“What really was frustrating to me is that the public, the people of Colorado, didn’t get to hear my heart. They didn’t get to hear who I am, or how I wanted to solve problems for them because [the news media] were so jaded and cynical, cynical and selective,” Heidi Ganahl told KOA radio host Mandy Connell last week.
“I would have a conversation with a reporter for an hour and talk all about policy and what I wanted to do. And the headline would be — what do you think?”
“Furries! Furries!” responded Connell.
“Or election deniers or you know. …” said Ganahl.
Ganahl said the situation with the media is “not fair to the people of Colorado.”
“Look at what’s happening with Twitter right now,” she told Connell on Dec. 5. “That’s not fair to the Americans who could have made a different decision about what they were going to vote if they knew what happened with the Hunter Biden story or pick your pleasure, whichever story they covered up. But in a smaller scale that happened in Colorado because we could never get our message out.”
In the end, Ganahl is left thinking that “conservative radio in Colorado is the only way we got our voice out.”
Ganahl is not the only failed conservative candidate in Colorado who’s said that conservatives should avoid media environments where challenging questions might pop up — and instead focus on their own platforms.
In the runup to his loss in 2020, former Sen. Cory Gardner, a Republican, said that to win, conservatives should skirt the media’s “pre-approved filter” and speak directly with constituents in order “to get our message around the people who want to twist or turn it or ignore it.” Gardner once told a right-wing talk radio host that the media is biased against “people like us.”
Asked by Connell if she regretted not accepting an offer during the campaign to debate on 9News, Ganahl said, “No, Mandy, I don’t. I just, I have no respect for [9News anchor] Kyle Clark. He does not treat women well. And I’ve spent the last couple of decades of my life working on helping women, lifting them up, and teaching them how to be strong and bold and speak up for themselves. And at the end of the day, we tried to negotiate something with 9News where he had a woman with him instead of Marshall. Nothing against [9News political reporter] Marshall [Zellinger]. We just to make a point, said, ‘You need a woman’s perspective up there to counteract his attitude towards especially conservative women.’ And they wouldn’t do it. And so at that point, it was like, ‘Fine, then never mind, I am going to put my money where my mouth is and stand up like I tell other women to do and say no, even if it will cost me, you know, some name recognition.’ But I also, you know, we had four other debates that were really good that people could watch online.”
On the other hand, Ganahl praised CBS4 Political Specialist Shaun Boyd’s coverage of the furry story, which first appeared in the Colorado Times Recorder, but she lamented that “nobody paid attention” to Boyd’s piece because it came out late.
Meanwhile, with respect to her Democratic opponent, Gov. Jared Polis, Ganahl told Connell, “The media covered up for him and let him do his thing.”
