March 17, 2022 01:48 PM UTC

Meet "Heidi the Hypocrite"

• 2 Comments
• by: Sara Loflin

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Republicans have been losing in Colorado for so long there’s only one left in statewide elected office in the entire state, University of Colorado Regent At-Large Heidi Ganahl. Colorado has been moving away from the far right politically for almost two decades now, and after the 2018 elections Republicans were left with the least amount of power in Colorado since FDR was President.

In 2020, Colorado voters punished Republicans up and down the ballot once again for their loyalty to Donald Trump. In 2022, despite the spin of an oncoming “red wave,” polls show that Gov. Jared Polis and Colorado Democrats have weathered the storm of the COVID-19 pandemic and are poised to retain their majorities.

By contrast, the only way Republicans can win in Colorado is hypocrisy. Colorado voters stopped buying what Republicans are selling years ago, and the only way for Republicans to make it in this state in 2022 is to fake it.

After studying Heidi Ganahl’s record in elected office, her statements since getting into the race for governor, and her connections to the same far right usual suspects Colorado voters have been rejecting at the polls for years, we’ve established that Ganahl is a far-right hypocrite hiding behind cheap Tony Robbins-style slogans. Ganahl’s gaudy facade of generic bromides and shallow policy prescriptions conceal a dangerous ideology and willingness to court violent extremists for political power.

Heidi Ganahl claims she supports transparency as a public official, but she’s the worst kind of hypocrite. Just before Ganahl launched her campaign for governor, her social media accounts were wiped clean of hundreds of posts, which included support for extreme and hateful candidates like Lauren Boebert. Ganahl also deleted her accounts on the far-right social media sites Gab and Parler. Before launching her campaign for governor, for months Ganahl operated a shadow campaign on the premise of recording a “traveling podcast” to avoid campaign finance laws.

Heidi Ganahl claims to fight for our kids and our schools, but her record on education is a study in hypocrisy. As CU Regent, Heidi Ganahl pushed a proposal to force massive budget cuts at the University of Colorado that would have resulted directly in layoffs of teachers and staff. And it gets even worse: Ganahl was the only vote in support of ex-CU President Mark Kennedy, an 8-1 landslide, after a damning report by CU faculty was published documenting Kennedy’s “failure of leadership.”

When asked by reporters whether she believes the 2020 presidential election was fairly decided, Heidi Ganahl pretended to be offended, calling it a “divisive question.” Then just a few weeks later when she thought she wasn’t being recorded, “Heidi the Hypocrite” told a group of believers in the “Big Lie” that “I care about everything that you care about”–only she has to be “so disciplined” with her campaign message she can’t talk about it.

The truth is, Heidi Ganahl has had every opportunity to back away from the incompetence and insanity gripping her party today, and she has chosen to align herself with the worst of the worst. At a campaign stop in Fort Collins with other Republican candidates, Ganahl stood idly by while fringe U.S. Senate candidate Ron Hanks and Secretary of State candidate Tina Peters made their half-baked case that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. Maybe that’s because Ganahl as University of Colorado Regent was a principal supporter of John Eastman, CU’s “Visiting Professor of Conservative Thought” who helped draft the plan for Trump to overturn the election while on the University of Colorado’s payroll.

Heidi Ganahl’s record of public service is one blatant act of hypocrisy after another. Behind the slogans, a dark reality of extremism and willful disregard for the best interests of Colorado families is lurking. The more we learn about “Heidi the Hypocrite,” the clearer it gets that she has no business anywhere near the state’s highest office.

Sara Loflin is the executive director of ProgressNow Colorado.