October 08, 2021 08:58 AM UTC

"Divisive Questions"--Ganahl Disavows GOP Chair's Militia Group

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Colorado GOP chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown responds as carefully as she may in today’s Unaffiliated newsletter by the Colorado Sun:

“I briefly accepted a role with FEC United where I was never paid and no contract was signed,” Burton Brown said in a statement to The Colorado Sun. “It was my understanding that FEC’s mission was to focus on education and business — with the specific goal of helping parents with choice in schools and helping Colorado small businesses to reopen. Those are priorities that unite Coloradans, and they are the only priorities I ever signed on to help with.”

Burton Brown didn’t deny, however, that she was president of FEC United, which has a militia arm and has spread baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. FEC stands for faith, education and commerce.

9News reported this week that at an October 2020 FEC United recruiting event, Burton Brown said she was “helping spur the growth of FEC United.”

Again, if Brown didn’t depart FEC United until she ran for Colorado Republican Party chair early this year, she was present for a lot more of Joe Oltmann’s conspiracy theorizing than she is letting on today. This statement simply doesn’t add up with the timeline and what is already publicly known.

Per usual these days, it’s an answer that only raises more questions.

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Since Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl kicked off her campaign in mid-September by refusing to answer repeated questions from reporters about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential elections, this “divisive question” (her words) she insistently dodged has dominated the national news headlines. New revelations about the central role played by former CU visiting professor John Eastman, who Ganahl backed and praised as a CU Regent, in the failed plot to overturn the results of the election on January 6th brought these uncomfortable questions right back to Ganahl’s doorstep where they have smoldered like a flaming bag of poo.

Ganahl’s failure to take a position on the most important political question of 2021 was such a disaster for Ganahl’s campaign kickoff that prominent local conservative pundits weighed in to give Ganahl some space to get her message together (which as of this writing she still had not).

And as 9NEWS reported last night, dodging that 800-pound gorilla of a “divisive question” just got even harder–not just for Heidi Ganahl, but every Republican running for office in Colorado:

The Republican frontrunner for governor of Colorado said she has never had formal ties with the election rigging conspiracy theory group recently run by the state GOP chairwoman, as alleged in court testimony.

In an email to 9NEWS, Heidi Ganahl’s campaign declined to say whether she still has faith and confidence in party chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown after it was revealed Burton Brown previously led the extremist group FEC United. [Pols emphasis]

The Republican Party chairwoman’s involvement with FEC United came out recently in sworn testimony as part of a lawsuit. The Colorado Republican Party did not respond to 9NEWS’ questions about the deposition from FEC United’s founder, Joe Oltmann, who said Burton Brown was president of FEC United in November 2020.

First reported by the Colorado Times Recorder four days ago, Colorado Republican Party chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown has been outed via court filings as the past leader of the hard-right activist group FEC United–a group that features its own armed militia wing known as the United American Defense Force (UADF), and founded by noted local election conspiracy theorist Joe Oltmann. This disclosure came by way of a deposition in the defamation suit against Oltmann filed by Dominion Voting Systems.

To summarize, you’ve got the chairwoman of the Colorado Republican Party, who has herself expressed a desire to “move on” from 2020, wrapped up with the state’s most militant proponent of the “Big Lie” that the 2020 elections were stolen from Donald Trump. KBB reportedly didn’t resign as the leader of FEC United until she ran for state party chair in January of this year. That means Kristi Burton Brown led FEC United as a state party vice-chair, and presided over a great deal of election misinformation in her own right before running for Colorado GOP chairwoman on a platform of being more palatable than discredited election denier Scott “Honey Badger” Gessler.

The questions raised by these revelations of direct ties between the leader of the Colorado Republican Party and the state’s most prominent armed militia group are very serious. Only Brown can answer many of them, but Heidi Ganahl has to answer some of them. Ganahl is the only remaining statewide elected Republican in office and a candidate for the state’s highest office. If Ganahl won’t hold her own party’s leadership accountable, who will?

Ganahl should have answered the question when she had the chance to…less divisively.