Republican gubernatorial nominee Heidi Ganahl on Friday introduced Danny Moore, the Navy veteran and business owner she named earlier this week as her running mate in a bid to deny Colorado Gov. Jared Polis a second term.

The candidates delivered brief speeches before an enthusiastic, standing-room-only crowd at JJ’s Place, an Aurora sports bar,  but neither spoke to reporters at the event or addressed questions raised this week about Moore’s history of promoting claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

“Coloradans have had enough,” Ganahl said. “The hard-working people of our beautiful state cannot afford to live here anymore. Gas prices are rising, homes are unaffordable, inflation is out of control, crime rates are skyrocketing and our children are in crisis. It does not have to be this way.”

“I chose Danny first and foremost for his heart. I chose Danny for his business acumen. I chose him for his leadership,” said.

Moore, who retired after 24 years in the Navy and owns and runs DeNOVO Solutions, an Aurora-based defense contractor, said he was running to represent all Coloradans, regardless of their political lean. 

“To the people of Colorado — all the people — you can trust that I will support you above government and defend you when no one else will,” Moore said. “I will work tirelessly to deliver prosperity and security. This is my commitment to you, because it’s time for a change.”

Moore, who is Black, added, “This ticket is the most diverse that our state has ever seen.”

Ganahl, a University of Colorado regent and the sole Republican holding statewide elected office, defeated former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez, who was making his second run for governor, in last month’s primary by nearly 8 percentage points. The GOP ticket will face Polis, a former five-term congressman, and his lieutenant governor, Dianne Primavera, who won the Democratic nomination without opposition.

Ganahl announced her lieutenant governor pick in a press release Monday morning. After originally planning to introduce Moore to supporters on Wednesday, her campaign postponed the rally to Friday so it wouldn’t conflict with the 10th anniversary of the Aurora theater shooting and events commemorating its victims.

The founder of a national chain of dog daycare centers, Ganahl touted the Republican ticket’s entrepreneurial experience.

“If you own a small business, you will never have a better friend in the governor’s mansion than Danny and I,” she said. “We are going to use our business experience to get our state’s economy back on track again.”

Ganahl added, “We are fighters who are ready to take on Jared Polis and the Democrats.”

Noting that Polis, who made a fortune in the tech industry, has the ability to spend millions of dollars to self-fund his reelection bid, Ganahl declared: “This is an election, not an auction.”

Moore hit the same theme.

“We may not outspend him, but we are going to outwork him,” he said. “It’s time for a change.”

During the roughly 15 minutes Ganahl and Moore spoke, neither candidate mentioned the controversy that landed Moore in the headlines last year, when fellow members of Colorado’s Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission voted unanimously to remove Moore as chairman after The Gazette and other news outlets unearthed Moore’s Facebook posts casting doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election.

“This is the guy elected by the Democrat steal!” Moore posted on Jan. 29, 2021, above a photo of President Joe Biden speaking at a press conference. “Do you think 80 million Americans voted for this guy!!!!”

Other posts called into question the security of mail ballots and asserted that Biden’s election had “broken all of the mathematical and statistical models in history,” echoing false claims stoked by Trump and his supporters.

Responding last year to calls for his demotion on the redistricting commission, Moore insisted that he was simply asking questions in order to provoke a vigorous discussion among his friends.

A spokesperson for the Colorado Democrats panned Ganahl’s pick, seizing on Moore’s remarks about the last election.

“This is no accident,” Kailee Stiles said in a release. “Heidi chose an election denier for lieutenant governor because that’s what she supports.”

“Danny is not an election denier,” Ganahl said Monday in an interview on KOA radio.

Ganahl’s campaign declined repeated requests from Colorado Politics to make Ganahl or Moore available for an interview this week. Her campaign also declined to say whether Moore believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen, or if Moore felt he ever got answers to the questions he raised on social media.

A Ganahl campaign spokeswoman, however, produced a statement saying that Ganahl and Moore “agree” that Biden and Polis are president and governor, respectively, but quickly pivoted to campaign themes without addressing the 2020 election’s legitimacy.

“Mr. Moore made these comments as a Colorado citizen. He believes citizens are the counterbalance to the government and bear the responsibility of raising questions,” Lexi Swearingen, Ganahl’s communications director, said in a text message. “He also believes the role of the government is to instill confidence. I point to you his comments on social media congratulating President Biden on his election victory. Heidi and Danny are both in agreement that Biden and Polis are our elected leaders and we must focus on the future of Colorado — lowering our soaring gas prices, cost of living, crime rates, and providing a better education for our children who are suffering.”

As proof Moore congratulated Biden, Swearingen provided a screenshot of a portion of a post from Moore’s Facebook account, much of which has been hidden from public view since April 2021. In the post, which the Ganahl campaign said was made on Jan. 7, 2021 — the day after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and three weeks before his later post referring to the “Democrat steal”— Moore congratulated Biden on his inauguration and condemned “the acts of yesterday,” after noting that he likewise condemned “the violence of BLM and Antifa from Labor Day to Election Day,” referring to Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist activists. 

Former state Republican Party Chairman Dick Wadhams, a political consultant with multiple winning statewide campaigns under his belt, told Colorado Politics he doesn’t understand why the Ganahl campaign can’t acknowledge the last election wasn’t stolen, calling it a potentially disqualifying fault in a state that has demonstrated its voters don’t like Trump.

“Candidates must state clearly and succinctly that the election was not stolen, or they will not be credible in a general election in Colorado, period,” Wadhams said in an interview.

He noted that the other Republicans running on the statewide ticket — U.S. Senate nominee Joe O’Dea, secretary of state nominee Pam Anderson, attorney general nominee John Kellner and state treasurer nominee Lang Sias — have all made clear they roundly reject the stolen election narrative.

It isn’t a message just for the state’s Democrats and large share of unaffiliated voters, he added, pointing to O’Dea and Anderson defeating primary rivals who based their campaigns around the claims.

“We just got done with a primary election where conspiracy theorists were defeated up and down the ticket — in the Republican primary, no less, so it’s clear that that’s what Republicans wanted in the primary.”