By C.J. Garbo | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
For years, Colorado conservatives have spent enormous amounts of energy asking the wrong question.
How do we win the next election?
It is an understandable question. Elections determine who holds power. But elections are the final event in a much longer process. By the time most citizens receive a ballot, much of the intellectual work that influences their vote has already occurred.
They have formed impressions about whether Colorado is prospering or declining. They have developed beliefs about taxes, crime, schools, energy, firearms, housing, government competence, and personal freedom. They have decided which institutions they trust. They have learned which issues deserve their attention and which can safely be ignored.
Then they vote.
That means political power begins long before the ballot.
It begins with information.
It grows through persuasion.
It becomes durable through institutions.
This is precisely why Rocky Mountain Voice matters.
RMV is often described as a conservative news outlet. While that description is accurate, it is also incomplete. What Heidi Ganahl and her team are building has the potential to become something considerably more consequential: civic infrastructure for a political and cultural movement that has spent too many years expecting electoral success without building enough of the institutions that are required to sustain it.
That distinction matters a great deal.
A campaign exists to win an election. An institution exists to shape the environment in which elections occur, and Colorado conservatives desperately need more of the latter.
The missing infrastructure
I have written repeatedly about the strategic problems confronting conservatives in Colorado.
We cannot govern through ideological purity alone. We cannot build a majority by endlessly identifying people to exclude from it. We cannot surrender unaffiliated voters and then wonder why we lose statewide elections. We cannot allow anger to substitute for competence. We cannot complain that Democrats have successfully presented themselves as the reasonable adults in the room while some Republicans enthusiastically provide the footage for the commercial.
Principle matters enormously, but principle must be effectively and convincingly communicated.
Arguments must be heard before they can persuade. Facts must be distributed before they can influence public understanding. Government misconduct must be discovered before citizens can demand accountability. Successful conservative governance must be explained before voters can distinguish it from the caricature presented by its opponents.
An article that nobody reads does not change public opinion.
A fact that never escapes a committee hearing remains politically inert.
A government abuse that receives no sustained attention becomes easier to repeat.
A successful policy that citizens never hear about generates little political benefit.
Distribution is, therefore, not an administrative detail of politics. Distribution is power.
This is the insight conservatives have too often neglected.
The Left did not acquire cultural influence merely by winning elections. It built institutions. Media organizations. Advocacy networks. Universities. Nonprofits. Legal organizations. Research centers. Donor networks. Entertainment platforms. Activist communities.
Those institutions operate between elections. They develop arguments, identify issues, create language, train advocates, distribute information, and reinforce ideas over years.
Then election season arrives.
Conservatives frequently attempt the reverse. We build a campaign, purchase advertising, knock on doors for several months, hold an election-night party, and dismantle much of the apparatus afterward.
Then we start over.
That is not a durable movement.
Texas Scorecard, the organization that helped inspire RMV, captures the alternative approach in four important words: act “systemically and generationally.” Its model centers journalism on informed citizenship and self-government rather than treating news as detached political entertainment.
Colorado needs that kind of institutional thinking.
Reach is not vanity. Reach is capacity.
Heidi recently told me something that deserves far more consideration than it will probably receive.
“Political pressure comes from numbers.”
That is exactly right.
RMV already reaches roughly 200,000 people through its email distribution. Publicly reported figures show that its operation has moved well beyond the experimental stage. In 2025 alone, RMV reported publishing more than 800 original articles from 98 independent writers. Its reporting generated 12.5 million social media views, 1.6 million interactions, and more than 46,000 new followers. Its Mountain Minute podcast recorded more than 166,000 downloads after launching in 2025.
Those numbers matter for reasons deeper than popularity.
Every additional reader increases the probability that a story reaches a school board member, pastor, business owner, parent, donor, activist, legislator, county commissioner, or previously disengaged voter.
Every additional subscriber creates another potential distribution point.
Every forwarded article extends an argument beyond the people who already agree.
Every credible investigation raises the political cost of misconduct.
Every citizen journalist expands the geographic territory in which government can be observed.
Scale changes the relationship between citizens and power.
One person asking a question can be dismissed.
Ten thousand citizens asking it become politically relevant.
Hundreds of thousands asking it can change an agenda.
This is why audience growth should not be dismissed as marketing. For a civic institution, audience is infrastructure.
The broader media environment makes this even more important.
Pew Research Center found that 85 percent of Americans consider local news at least somewhat important to the well-being of their communities. At the same time, the way citizens consume information is changing rapidly. Pew also found that about 21 percent of American adults now regularly obtain news from social media news influencers, rising to 38 percent among adults under 30.
The old media gatekeeping model is weakening.
That presents an extraordinary opportunity, but it also creates an extraordinary responsibility.
The objective cannot be to build our own propaganda machine
Conservatives should be careful here.
If our answer to biased journalism is merely to create journalism biased in the opposite direction, we will have accomplished much less than we imagine.
A conservative media institution earns influence only when people believe it.
Credibility is therefore not a secondary concern. It is the asset upon which every other asset depends.
This requires a distinction that our political culture increasingly struggles to make.
Having a worldview is not the same as being dishonest.
RMV openly describes itself as right-of-center and pro-Colorado. That intellectual transparency is healthy. Every journalist, editor, and institution operates with assumptions about which questions matter, which stories deserve attention, and what constitutes relevant context. The ethical question is not whether a perspective exists.
The ethical question is whether the facts remain sovereign over the perspective.
This is where RMV can distinguish itself.
Conservative journalism should be willing to expose progressive failures without hesitation. It should investigate government overreach. It should examine ideological capture. It should scrutinize spending. It should defend constitutional rights. It should tell stories established outlets ignore.
It must also tell conservatives when we are wrong.
It must distinguish reporting from commentary.
It must correct errors.
It must refuse to turn friendship into immunity from scrutiny.
It must never manipulate a fact simply because the unmanipulated fact is politically inconvenient.
That is not weakness.
That is how trust is built.
I experienced a small example of this myself just this week.
In editing my recent commentary concerning several Second Amendment challenges in Colorado, RMV editor Shaina Cole questioned the caption I had used for one of the federal cases. Rather than shrugging at an obscure detail, we went back to the actual complaint and federal docket.
The record resolved it.
My original identification was essentially correct. Shaina acknowledged her mistake immediately; we refined the caption for maximum precision, and the piece moved to publication.
That exchange might appear insignificant. It was not.
That is what serious journalism looks like.
Someone asks whether a fact is right.
The primary source is examined.
The evidence decides.
Nobody’s ego gets a vote.
If RMV preserves that culture as it grows, its influence will become much more difficult to dismiss.
What “driving the narrative” should actually mean
The phrase “driving a narrative” makes some people uncomfortable because it sounds suspiciously like manipulating public opinion.
But, like it or not, every functioning news organization affects narrative.
Editors decide what becomes a headline. Reporters determine which questions get asked. Producers determine which stories receive five minutes and which receive thirty seconds. Newsrooms decide what deserves continued investigation and what disappears after one news cycle.
Those decisions create public salience.
The real question is whether narrative follows reality or reality is manipulated to serve narrative.
RMV should (and does) aspire to the former.
If a Colorado family is paying dramatically more for insurance, investigate why.
If legislators create constitutional concerns, explain them.
If a school district makes consequential decisions parents do not understand, obtain the records.
If Republicans behave incompetently, report it.
If Democrats enact a good policy, say so.
If government makes a claim, examine the underlying document.
If activists describe something as grassroots, follow the money and determine whether it is.
If a politician says something that contradicts the record, publish the record.
That is how an honest narrative is built.
Not through slogans.
Through accumulated evidence.
RMV’s original founding promise reflected precisely this idea. It pledged to tell the other side of stories while remaining willing to call balls and strikes regardless of whether the offender carried an R or a D. Its current mission emphasizes connecting conservatives, building community, and keeping its journalism freely accessible without paywalls.
That combination matters.
A movement needs a point of view.
A news organization needs credibility.
RMV must protect both.
Colorado’s persuadable majority
There is another reason RMV’s growth matters.
Colorado conservatives cannot build a future by speaking exclusively to committed Republicans.
The political future of this state will be decided heavily by people who do not organize their identities around either major party.
They are not waiting for another party memo.
They are trying to decide whether their children’s schools are working. Whether they can afford their home. Whether they feel safe. Whether government spends money responsibly. Whether their rights remain secure. Whether the people in charge are competent. Whether anyone is telling them the complete truth.
Those citizens do not need more partisan noise.
They need evidence.
They need explanation.
They need context.
And they need credible voices willing to respect their intelligence enough to make an argument rather than demand allegiance.
That is an enormous strategic opportunity for RMV.
The goal should not simply be to become the preferred news source of Colorado conservatives.
The larger goal should be to become indispensable reading for Coloradans who want to understand what their government is doing, including those who do not yet think of themselves as conservatives in the truest sense of the word, rather than through the distorted, self-serving caricatures that too often masquerade as conservatism.
That requires excellent journalism, intellectual seriousness, and writers who know the difference between an argument and an insult.
It requires reporters willing to spend hours inside government records while everyone else fights on social media.
It requires editors willing to challenge friendly writers.
It requires contributors capable of explaining conservative principles in language that persuadable citizens can understand.
And it requires scale.
A movement cannot persuade people it never reaches.
Stop complaining about the media. Build one.
For decades, conservatives have complained about media bias.
Some criticism has been deserved.
Some has become habitual.
Complaining accomplishes very little once the alternative can be built.
The technological barriers that once made statewide media extraordinarily expensive have collapsed. A newsroom no longer requires a printing press, broadcast tower or cable channel to reach hundreds of thousands of people.
The opportunity now exists.
The question is whether conservatives will build it.
RMV has already constructed much of the foundation. It produces original reporting, commentary, podcasts, video, newsletters, scorecards, and events. It has developed a distributed network of writers and citizen journalists. It maintains free access rather than placing its reporting behind a subscription wall. Its stated mission is explicitly focused on civic engagement, community, and self-government.
Now the movement has to decide whether that infrastructure matters enough to sustain and expand.
I believe it does.
And participation does not require becoming a journalist.
Subscribe.
Read.
Forward the strongest reporting to someone outside your normal political circle.
Send RMV credible story leads.
Invite people into the audience.
Support the organization financially if you are able.
Contribute professional expertise.
Encourage thoughtful people in your community to write.
Challenge RMV when it gets something wrong.
Defend it when it gets something right and powerful interests would prefer silence.
Most importantly, stop thinking of sharing a well-researched article as a trivial social media action.
Distribution is how information acquires consequence.
The real project
I have developed a genuine respect for what Heidi Ganahl and the RMV team are building because I increasingly believe Colorado’s conservative challenge is institutional before it is electoral.
We need better candidates.
We need better campaigns.
We need better organization.
We need greater unity.
We need more disciplined political leadership.
But all of those things become stronger when an informed citizenry exists around them.
That is the real project.
A self-governing people cannot govern themselves intelligently without information. They cannot hold power accountable for actions they never discover. They cannot defend principles they have never been taught to articulate. They cannot challenge a political narrative they never hear contradicted.
And a movement cannot grow if every conversation takes place among people who have already joined it.
Rocky Mountain Voice can become one of the institutions that changes that.
Not because conservatives need someone to tell us that we are always right.
We do not.
We need something much more valuable.
We need an institution willing to find the facts, explain their meaning, defend liberty, challenge power, expand the conversation, and give ordinary citizens enough information to exercise the authority that our constitutional system ultimately places in their hands.
That is why RMV matters.
And that is why its audience matters.
Political pressure comes from numbers.
But durable political influence comes from something even more fundamental.
An informed people who know what is happening, understand why it matters, and possess the means to make themselves heard.
Build that, and elections begin to look less like isolated battles.
They become the downstream consequence of a movement that finally built the institutions necessary to compete.
C. J. Garbo is a cybersecurity executive, political strategist, and former law enforcement officer with more than two decades of experience in public safety, technology, and civic leadership. He has managed political campaigns from the local to federal level and writes on government, constitutional issues, political strategy, and institutional reform. A continued contributor to Rocky Mountain Voice, Garbo focuses on the ideas, institutions, and leadership required to build durable political influence and strengthen self-government.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.