GOP can see lessons in 2010 election fiascos

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GOP can see lessons in 2010 election fiascos

Candidates reflect on fights that split Republicans
Alleged plagiarism plagues McInnis

Although a plagiarism allegation helped ruin Republican Scott McInnis’ campaign for governor last year, he did nothing wrong, a legal panel ruled in May.
Last summer, media outlets reported that sections of “Musings on Water” — a series of articles on water that McInnis submitted to the Hasan Family Foundation — were lifted directly from a book by state Supreme Court Justice Gregory Hobbs.
McInnis blames an assistant who ghost-wrote the offending sections of the papers while thinking Hobbs’ book was in the “public domain” and not subject to copyright. But he refunded the $300,000 the foundation paid him for the articles, and he pinpoints the “ambush” by Democratic activists as the turning point in the campaign and the reason why Dan Maes won the GOP primary.
“I just don’t think the can read into it anything differently than the ambush that took place on me,” McInnis said.
As a lawyer, he could have faced legal sanctions if the accusations were found to be true.
But the Supreme Court’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel found that “there is no clear and convincing evidence that Mr. McInnis knowingly engaged in dishonest conduct.”
The group pinned the blame on McInnis’ researcher, who was an “inexperienced author” and failed to give credit to Hobbs.
But the ruling did not satisfy Seeme Hasan, who runs the foundation with her husband.
A call to the Hasan Family Foundation for this article was not returned, but in May, Seeme Hasan told The Colorado Statesman that she remained disappointed by the quality of work McInnis submitted.
“I am confident that some of the articles he sent to me, he had never even read them, he had never even looked at them. If he had looked at them, he would have been appalled,” she told the Statesman.
McInnis is serving on corporate boards and advising Republican candidates, and he might return to politics.
“I have some free time ... and kind of miss the action,” McInnis said. “I’m not assigning myself to a corner not to be active in the arena anymore. It may not be running for office and it may be.”

Reach Joe Hanel at joeh@cortezjournal.com.