December 07, 2021 09:49 AM UTC

Two-Face Heidi Panders to Election Conspiracy Theorists

• 17 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Republican Hiedi Heidi Ganahl got off to a rough start when she launched her campaign for governor in September, repeatedly stumbling over the very simple question of whether or not the 2020 Presidential election was legitimate. Ganahl has since tried different variations of an answer to questions about the “Big Lie,” recently seeming to settle on a response in which she says that Colorado’s election was probably okay but that she still has questions about other states.

Ganahl is struggling with what should be a very simple question because she doesn’t want to alienate right-wing supporters who actually do believe that the 2020 election was illegitimate. During a campaign event just before Thanksgiving, Ganahl made headlines for again suggesting that the 2020 election was fraudulent and then telling right-wing supporters that she was totally on their side (“Y’all, I care about everything that you care about”) but that she would be presenting a different face in television ads and media appearances in order to try to win over Unaffiliated voters in Colorado.

The story of Ganahl’s Nov. 18 campaign event in Durango is still being told, however. As Quentin Young reports for Colorado Newsline today:

….during a recent event with supporters [Ganahl] endorsed the work of a Colorado-based conspiracy group that rejects the results of the 2020 election, according to a recording of her comments obtained by Newsline.

The event, a meet-and-greet in Durango, occurred on Nov. 18.

At one point she discussed elections and ways they purportedly might be compromised by “bad actors.” Then she mentioned the election conspiracy group U.S. Election Integrity Plan, referring to it by its abbreviation: “USIE, IE , EIP — I always mess up the acronym — there are a lot of great people working on this issue that would love to have you volunteer, get involved, and they are just doing great things.” 

She adds that she would be happy to share the group’s contact information. [Pols emphasis]

USEIP was founded by Colorado election deniers and reportedly deploys teams of volunteers to neighborhoods throughout the state to conduct “voter verification” canvassing, an effort to collect evidence of alleged election fraud. The group has close ties to Tina Peters, the clerk and recorder of Mesa County whom a court barred from overseeing last month’s election due to her alleged role in subverting election security in her own office.

You can’t be a vocal supporter of USEIP and the so-called “Election Integrity Project” but ALSO say that you think the 2020 election was probably fine. That’s like wearing a fur coat to a PETA meeting.

[mantra-pullquote align=”right” textalign=”left” width=”50%”]“It would be good to know, as the woman who wants to run our state, what she actually believes. Not just, ‘well, I’ll tell these people this thing and I’ll tell these people this [other] thing, and y’all can sort it out.”

     — Kyle Clark, 9News anchor (Nov. 29, 2021)[/mantra-pullquote]

This sort of double-talk is a Ganahl specialty. Back in October, Ganahl refused to say whether she still had confidence in State Republican Party Chair Kristi Burton Brown after it was revealed that KBB had been in charge of a militia group in Colorado before she was elected to head up the State GOP. Brown led the extremist group FEC United, an organization founded by election conspiracy zealot Joe Oltmann — a man who was literally in the room with Trump supporters (including John Eastman) who were plotting to overturn the 2020 election ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The more that Two-Face Heidi does this silly dance, the more damage she does to whatever credibility she might have left. When you try to be all things to all people, you usually end up being nothing to everybody.