STATE BILL COLORADO

Denver Post gossip columnist Penny Parker won an interview published today with Scott McInnis despite the former GOP gubernatorial candidate’s insistence that The Post “in large part” contributed to his political downfall.

The interview confirms the establishment power of The Post, especially after the February 2009 shutdown of the rival Rocky Mountain News. Parker wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Parker’s story noted that McInnis may be bruised and bloodied after losing the race even before the nomination, “but he’s ready to go another round.”

McInnis, who is on leave through Dec. 31 from the Denver office of international law firm Hogan Lovells, told Parker he has repaid the foundation that paid him for the writings found to contain plagiarism. But he “maintains that the truth about the situation will come out soon,” Parker wrote.

Post reporter Karen E. Crummy broke the news of the plagiarism scandal at about the same time as Denver TV station 7News. Both news organizations found a number of passages where language in a McInnis paper written for the Hasan Family Foundation were nearly identical to that of a 1984 article written by Gregory Hobbs, a Colorado Supreme Court justice. Two days later, The Post editorialized that McInnis should exit the race. He didn’t and, in August, he lost the Republican primary to businessman and political novice Dan Maes, who lost in the general election to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.

The left-leaning political website ColoradoPols.com noted that Parker’s involvement in the story allowed McInnis to bypass the paper’s newsroom. But the site mostly criticized McInnis for continuing to blame others, including The Post, for problems of his own making.

McInnis “continues to point fingers outward instead of contemplating how he puts himself in these politically disastrous situations over and over,” commented the site, run by Democratic political figure Jason Bane.