FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, July 06, 2009
CONTACT: Michael Huttner at 303-931-4547 

DENVER: ProgressNow Colorado, the state's largest online progressive advocacy organization, vowed Monday to help gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis learn the geography of the Centennial State he aspires to lead, after reports circulated over the holiday weekend that he needs some serious remedial help in this department. 

"Scott 'McLobbyist' McInnis has clearly spent too much time lobbying for his corporate friends in D.C. and not enough time focused on the state he lives in," said ProgressNow Colorado founder Michael Huttner. "McInnis, like Bob Schaffer, thinks all mountains look the same." 

Local political blogs discovered after the launch of McInnis' new website that a large photo on the front page, emblazoned with the headline "What do you want for the future of Colorado," was in fact a photo of Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada. The photo was subsequently replaced with an image of the Flatirons near Boulder, but not before the image of Canadian mountains was captured and widely distributed.[1]

McInnis' "moving mountains" mistake comes a year after he criticized former U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer for his use of an out-of-state mountain in an ad declaring, "Colorado is my life!" 

"What's unbelievable about this is McInnis actually had the nerve to criticize Bob Schaffer after his campaign switched Alaska's Mt. McKinley for Pikes Peak in a television ad," Huttner continued. "McInnis told Schaffer in the Grand Junction Sentinel last year that one can 'only absorb' one or two such mistakes. Does this mean McInnis has already used his free pass?" [2]

In an effort to help McInnis avoid making this kind of embarrassing mistake in the future, ProgressNow Colorado launched a grassroots fundraising campaign to purchase McInnis a copy of Geography of Colorado, an excellent textbook by Joy Clapp and Paul C. Stevens. 

"We don't want Scott 'McLobbyist' McInnis to be unable to distinguish Colorado from Canada," Huttner concluded. "Our members are happy to put politics aside and help McInnis learn the difference." 

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[1] Colorado Independent, 7/2/09. "Candidate McInnis moves mountains - from Canadian Rockies to Colorado"

[2] Colorado Pols, 5/18/08. "Schaffer: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day"