whitcomb by 41,569 votes to 35,474 votes, or 54 percent to 46 percent, in Senate District 23. But Szabo narrowly lost to Democrat Evie Hudak, 29,942 to 31,145, or 51 percent to 49 percent, in Senate District 19.

“This Western Skies ad makes Shawn Mitchell look great, and he has the most God-awful voting record [on alternative energy],” Whitcomb said in an earlier interview. “He was one of only seven or eight senators who voted against doubling Colorado’s alternative-energy portfolio.”

An investigative series by the Colorado Independent led to the IRS probe of WSC and three other 501(c)4 nonprofits after a request by Colorado Ethics Watch.

In addition to the Western Skies Coalition, Colorado Ethics Watch is seeking an investigation into the American Future Fund, Coloradans for Economic Growth and Freedom’s Watch. By federal law, 501(c)(4) groups, which are not required to disclose the names of their donors, must spend at least 51 percent of their total resources on charitable activity.

Ethics Watch alleges that “it appears that more than half of the activities engaged in by AFF, CEG, Freedom’s Watch and WSC have been partisan, non-educational activities that provide benefit to various conservative candidates for state and federal public office in violation of statutory requirements for 501(c)(4) organizations.”

“Each of these organizations have paid considerable money to purchase television ads attacking U.S. Senate candidate Mark Udall and candidates running for the state legislature,” said Chantell Taylor, director of Colorado Ethics Watch, in a news release.

“Based on our research, it appears that the organizations are primarily engaged in political activities and need to show where, how and what they are doing to promote the welfare of the community at large. If they do not, they can and should lose their tax exempt status.”

On Sept. 5, the Colorado Independent reported on the Western Skies Coalition and its efforts to — fueled by unlimited gas and oil industry cash — boost conservative candidates running for the state Senate.

This campaign cycle, the group has been sponsoring TV ads portraying Republican state Senate candidates such as incumbent Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield, as renewable energy advocates despite voting records to the contrary. Western Skies-sponsored ads have also appeared to boost Republican state Senate candidate Libby Szabo, who is running against Democrat Evie Hudak in the northern Jefferson County race, targeted by both parties, to replace Democrat Sue Windels.

Further, The Colorado Independent found, the Western Skies Coalition, registered as a Virginia corporation with an office in Littleton, is allegedly being used by state Sen. Josh Penry, R-Fruita, to raise funds from oil and gas companies in a bid to target several key Colorado state Senate races and win back a Republican majority in 2010, according to several sources.

When contacted by the Colorado Independent, several oil and gas companies doing business in Colorado refused to confirm or deny their involvement in the coalition’s efforts. However, as TCI has also reported, many of them have dropped a mind-blowing $10 million into fighting Amendment 58 — a statewide initiative that would eliminate a tax credit for oil companies in Colorado that would raise more than $300 million a year for college scholarships, wildlife habitat and other programs. In that campaign, they have been required by state election laws to disclose their contributions.

In late July the Colorado Independent also reported on the activities of another group targeted by Colorado Ethics Watch this week — Coloradans for Economic Growth.

This summer Coloradans for Economic Growth launched a $670,562 negative ad blitz against Rep. Udall, the Democratic Senate candidate. The principals behind the organization include Denver-based GOP heavyweight and former legislator Cliff Dodge; Margo Branscomb, the executive director of the pro-charter and school voucher group Foundation for Academic Innovation; and Michele Austin, an operative and delegate to the Republican National Convention in Minnesota.

All three have ties to Udall’s Republican opponent, former congressman Bob Schaffer, including through his former boss, Aspect Energy CEO Alex Cranberg. Schaffer resigned as Aspect’s vice president for international business development Dec. 31, 2007, to run for the Senate.

(Photo/kool_skatcat, Flickr)

Even as a shadowy conservative group backed by oil and gas money works to reclaim a state Senate majority for Republicans in 2010, other issues committees are taking a much more direct approach to fighting off attempts to end tax subsidies for the industry in November.

Coloradans for a Stable Economy has raised $10 million from oil companies to fight Gov. Bill Ritter’s Amendment 58 ballot initiative, which would pull the plug on a nearly 90-percent property-tax exemption for the industry and raise more than $300 million more a year for college scholarships, wildlife preservation, road improvements and renewable energy projects.

And Better Roads Now, an issues committee formed by state Rep. Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, has raised another $300,000 from three oil companies in California and Texas to support Amendment 52, which he sponsored with state Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction.

That initiative would keep the state’s oil and gas severance tax at its current rate of less than 2 percent in some cases (with the current property-tax exemptions) but divert the money to road improvements along Interstate 70. Amendment 58 would impose a flat 5-percent severance tax, and critics claim Amendment 52 was floated primarily as a diversionary tactic.

The anti-58 people “are exclusively funded by oil and gas, as is [Amendment] 52, by the way,” said George Merritt, a spokesman for A Smarter Colorado, an issues committee and 501(c)(4) nonprofit set up to support 58.

“We knew this industry would try all kinds of gimmicks to distract the voters from the fact that they get a $300 million subsidy, and they have shown that they will say or do anything, including threatening Colorado water projects.”

Opponents of Amendment 52 charge that too much of the money (about $60 million a year) goes to fix just one of the state’s major highways, that too much money would be diverted from critical water projects, and that it’s a drop-in-the-bucket approach to fixing the entire state road system.

McNulty told the Colorado Independent in a previous interview that some have positioned 52 as an alternative to Ritter’s tax increase in the form of 58, but that 52 is in fact just an attempt to use existing funds to make a “down-payment” on fixing and maintaining the state’s deteriorating road system.

McNulty’s Better Roads Now group has raised $100,000 each from Occidental Oil and Gas of Los Angeles, Berry Petroleum of Bakersfield, Calif., and Plains Exploration and Production Co. of Houston — a curious group of donors to be interested in improving Colorado roads.

Coloradans for a Stable Economy, the group fighting Amendment 58, has raised $1 million each from Exxon/Mobil, Chevron, BP, Encana, Williams, Conoco Phillips, Anadarko and Noble. With donations totaling nearly $2 million from smaller energy firms, the group has raised nearly $10 million overall.

The group has spent nearly $8.5 million of that already, primarily on a highly aggressive television advertising campaign portraying 58 as a Ritter tax hike aimed at funding his pet projects. One ad has called the pro-58 claim to be a tax-subsidy rollback instead of a tax increase a “scandal.”

Dan Hopkins, a spokesman for Coloradans for a Stable Economy, did not return a call requesting comment. Hopkins is the former spokesman for Ritter’s predecessor, Republican Gov. Bill Owens, a former oil and gas lobbyist who is on the executive board of the Western Skies Coalition.

That organization, which is set up to operate as a 501(c)(4) social-advocacy nonprofit and therefore is not required by the Internal Revenue Service to reveal its donors, has recently been running TV ads in key state Senate races portraying the Republican candidates as friends of renewable energy despite histories to the contrary.

Several sources told the Colorado Independent that Penry and McNulty helped form Western Skies in a bid to reclaim a GOP state Senate majority by 2010, and that the group is funded by many of the same oil and gas companies that have contributed to Coloradans for a Stable Economy. McNulty would not discuss funding for the group but did admit to signing the Western Skies Energy Action Plan pledge.

The pro-58 group A Smarter Colorado is set up as both an issues committee and 501(c)(4) nonprofit. While the initiative has a great deal of support from higher-education groups, the bulk of the more than $2 million raised by A Smarter Colorado came from the Nature Conservancy. All the group’s donors, as well as those of the opposition, are available on the Colorado Secretary of State’s Web site. That’s not the case with the Western Skies Coalition.

“There are reporting guidelines, particularly around the intervention in elections, that are getting fuzzy and are getting a little bit difficult to follow,” said David Donnelly, director of Campaign Money Watch, a Washington, D.C., 527 group that’s a project of a 501(c)(4) called Public Campaign Action Fund.

“When a 501(c)(4) spends money in the last 60 days of an election, which we’re in right now, it has to disclose to the Federal Election Commission how much money it spent and any donation for $1,000 or more that it has received for the purpose of that advertising.”

Which means the relentless ads from the fully disclosed groups opposing and supporting Amendment 58 will undoubtedly continue right up until Nov. 4, while Colorado voters have likely seen the last of the Western Skies ads this election cycle because of the group’s more subtle agenda and desire to remain anonymous.

“The law is pretty specific that if the donation is not solicited for a particular expenditure for a C4, you don’t have to report it,” Donnelly said. “There’s a lot of winking and nodding going on. I’m sure it’s happening all over the country as we speak with C4s.”

(Photo/Jason Kosena)

Rep. Frank McNulty is one of a trio of GOP state lawmakers thought to be behind the Western Skies Coalition — a Virginia corporation raising oil and gas money to target key state senate races.

In an interview with Colorado Independent, McNulty (R-Highlands Ranch) declined to discuss the group’s funding sources Tuesday, but he did acknowledge signing its “Energy Leadership Action Plan” pledge.

Click to enlarge the image.

Several sources, both on and off the record, have told Colorado Independent that McNulty, along with Sen. Josh Penry (R-Grand Junction) and Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma), are behind the Western Skies Coalition (WSC), which bills itself as a 501(c)4 nonprofit organization but has not registered as such with the Internal Revenue Service.

WSC has a Littleton office, but messages left there have not been returned, and both Penry and Gardner did not return numerous phone calls and e-mails seeking comment.

So-called C4 organizations by law do not have to disclose donors but must engage in promoting social issues, with no more than 49 percent for their contributions spent on political advocacy. Western Skies in recent weeks ran thousands of dollars worth of television ads in support of Republican state senate candidates Shawn Mitchell and Libby Szabo.

The ads have portrayed both Mitchell, an incumbent from Broomfield and Szabo, a businesswoman running for Senate District 19 on the Front Range, as green-energy advocates. In fact, Mitchell has repeatedly voted against increasing the state’s renewable-energy portfolio and Szabo is running on a pro-traditional-energy platform. Neither Mitchell nor Szabo returned messages requesting comment

According to an Aug. 29 story in the Rocky Mountain News, Mitchell also signed the Western Skies pledge, but did so because of its traditional-energy opportunities rather than its nod to pursuing renewable sources, telling the paper, “What I’m not is a clean-energy statist that’s going to force consumers to transition before it makes sense.”

McNulty said he is interested in renewables as part of a menu of energy-production options: “On the hydro front we need to look at pump-back, because it provides the ability to provide a battery for wind and solar, which we also need to look at. Wind and solar make sense, but it doesn’t work all the time and it doesn’t work without having some way to flip the switch and generate electricity when the wind’s not blowing or the sun’s not shining. I don’t think it’s to the detriment of oil and gas.”

McNulty added it’s simply a matter of maintaining the Colorado lifestyle.

“It’s clear that as a state and nation we’re going to have to look at the full broad spectrum of energy resources if we’re going to be able to continue our economic growth and be able to continue something resembling the standard of living to which we as Coloradans have become accustomed,” he said.

Several oil and gas companies with extensive interests in Colorado flatly refused to disclose whether they have contributed to Western Skies, and McNulty wouldn’t go there either. The group lists on its executive committee former Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican who used to work as an oil and gas lobbyist and was behind the infamous Trailhead Group 527 that flooded state airwaves with attack ads in 2006.

Another reportedly targeted race — Senate District 8 in northwest Colorado, which includes parts of gas-rich Garfield County — has yet to see substantial injections of outside money.

“I’ve seen a couple of mailers for me that have come from somebody called Coloradans for Integrity, and I don’t know who that is. I haven’t seen anything against me,” said Rep. Al White (R-Hayden), who’s running to replace term-limited Sen. Jack Taylor in SD 8. “It’s certainly not to the extent that some of those targeted Front Range races are being identified for support, and I don’t know frankly how much more I will get, if anything, by way of outside entities.”

Coloradans for Integrity is a Colorado LLC registered in January to Jennie Willis, a receptionist at Denver-based Axiom Strategies, which on its Web site purports to be a bi-partisan political consulting and lobbying firm. It lists among its clients the Colorado Independent Energy Association, which promotes natural gas production but also renewable energy.

White is running against former Steamboat Springs City Councilman Ken Brenner, a Democrat who’s accused his opponent of being in the pocket of the oil-and-gas industry, which White flatly denies, pointing to two past endorsements from the environmentally-minded Colorado Conservation Voters.

As for a concerted Republican strategy to retake the senate using groups such as Western Skies, White said it’s no secret the state GOP wants to regain the legislative majority standing it enjoyed for decades before being ousted in 2004.

“Yeah, the party’s always interested in having the majority, and although my seat would just be a hold as opposed to a pickup, until we stop losing seats we’re never going to get the majority back,” White said. Democrats hold 20 of the 35 senate seats and Republicans would need to maintain those seats and pick off three from the Dems in the 18 races being contested in November in order to regain a majority.

McNulty declined to discuss the overall Republican strategy for regaining control of the senate, but acknowledged 501(c)4 groups have supplanted 527s (also named for their IRS code) as a useful political tool since the crackdown this year on 527 disclosure.

“It is interesting how 501(c)4’s have become the new 527s, but it’s a campaign finance change,” McNulty said. “Folks are going to figure out how to support the issues that are important to them, so whether that’s through a state party, or a 527, or a contribution to an individual candidate, or whatever vehicle is out there, I suppose smart folks will figure out how to do it.”