CRAZYTOWN: Colorado GOP governor’s candidate doubles down on false furry narrative
Despite being debunked, the unhinged and maniacal Colorado GOP candidate for governor, Heidi Ganahl, is going all in on her baseless claims that school students are identifying as “cats,” telling right-wing radio host Jimmy Sengenberger, “Not many people know that we have furries in Colorado schools.”
“Have you heard about this story?” Ganahl asked Sengenberger. “Yeah, kids identifying as cats. It sounds absolutely ridiculous, but it’s happening all over Colorado and schools are tolerating it. It’s insane. What on earth are we doing? Knock it off, schools. Put your foot down. Like, stop it. Let’s get back to teaching basics and not allow this woke ideology, ideological stuff, infiltrate our schools. And it is happening here in Colorado. It’s why I moved from Boulder Valley to Douglas County, because it was happening in my kids schools four years ago.”
The only problem for Ganahl is that her claims are entirely baseless.
KRDO13 reporter, Spencer Soicher tweeted:
🧵: When I spoke with @heidiganahl this week, she doubled down on her comments that kids were identifying as cats in schools. On @KDVR, she said it was happening in Jefferson County.
When I asked if she had any specific examples, Ganahl said, "many, many."#copolitics @KRDONC13 pic.twitter.com/EaCCTEEnwh
— Spencer Soicher ABC 10News (@spencersoicher) October 1, 2022
Despite no evidence for her claims, and having being fact-checked across the board, Ganahl has doubled down on her lies, brazenly saying in an interview aired on Colorado Point of View:
“We’ve got to focus on the basic blocking and tackling of teaching our kids how to read, write and do math and not put up with this nonsense in the classroom,” Ganahl said. “I just heard from over 100 parents identifying 30 different schools that this is happening. Jefferson County, there’s a lot of this going on.”
Jefferson County School District pushed back on Ganahl’s ludicrous comments:
“There are no litter boxes in our buildings and students are not allowed to come to school in costume. There are no furries or students identifying as such during the school day,” a statement from the district said.
But that didn’t stop the wannabe Republican parrot. Ganahl hitched her train to the anti-LGBTQ wagon, regardless of the facts – which have contradicted her gaslighting and her hate-filled rhetoric.
“These claims are frequently used to conflate the existence and/or acceptance of furries with transgender students, in an effort to make a kind of “slippery slope” argument about the dangers of acceptance,” the Colorado Times Recorder reported.
According to local affiliate Fox31:
“The claim that students identify as furries has been spreading across the country for several months. A fact check by Reuters in July determined there was ‘no evidence that U.S. schoolchildren are self-identifying as animals and disrupting classrooms.’”
“In April, The Associated Press did a fact check against a claim from Wisconsin that one district there had a ‘furry protocol.’ The AP found this claim to be ‘completely false.’”
The truth of the matter is Colorado schools did distribute litter boxes in the classrooms, but what Heidi Ganahl and right-wing media leave out is the reason – training for a school shooter lockdown. Administrators call them “go buckets.”
Insider reported, “A school district in Denver, Colorado, has started adding large buckets and kitty litter to teacher’s supply lists.
“In some Colorado schools, teachers are asking parents to bring in buckets filled with kitty litter to act as a toilet if children are trapped in their classrooms during lockdowns. Called “go buckets,” these human litter boxes have been added to the school supply lists for teachers at Jeffco Public Schools in Denver.”
Cassie, an amazing educator and friend of mine, shared this video today. This is the current reality in our public schools. This cannot be allowed to be the new normal. #ThisIsAmerica pic.twitter.com/4xeS2wsXVh
— Melea Mayen (@MFoleyMayen) August 13, 2019
Like most Republicans today, Heidi Ganahl has turned a real issue into a culture war – gaslighting the American people while pushing her factless agenda and not addressing the root causes at all.
Colorado is home to two of the worst mass shootings in this country’s history – the Columbine school shooting and the massacre at an Aurora movie theater. While the conspiracy theory-spouting gubernatorial hopeful is focused on a non-existent issue, hopefully, Colorado voters are focused on the real issue – going to the polls in droves and keeping crazies like Ganahl far from office as possible.
Follow Ty Ross on Twitter @cooltxchick
