Let's "Spark a Conversation" About Danny Moore

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by: Colorado Pols

Danny Moore

This is Danny Moore. He is a Republican from Centennial, and the recently-elected Chairperson of the Colorado Independent Congressional Redistricting Committee. 9News reported on Monday that Moore “is an election-rigging conspiracy theorist,” which is odd. Evan Wyloge of the Colorado Springs Gazette followed up with another story today in which Moore makes no apologies for saying ridiculous crap:

In the months following the 2020 election, Moore, one of the congressional redistricting commission’s four Republican members and now the commission’s chairman, published posts and comments questioning the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, calling it “the Democrat steal” and repeating the untrue assertion that President Joe Biden did not get more votes than former President Donald Trump.

Moore insists that he is not a conspiracy theorist; he just happens to be someone who regularly repeats conspiracy theories aloud. This is sort of like claiming that you are not a thief even though you spend a lot of time stealing things that don’t belong to you.

Danny Moore believes that the 2020 Presidential election was fraudulent. Danny Moore does not think that more than 80 million Americans really voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Danny Moore believes that the news media has been exaggerating the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic since the very beginning. You used to be able to read these comments on Moore’s Facebook page, but Moore apparently decided in the last day or two that he should make his page private.

Danny Moore believes that he can say anything he wants and lie with impunity by hiding behind the excuse that he is entitled to his own opinion. “I don’t know if those things are true or not, but in my circle we share these things between us and we debate these things,” he told the Gazette. Way to stand up for your convictions, Danny.

With that in mind, here is our opinion of some other things that we should debate about Danny Moore:

♦ Danny Moore does not believe that the earth is round; he thinks it is a square.

♦ Danny Moore became fabulously wealthy by selling used Q-tips to indigent people in Latin America.

♦ Danny Moore was once engaged to be married to a jar of pickles (Vlasic, reportedly).

♦ Danny Moore has an inside-out penis.

♦ Danny Moore eats live squirrels for breakfast twice a week.

Now, look, we don’t KNOW if these things are true or not. We’re just throwing it out there for discussion. If Danny Moore is not a lizard man from outer space, then he should prove it and put the matter to bed once and for all.

We should note that Moore is no stranger to Colorado politics. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Leadership Program of the Rockies, the right-wing training ground directed by well-known conservative names such as Bob Schaffer, Mark Hillman, and Alex Cranberg. University of Colorado Regent Heidi Ganahl, the only remaining statewide Republican elected official in Colorado, is a former board member. It’s fair to say that Moore’s political “opinions” are probably pretty similar, which would be fine if Moore had the courage to defend those opinions instead of answering every question with a variation of, “who really knows?”

If Moore does not even attempt to support his his own thoughts with factual arguments, then we should be concerned about whether he’ll pay any attention to truth on the redistricting commission. Is Census data just someone else’s opinion of population changes? Maybe Moore has a different “opinion” about how many people live in Denver.

Look, Danny Moore has every right to make an ass of himself on any number of topics. But the other members of the redistricting commission don’t have to let him make a fool out of them, too.

12 thoughts on “Let’s “Spark a Conversation” About Danny Moore”

2Jung2Die says:

March 31, 2021 at 1:20 pm

I was just reading about how he was selected to the commission. A 300-person pool of Republicans was winnowed down to 50, and then Moore was randomly selected as one of two Republicans from the 50-person pool. I don't know how well the 50-person pool was vetted, but unless I'm really missing something the random selection part of this process seems like something worth a serious re-think.

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1. Old Time Dem says:
  
  March 31, 2021 at 2:38 pm
  
  Drawing two names from a pool of Republicans virtually guarantees that at least one will be nutjob.
  
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  1. kwtree says:
    
    March 31, 2021 at 2:41 pm
    
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2. kwtree says:
  
  March 31, 2021 at 6:09 pm
  
  So how was it decided to have a Republican, as opposed to a Democrat or Unaffiliated, or a professional staff person, chair this cimmittee? Who picked the “pool”?
  
  I’m just afraid that this clown will do a McConnell or Grantham and gum up the process in favor of maps that he likes. Will he have the powerto set agendas and priorities?
  
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OpenSpace says:

March 31, 2021 at 2:17 pm

This is nuts. Did they vet any of the applicants? He needs to resign.

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MichaelBowman says:

March 31, 2021 at 2:27 pm

Reminds me of the smack many of my old friends used to post about Obama. They’d often qualify the posts (which were outrageous) with, “well, this may not be be true but wouldn’t it be something if it was?!?”

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High Valley Lurker says:

March 31, 2021 at 3:27 pm

It has to be a fundamental rule of a democracy that every participant accept the results of the elections. Otherwise, we might as well go straight to the guns and tanks in the streets stage.

So, how is it that the Chairperson of the ‘independent’ state redistricting committee is someone who just tried to overthrow democracy by spreading the evidence-free Big Lie that led directly fellow travelers in the Republican movement mounting an assault on the Capitol with the direct purpose of overturning the last election results?

Here’s a sentence which illustrates why it is important to exclude the people who want to destroy democracy from the democracy….. Why can’t I choose to believe that any and all elections under the districts formed by this anti-democracy conspiracy theorist are automatically rigged and false by definition?

Democracy is an common exercise in faith. I now have no faith in this redistricting commission.

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JohnInDenver says:

March 31, 2021 at 9:05 pm

Random selection turns up some truly RANDOM results.

As I said in a comment before:

The process of selecting people to the commissions is a weird amalgam. Steps are:

Phase One. Individuals apply using online application process. Phase Two. Nonpartisan staff review of applications for the initial applicant pool. Phase Three. The judicial panel randomly selects 300 Democrats, 300 Republicans, and 450 unaffiliated voters to establish a selection pool of 1,050 people. Phase Four. The judicial panel reviews applications and narrows the pool down to 50 Democrats, 50 Republicans, and 50 unaffiliated voters to establish a pool of 150 people. Phase Five. The judicial panel randomly selects 6 commissioners (2 Democrats, 2 Republicans, and 2 unaffiliated voters) from the 150-person pool. Phase Six. 4 legislative leaders select 10 applicants each from the initial applicant pool and submit them to the judicial panel. Phase Seven. The judicial panel selects 4 commissioners, 1 from each of the legislative leaders’ pools. Phase Eight. The judicial panel selects 2 commissioners from the original pool of 450 randomly selected unaffiliated voters.

Once selected, the commission gets a set of criteria of what may or may not be considered. The professional staff prepares a draft map, maps submitted by members of the public are on file and may be considered by the commission. There are at least 3 meetings in each Congressional district for public input and comment. After all the hearings, the staff prepare another map. Commissioners can request alternative maps.

"At least 8 of the 12 commissioners, including at least 2 unaffiliated commissioners, must approve the final map, and the map must be made public before the commission votes on it." Once approved by the commission, it is submitted to the Supreme Court,

"The Colorado Supreme Court must approve the final map unless the court finds that the commission abused its discretion in applying or failing to apply required criteria."

No matter who is the chair, there are any number of bulwarks to prevent "control."

As best I can tell from the press release, Moore was in the first group, the "randomly selected by a judicial panel."

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1. MartinMark says:
  
  April 1, 2021 at 7:13 am
  
  That's a confusing sentence: "randomly selected by a judicial panel."
  
  Was his name literally randomly selected i.e. out of hat, or was he selected by a panel that "reviewed" the applications? What does that word "reviewed" mean in this context?
  
  So, I suspect there are some loopholes in the above for stacking the process, aka the electoral college type of end run. But I have not analyzed it deeply enough. But it makes me wonder, was the GOP good at exploiting the loophole and the Dems not?
  
  In any case, it seems weird and suspicious that the GOP managed to land the perfect clown in the perfect spot at random, unless they manged to stack a few hundred perfect clowns as applicants.
  
  Finally, the buried lede here seems to be that he managed to get himself in the role of chairman. How was that assigned? Was he elected by fellow commission members? That would be very troubling.
  
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  1. 2Jung2Die says:
    
    April 1, 2021 at 8:30 am
    
    Thing is, his straight resume-type qualifications seem pretty darn impressive. Some types of high-level vetting then get into things like fringe views, odd habits, objectionable behavior, dangerous alliances, etc., but I wonder if that happened with these applications.
    
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    1. kwtree says:
      
      April 1, 2021 at 9:45 am
      
      How did such a data nerd start believing in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories?
      
      A social media scan should have been part of the vetting process.
      
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  2. JohnInDenver says:
    
    April 1, 2021 at 9:13 am
    MartinMark, I’m pretty certain the commission staff would be able to tell you precisely how things were done this year. You can email Julia Jackson, Public Information Officer and Redistricting Analyst, julia.jackson@state.co.us
    
    At a guess, it would be putting identical slips of paper with each of the names into a black box, and having someone reach in to grab two.
    
    In the second round, when the 4 legislative leaders have narrowed the names down to 10 each and the judicial panel is picking one, there has to be some selection to insure some diversity in location, as the commission is supposed to have a member from each Congressional district. I’d also guess there is a “choice” factor to have different genders and race/ethnicity.
    
    The review by nonpartisan staff happens immediately after application. I expect the staff was instructed to get to pools of 300 from each major party and 450 for Unaffiliated and minor party. by a quick review to
    
    make certain the applications were complete and registration status was accurate,
    
    weed out those put in by insincere persons (“Hughy Duck” and “Amanda Hug” would be screened),
    
    take out any wildly inappropriate (“here’s one from someone with an offender’s community re-introduction address. Can that someone travel to meetings?”), and
    
    then did a rough sort based on “how well do we expect him or her to deal with committee meetings?”).
    
    Then count off the top 300 or 450.
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