Is it a hat? Is it a map?

Ever since Democratic congressional candidate Dominick Moreno, a state senator, unveiled his campaign logo late last week, questions have been floating in about the prominent green shape that occupies the top right corner alongside the Adams County lawmaker’s first name. (Along with state Sen. Andy Kerr and state Rep. Brittany Pettersen, Moreno is one of three Democrats running in next year’s election for the 7th Congressional District seat left open by incumbent U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter’s gubernatorial bid.)

Call it a Rorschach test, political graphics edition.

Except in this case, unlike the psychological test using random inkblots, there is, in fact, a right answer.

First, however, more of the wrong answers: It isn’t a side view of a bumpy ball cap. It isn’t the left side of a straw sun hat. It isn’t an ice cream cake that’s started to melt. It isn’t a map of South Carolina turned upside down for some reason. Nor is it a flattened map of Virginia (picture a cartographic Godzilla stomping the Eastern Seaboard). And it isn’t a snake digesting a cheeseburger.

A Google search for “visually similar images” yielded hundreds of green hats – “best guess for this image: headgear” – including ball caps, hard hats, jaunty bowlers, Sherlock Holmes hats, Robin Hood caps and the kind of hats leprechauns wear. (For some reason, the search engine seems to think the image looks best with a feather.)

But it’s none of those things.

“Table Mountain,” Moreno told a Colorado Politics reporter who lives in Jefferson County. “A little nod to your hood.”

Turns out it’s a silhouette of a well known vantage of South Table Mountain’s Castle Rock – it used to be known as Table Rock – the prominent lava formation atop a plateau just east of Golden. (In an informal survey conducted by Colorado Politics, a GOP political consultant said the shape reminded him of another Castle Rock – the Douglas County town’s namesake, which shares geological characteristics with the Jefferson County feature.)

It isn’t the geographic center of the 7th Congressional District – that would be somewhere around Wadsworth Boulevard and West 80th Avenue in Arvada’s Lake Arbor neighborhood – but it’s one of the high points in the district. It’s also probably one of the suburban district’s few recognizable landmarks – when it isn’t mistaken for a hat, that is.

– Ernest.Luning@coloradopolitics.com