July 22, 2022 02:31 PM UTC

No Questions: "Heidi & Danny" Kickoff Another Absurd Self-Own

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

Heidi Ganahl’s struggling campaign for governor held an event today in Aurora to roll out her second choice for lieutenant governor after the Las Animas County Commissioner Felix Lopez apparently declined, the ex-chair of the state’s congressional redistricting committee Danny Moore. Moore, as Ganahl’s campaign has spent every day since Monday’s announcement performing damage control over, was removed from his position as chair of the redistricting committee over Moore’s baseless questioning of the results of the 2020 presidential election.

As the Aurora Sentinel’s Carina Julig reports, they shouldn’t have bothered:

It was standing room only Friday afternoon at JJ’s Place, where Danny Moore formally accepted the nomination to be Heidi Ganahl’s running mate in her campaign to unseat Jared Polis as next governor of Colorado.

Neither Ganahl nor Moore permitted questions from reporters, despite widespread criticism of Moore earlier this week stemming from election denier social media posts he made last year. [Pols emphasis]

Moore and Ganahl both gave short speeches to the enthusiastic crowd at the restaurant owned by Aurora City Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky. The event had been rescheduled from Wednesday due to a conflict with the 10 year anniversary of the Aurora theater shooting.

The campaign has already apologized for initially scheduling this event on the tenth anniversary of the Aurora theater shooting, though like their excuse for delaying the original LG announcement past the “holiday week,” the date was certainly known–or knowable–in advance. Much worse for Ganahl was inviting the press to this kickoff event in the distant reaches of “Saudi Aurora”…and then refusing to answer a single question.

Not just refusing, says the Denver Post’s Alex Burness, but even getting physical about it:

Colorado’s GOP gubernatorial ticket, Heidi Ganahl/Danny Moore, just held its first joint public event, at a restaurant in Aurora. They didn’t take any questions. When I went to introduce myself to Moore, a man walking with him said “no questions” and pushed me aside with his arm.

— Alex Burness (@alex_burness) July 22, 2022

What was the point of this event? To alienate the press even more than Ganahl has already?

It doesn’t matter if Ganahl packed a venue ten times the size of this sports bar. A couple hundred people who attended this event count for little compared to the thousands of people who will hear the story reported by the press, which is that Ganahl and Moore held a “public” event but refused to answer questions. Not just the “divisive” questions Ganahl has complained to the media about since the day of her campaign launch. Any questions.

So again, why hold a public event at all?

The confounded rollout of Ganahl’s LG choice, like so much of Ganahl’s campaign up to now, has consisted of a series of unforced errors on painfully public display. There was no imminent deadline forcing the announcement of Lopez before it was certain, and every choice since that original mistake has compounded the embarrassment. This is a campaign seemingly determined to wreck itself without any outside help.