September 15, 2022 09:52 AM UTC

Throwback Thursday: Ganahl Launches Campaign for Governor

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Kyle Clark of 9News reminds us today via Twitter, we have reached the one year anniversary of the (first) launch of Republican Hiedi Heidi Ganahl’s campaign for Governor (Sept. 14 is the official anniversary):

Following that four minute exchange, Ganahl’s campaign has declined or ignored 9NEWS’ interview requests for the last year.

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) September 15, 2022

Ganahl has actually “launched” her campaign for Governor more than once, which is as stupid as it sounds, but shit officially started rolling downhill shortly after her initial announcement on Sept. 14, 2021. Despite having spent more than a year prepping for a gubernatorial run, Ganahl’s campaign was a mess from the jump; as an example, the “issues” page of her website was still Latin text filler (“Lorem Ipsum“) for weeks after her announcement.

Within a month of her campaign kickoff, Ganahl had already fired her campaign manager, which was another preview of things to come; you would need more than one hand to count the number of people who have theoretically been in charge of the Ganahl campaign in the last 12 months.

As we wrote in December 2021:

Ganahl’s campaign launch began with a bungled effort at generating suspense in advance of a formal announcement in an ominous location. Once things got going, Ganahl proved completely unprepared to answer even basic questions from reporters and struggled to elaborate on a nonexistent platform of ideas. Ganahl’s campaign ended up cutting its 2-week statewide tour in half when it became clear that nobody, anywhere, wanted to listen to her speak.

Ganahl’s gubernatorial kickoff was legitimately one of the saddest efforts we’ve seen in recent Colorado political history. Before the month was out, multiple REPUBLICAN political experts were publicly acknowledging that her campaign would have to improve just to reach “dumpster fire” status.

And then things GOT WORSE.

In fact, it’s fair to say that since launching her campaign for Governor (the first time), every subsequent day for Heidi Ganahl has been worse than the one that came before.
 

Unfortunately for Ganahl, she still has two more months of misery ahead of her. The Ganahl campaign has no message, no tangible policy ideas, very little money, and no hope of national support. Her attacks on Democratic Gov. Jared Polis have been just plain silly (and often embarrassing). Ganahl is doing so poorly that her campaign can’t even manufacture a poll showing her ahead of Polis even after respondents are subjected to a battery of negative information about the incumbent.

Oh, and the next General Election television ad you see featuring Ganahl…will also be the first General Election ad featuring Ganahl.

Five weeks from today, Colorado voters will have started to return their mail ballots for the 2022 General Election. Three weeks later, Ganahl will finally be able to stop pretending that anybody wants to “Meat Heidi” at the State Capitol. The only suspense remaining? Whether or not Ganahl will capture the mythical title of “worst major candidate in Colorado history.”

Happy “Throwback Thursday”! If Ganahl could go back in time and do it all over again, we’re fairly confident that she would not do this again.