COLORADO: Anti-Gay GOP Candidate For Governor Busted For Plagiarism

Former GOP Rep. Scott McInnis, who is running for governor of Colorado, has been accused of plagiarizing work that earned him a $300,000 fellowship from a local education foundation. McInnis claims that the stolen work came from a researcher he hired. From a newspaper editorial calling for him to drop out of Colorado's governor race:

McInnis can make a reasonable case that he didn’t know of the plagiarism that initiated this whole scandal. Words lifted from the writings of now-Supreme Court Justice Gregory Hobbs were included in papers McInnis submitted to the Hasan Family Foundation, and for which he was paid handsomely. It was Rolly Fischer, the retired water engineer from Glenwood Springs, who took Hobbs’ words and included them in research he prepared for McInnis. Fischer has admitted as much. But Fischer also told Channel 7 News in Denver he believed he was preparing raw research for McInnis to use as background in a future Senate race, not a final product that McInnis would submit to the Hasan Family Foundation for possible publication. Fischer said he would have checked with Hobbs and fully attributed the parts taken from Hobbs’ writing if he had known how it was to be used.

Some GOP leaders including Tom Tancredo are calling for McInnis to suspend his campaign. During his three terms in Congress, McInnis voted to ban gay adoption in Washington DC and voted against other LGBT rights measures. His 2010 platform states that he "strongly opposes" same-sex marriage.