Rep. Scott McInnis (R) Elected 1992, 6th term
Born:	May 9, 1953, Glenwood Springs
Home:	Grand Junction
Education:	Ft. Lewis Col., B.A. 1975, St. Mary's U., J.D. 1980
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Lori)
Elected  Office:	CO House of Reps., 1982-92, Maj. Ldr., 1990-92.
Professional Career:	Glenwood Springs Police Officer, 1976; Practicing atty., 1980-92.
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On a clear night from the air, they look like tiny mottled veins with small clots here and there, thicker near Denver but never very bright: The lights of the civilization Americans have built on the Western Slope of the Rockies in Colorado. The lights follow the trails of valley roads and mountainside switchbacks. The nodes mark the dozens of little towns built during mining boom years: The gold rush of the 1870s, the uranium boom of the 1950s, and the oil shale boomlet of the 1970s. The Western Slope--everything west of the Front Range, with dozens of peaks over 14,000 feet--has always blocked east-west movement; except for mining and now skiing, no one would have followed the Ute Indians and settled here. The miners who tracked gold and silver and lead ores also built Victorian towns with opera houses and gingerbread storefronts in Aspen and Telluride in valleys and defiles scarcely accessible to the outside world. Now, many of these towns have been restored by ski resort operators and joined by dozens of new condominiums and shopping malls. Cries of overdevelopment have followed, and stimulated different responses. One is extreme: The ''Earth Liberation Front'' announced it burned $12 million of Vail's resort expansion facilities ''on behalf of the lynx,'' whose reintroduction to the area began in February 1999. But there is also consensus between former adversaries: Cattlemen and environmentalists are using land trusts to preserve open land in pastures around Steamboat Springs.

The political map of the Western Slope is as diverse as its history. Aspen and Telluride, with Victorian houses and counter-cultural substrata, are liberal and Democratic. Crested Butte and Steamboat Springs, with contemporary condominiums, formerly Republican, are trending left. The rough-handed mining area around Grand Junction, where piles of tailings still crackle with radioactivity, Glenwood Springs, with its old hot springs hotel once visited by President Taft, and the northwest corner of the state, where people remember the oil shale boom with nostalgia, are hostile to environmentalists and heavily Republican.

The 3d Congressional District is the state's largest and includes most of the Western Slope. Redistricters in 2002 removed some of the resort and mining towns like Vail and Leadville. But the southern end of the district continues to move east of the Front Range to include the small industrial city of Pueblo. There, on the banks of the Arkansas River, the Rockefellers built large steel factories before World War I to make barbed wire and rails; now, this blue-collar town has attracted large medical centers and some industrial plants. Pueblo is heavily Democratic and so are Hispanic Conejos and Costilla counties just to the south. These inhabitants are Hispanic, not Mexican-American: Spanish-speaking people have been living here, as in northern New Mexico, for 350 years. Politically, the 3d District has been moving to the right, voting for Bill Clinton in 1992 but for Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000. On balance, it is a Republican district.

The congressman from the 3d District is Scott McInnis, a Republican elected in 1992, when then-Democratic Congressman Ben Nighthorse Campbell was elected senator. McInnis grew up in Glenwood Springs, in a valley so deeply crevassed that Interstate 70 running into the town is double-decked. He worked as a local policeman and went to law school, practiced law and was elected to the legislature in 1982, at 29. Colorado was one of the few states in the 1980s with a Republican legislature, and McInnis became House majority leader in 1990. In 1992, he won the 3d District Republican nomination unopposed; he outworked and outcampaigned Lieutenant Governor Mike Callihan to win 55%-44%.

McInnis has a moderate-to-conservative voting record, with some maverick tendencies; he supports funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and Denver's light rail, for example. He has followed in the footsteps of members from Henry Gonzalez to Newt Gingrich with frequent late-night "special orders" on the House floor, during which he often speaks for an hour about his party's or his own latest ideas. He has criticized such local sacred cows as the Air Force Academy (for allowing its graduates to cut short their active duty so they can play professional football) and United Airlines (for its poor service in Denver). During the Gary Condit furor, he sparked complaints from both sides of the aisle for requesting an ethics committee rule banning sexual relationships between interns and House members. But McInnis was enough of a party regular to win a seat on Ways and Means.

As chairman of the Forests and Forest Health Subcommittee, he held hearings on eco-terrorist groups that destroy property to "save" the environment. With Democrat George Miller, he pushed legislation to remove obstacles to the thinning of overgrown forests, which he said was designed to reduce the West's massive wildfires; his alternative imposed more limits on new forest roads than did a Bush administration plan, but environmentalists still objected. The willingness of the liberal Miller to cooperate with McInnis was unusual, but Democrats were sensitive to being portrayed as obstructionists; western Republicans like McInnis were blaming the environmental lobby for clogging the courts with lawsuits blocking federal attempts to thin combustible forest undergrowth. According to McInnis, "It is clear the Wilderness Society and Sierra Club did not strike the matchbut they certainly contributed." With Miller, McInnis sought to relax requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act and in early October 2002, Miller said they were "very close" to an agreement. But the Resources Committee later that month approved a modified version of McInnis' bill on a mostly party-line vote of 23-14; Democrats and environmentalists contended that the proposal "emasculates" environmental laws. Miller ultimately voted against the alternative plan in committee; the bill died at the end of the 107th Congress.

The wildfire issue has cut both ways for McInnis. He was ubiquitous as western Colorado's forests burned in 2002, showing up at fire command centers and shelters, and drew statewide attention. Yet in hard-hit La Plata County, his candor made him some enemies. In a letter, county commissioners requested additional federal assistance; McInnis replied that more aid was unlikely and that, given budget constraints, "there is not enough funding available to make whole every Colorado community, business, and individual hit by fire, drought, chronic wasting disease and other unexpected events." The Durango Herald ran this headline: "McInnis to County: Help? Hah!"

Still, McInnis remains upwardly mobile. In the House, he voiced interest in chairing the Resources Committee in 2003, even though eight Republicans had more seniority; California's Richard Pombo won the post instead. His plan to run for the Senate in 1998 was foiled when Campbell dropped plans to run for governor following his 1995 party switch and ran for re-election. McInnis grudgingly dropped out under pressure from national Republicans who were eager not to penalize a party-switcher. But his campaign war chest exceeds $1 million and he has been mentioned as a future statewide candidate. His focus on lands issues could help him: The Denver Post called McInnis "a surprisingly strong conservationist." McInnis's switch on his 1992 pledge to limit himself to four terms didn't bother his constituents much. Although the district is safe so long as McInnis wants it, Democrats had some hope of winning it if it became open. But the redistricting plan passed in May 2003 strengthened Republicans here--and McInnis's interest in a statewide bid--by adding new rural areas and removing Hispanic neighborhoods in Pueblo.

Update: September 23, 2003
On September 6, 2003, McInnis announced that he would not seek reelection in 2004.

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DC Office
320 CHOB 20515, 202-225-4761; Fax: 202-226-0622; Web site: www.house.gov/mcinnis

State Offices
Durango, 970-259-2754; Glenwood Springs, 970-928-0637; Grand Junction, 970-245-7107; Pueblo, 719-543-8200.

Committees

• Resources (9th of 28 R): Forests & Forest Health (Chmn.).
• Ways & Means (19th of 24 R): Human Resources; Oversight.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	0	7	13	25	77	100	61	95	100	91	100
2001	0	--	0	14	--	--	69	83	86	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	38%	--	62%		39%	--	60%
Social	34%	--	67%		0%	--	75%
Foreign	27%	--	72%		0%	--	85%
For National Journal's complete 2002 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 107th Congress (More Info)
1. Approve Bush Tax Cuts Y 2. Limit Patients' Bill of Rights Y 3. Campaign Finance Reform N 4. Ban ANWR Development N 5. Faith-Based Charities Y 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts Y		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion Y  8. Arm Commercial Pilots Y  9. Trade Promotion Authority Y 10. Bar Funds for Intl. Court Y 11. Authorize Force in Iraq Y 12. Deny Home. Sec. Dept. Union Y

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	Scott McInnis (R)	143,433	66%	$567,940
	Denis Berckefeldt (D)	68,160	31%
	Other	6,379	3%
2002 primary	Scott McInnis (R)	unopposed
2000 general	Scott McInnis (R)	199,204	66%	$545,836
	Curtis Imrie (D)	87,921	29%
	Other	15,415	5%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (66%); 1996 (69%); 1994 (70%); 1992 (55%)

2000 presidential
	Bush (R)	140,191	54%
	Gore (D)	102,100	39%
	Other	19,585	7%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Third District, please see the Almanac 2000 online. Please note that these older returns reflect district lines as they existed prior to 2002 redistricting.

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: R + 8
• District Size: 54,100 square miles
• Population in 2000: 614,467; 61.0% urban; 39.0% rural
• Median Household Income: $35,970; 12.8% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 25.0% blue collar; 56.1% white collar; 18.9% gray collar; 15.3% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 74.6% White, 0.7% Black, 0.5% Asian, 1.4% Amer. Indian, 0.1% Hawaiian, 1.2% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 21.5% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 13.6% German, 9.0% English, 8.1% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.