Heidi Ganahl, the Republican candidate for governor of Colorado, announced on Monday that her running mate will be Danny Moore, a business consultant and a 24-year veteran of the U.S. Navy.
“We share a common vision to lower Colorado’s soaring cost of living, gas prices, crime rates, and a commitment to making our children the priority,” Ganahl said in a statement.
Moore made headlines last year for falsely denying the results of the 2020 election.
He had been selected as the chair of the state’s independent redistricting commission, but his comments on social media caused an uproar and led the other commission members to unanimously strip him of the chairmanship.
“By any account, the election of 2020 will go down as the most questioned election in our country’s history,” he wrote in a January 2021 post that criticized mail-in voting, which is a major part of Colorado’s electoral system.
“What we know for sure is that mass mail-in ballots can be controlled by the people you give them too [sic] (the Postman, ballot counters.) Once you hand them over you lose any voice you thought you had,” the post continued.
There is no credible evidence of widespread election corruption. Moore’s January 2021 post went on to acknowledge that Joe Biden would be president and offered his “respect for the office.”
A few weeks later, however, he made another post about "the Democrat steal," questioning how 80 million Americans could have voted for Biden, according to The Colorado Springs Gazette. Moore claimed the post was made on behalf of “a friend." Separately, Moore wrote that there were "too many people involved for this to stay a secret."
He also has referred to COVID-19 as a “Chinese” virus, echoing a major Republican talking point about the pandemic spread widely by former President Donald Trump. Moore later said he “meant no offense” by the post.
Moore is the president and owner of DeNOVO Solutions and Thornberry Consulting, which serve the Department of Defense as consultancies, according to the campaign.
“As a retired Navy Veteran and a successful small business entrepreneur with nearly 40 years of leadership experience, I will be mission-focused and deliver what is best for Colorado. It is critical that we do better, and we will,” read a statement released by the Ganahl campaign.
The campaign did not immediately respond to questions about Moore’s current views of the 2020 elections, or whether Ganahl shares those views. Throughout the campaign, Ganahl has avoided explicitly stating her opinion of the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, saying only that Joe Biden “is the president” and that election fraud did not change the results in Colorado.
In June, she expanded that statement: “I don’t believe there was enough fraud that would have flipped the election,” she said in an interview with The Colorado Sun and CBS4.
Moore is a native of Louisiana. After serving in numerous roles in the Navy, he became the first Black man to earn the rank of Cryptologic Technician Technical Master Chief, the campaign stated. He received the Meritorious Service Medal and the National Security Agency Director’s Distinguished Service Medal, according to the campaign.
Ganahl originally planned to announce her running mate more than a week ago, telling a talk radio host that she would pick “a very strong Hispanic leader from rural Colorado.” The campaign didn’t immediately respond to a question about the apparent change of plans.
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