It’s easy enough to find someone who can get you hoppin’ mad over politics; easier still to find someone who’ll bore you into a coma. Just invite your least favorite uncle over for a beer, tell him you missed Rush today, and ask him to fill you in.

But to find someone who can talk politics and entertain you at the same time – maybe even make you laugh while also making you think – that’s where Kelly Maher comes in. The executive director of conservative advocacy group Compass Colorado has become a leading local voice of the political right, in part by serving up her polemics with a mug of mirth and a side of sass. Her wisecracking, fun-filled approach is her calling card; it infuses her comments to Colorado’s political press; her Facebook and Twitter posts; her appearances as resident right-of-center pundit on Denver’s 9News, and her daily e-newsleter, “The Flare.”  Arguably, it even informs her choice of pets: Her household is home to a real live wallaby. Think of it as politics meets joie de vivre. And it’s front and center in today’s Q&A.

Colorado Politics: You come across as a pundit with a wry twist. You sometimes put a spoofy spin on polemics and inject a dose of levity into otherwise dour political discourse. Does Colorado’s political culture take itself too seriously? What are some of the ways it could loosen up?

Kelly Maher: No one can dispute politics is important. Obviously, it’s more important to me than your average bear. Within the context of what feels like overheated and overwrought rhetoric, not adding to the din of the “everything is a thing” crowd is an important part my identity. I’m glad that shines through. It’s hard to look at the body politic – those on each side of our debates – and not feel like our self-satirization is almost complete.

Many of the issues we’re facing as a state and nation are critically important, and they deserve more than a tweet and a bullhorn. They require actual conversation with listening and critical thinking.

I’m afraid of a culture where whoever acts as the biggest steamroller wins. We’ve become tribalists whose primary job is to yell louder than the other guy, and sometimes in the context of that situation a well-placed, disarming joke is the only way to break through. It’s hard in a world where our various feeds act as a stand-in for human interaction – where all the humanity, depth and nuance that exist in looking someone in the eye is stripped away – to know what’s real and what is simply virtue signaling.

I can get just as wrapped up in the fight as anyone else, so I aspire to step back and make some eye contact once in a while.

CP: As executive director of conservative advocacy group Compass Colorado, you are competing for public bandwidth with both in-state and national organizations that all want attention. What does Compass Colorado bring to the table that sets it apart from other groups?

Maher: This is a great question and one I’m often asked. There are a lot of fabulous groups out there, and I’m grateful to have good working relationships with many of them, on the left and the right. We all have our own roles. Compass Colorado fills our space – we’re smaller and state-based – and therefore able to pivot and be nimble, dedicated solely to operations in Colorado.

Our focus is primarily on the economic and freedom side of things. We will engage regularly in discussions about taxes, regulation, infrastructure growth strategies, and individual freedoms. Generally, although I have personal thoughts about those issues, we don’t engage as much on the social side. We try to be pragmatists, and to approach issues in a thoughtful manner.

I send out a daily newsletter, The Flare, to thousands of Coloradans to keep them up-to-date with the news on which I’m most focused each day. It’s three quick bullet points and takes less than a minute to read, but wherever I go people tell me how much they enjoy it.

CP: Is Colorado moving left? Is it destined to turn ever more blue, not just in its presidential preference but also in electing its Washington delegation?

Maher: Coloradans are now and have always been our own breed of western, small-L, libertarians. I think the real question is how quickly we can assimilate all the people moving here to our unique lifestyle and philosophy. Colorado is so special, and clearly, people all over the country see it and want to be a part of it. The secret for us will be to welcome newcomers with open arms while also teaching them about what makes us different.

I’m not a fan of big government, but I would absolutely support a bill to require anyone moving here from states that end in “-ifornia, -exas and -orida” to take a snow-driving class before getting a driver’s license.

Kelly Maher

CP: You had your first baby nine months ago. For most new parents, it’s a life-changing experience. Has it also in some ways affected your view of politics or your approach to what you do in the political theater?

Maher: People who are childless spend decades being told having a baby changes you in a deep and fundamental way. I liked to joke before I had the baby that I thought those people were the ones who just didn’t love their dogs quite enough. Ultimately though, they were right. I am deeply changed.

It’s odd because everything I do now seems simultaneously more and less critical. There’s a new urgency to leaving a world where we respect individuals as such, and where we aren’t all absorbed into a sanctimonious collectivist Borg. I want to give the baby a world where a little bit of grit, luck, and hard work can make one as successful as he can dream. It emboldens me.

That said, having a baby has put all this political fighting in perspective as well. I pull punches more than I did before. I’m more afraid. In an age where hate and viciousness spew from my computer screen, every single thing I say or write must be filtered out of the concern it could have ramifications for my child.

The “trial by Twitter mob” means everyone in your life suffers from your perceived transgressions. I signed up for the hate as soon as I decided to work in the political space. That doesn’t mean I’m “asking for it” but it means that I made a conscious and adult decision. My family didn’t make that same choice.

I remember the first time it was obvious I was very pregnant on television and someone messaged me to tell me I should do my baby a favor and abort it. I responded with some snark about how since conservatives are prolific breeders, we’re eventually going to win the numbers war. I pretended like I wasn’t broken in half by the comment. It was a lie. I felt my heart crushed to dust in my chest. We all forget at times there are real people with lives and families on the receiving end of our keyboards.

CP: You are a pet enthusiast; you have dogs and even a pet Australian wallaby, for which you set up a blog that you contribute to regularly. You also hunt which is bound to draw barbs from some quarters. They’ll ask how you can love animals while also shooting them for sport. Your answer?

Maher: Oh, the sanctimonious vegans. It’s funny because at least the vegans are the ones who have intellectual honesty about it. I laugh when people send me hunter hate over Twitter while munching on their burgers. Several of my friends and I discuss this issue regularly on our podcast, “The LadyBrains Podcast,” because we all have different approaches and diets.

My favorites are the ones who act like armchair psychiatrists who think I hunt to fulfill some deep-seated need for bloodlust, to reconcile my sexuality with a masculine hobby, or some other insane theory. I also enjoy the questions as to why I can’t just get meat at the store like a normal person – as if by virtue of placing your meat in a tidily-wrapped styrofoam container in a sterile case, you are absolved of the animal-rights questions associated with outsourcing its procurement.

After hours or days of pursuing game, myself and every single hunter I know only take the best shot – one that will most quickly and humanely dispatch the animal. Every hunter passes over tens if not hundreds of shots to be clean and effective. There is nothing worse in hunting than an animal that needlessly suffers. That’s what keeps us up at night.

Those who spend hundreds or thousands of hours in pursuit of game have the highest respect for each life. That respect is part of the ethos of our hunting culture. Do you think most people consider how their burger died at dinner in the evenings? No. They are so far removed from where their food comes from that they don’t think about it. The closer you are to something, the more likely you are to care about it.

In addition to being a hunter, I am an avid gardener and can my produce. Living so many steps removed from our food sources gives us the luxury to ignore a large swath of how our society exists and thrives. There’s something fundamental about being able to feed myself with a few tools and the accumulated knowledge of thousands of years of ancestors that makes me feel more complete. The act of creation is very essentially human.

I’ve never shot an animal I haven’t eaten. If you’re an organic, grass-fed, non-GMO person, hunting gets you the closest to your meat source.

Also, yes, I have a pet wallaby, Welby. He and my labrador are the best pets anyone could ask for. He hops around the house and the yard, he loves treats and snuggles. He likes to curl up in his specially designed pouch and watch tv, and we are his mob. For the people who like to tell me that keeping a “wild animal” is cruel, while petting their dog, I would ask them to come to my house and watch Welby rifle through the crisper drawer when the fridge is open looking for his latest snack. He’s fully domesticated, and then some.

In fact, a recent study from scientists in the Netherlands showed that wallabies are some of the best nontraditional pets available, both in adaptability and temperament. That said, getting a wallaby isn’t something to do on a whim. I did over a year of research to determine if he would fit in our family, went through applicable zoning and government entities to ensure I could have him at our home, found a responsible (and fabulous) USDA-inspected breeder, then got a vet before I got on the waiting list to get Welby. No one should get any animal without the requisite planning, but that’s especially true for a pet like a wallaby.

We’ve become tribalists whose primary job is to yell louder than the other guy, and sometimes in the context of that situation a well-placed, disarming joke is the only way to break through.

CP: 9News viewers of your TV gig opposite left-leaning political activist and pundit Ian Silverii probably want to know if the two of your actually get along off camera. To that, we’d add this query: While such partisan, point-counterpoint media matchups are reliable crowd pleasers among the political class, does the relentless tug-of-war drive away the rest of the public? If, as some say, the less politically engaged majority has grown weary of debate, how do we re-engage them?

Maher: Ian and I are good friends in real life. We’re very lucky to both enjoy working together and to have a strong supportive friendship, and I trust his counsel. He has been my loyal friend though all kinds of bizarre things, including battling morning sickness on television (mortifying). There is a small handful of people in the state who know what it’s like to do politics in the public eye, and we have to stick together – even if he’s wrong all the time.

Here’s what’s important to me about Ian: He’s a fabulous and loyal husband, son, brother and friend. He’s imparted in me an abiding love of Rosenberg’s Bagels, he listens to my wacky ideas, and I can jams and salsas so he makes his own jerkys. We are humans first, and we see each other as such. That seems to be missing these days. We can adamantly disagree and grab a glass of wine after, and that’s ok. Ian loves this state and his country deeply, and although we don’t see eye-to-eye (figuratively and literally) about how to get there, I respect him for coming to different conclusions than me.

Ultimately, people don’t care about politics until it cares about them. It’s when they’re stuck at the DMV or receive an inflated tax bill that they care. The way to make people pay attention to politics is to personalize it, and that’s something we have been failing to do lately. Also, I think normal people are so turned off by it all they are just disgusted. I can empathize.

CP: You appear to have a major height advantage over Ian – enough to easily dominate inside the paint, sink the layup and draw the foul. Yet, he’s tenacious. Which one of you wins a one-on-one half-court game?

Maher: You are not the only person who has noticed this. Shortly after Ian and I were paired as a team, we did a total of one standing shot before we were told that would no longer work. I’m six feet tall and also refuse to allow my height to dictate my shoe choice, so I can push 6’4″ many days. The problem with being tall is that I have a high center of gravity and I’m pretty tippy. I would call it a draw, probably, but am sure the various basketball coaches I’ve had over the years would bet on Ian.