UPDATE: In taking a closer look at the reports done by Political Money Line, the overall financing numbers don’t appear to add up correctly when they are broken down by state donors. It doesn’t look like their figures are entirely accurate, so take the numbers below with a grain of salt.
Republican Marc Holtzman has made several forays out-of-state as he raises money for his gubernatorial run – an effort that he says is necessary for successful fundraising. It’s hard to argue with the results, as Holtzman has raised more money thus far than every other candidate by a wide margin.
But Holtzman has not avoided criticism for his out-of-state fundraising, and that got us thinking…how uncommon is it to raise a big chunk of money from out-of-state donors?
A quick examination of fundraising reports at Political Money Line shows some surprising results. Among Colorado’s seven congressman, Holtzman’s chief opponent for the GOP nomination - Bob Beauprez - raised 82% of his money prior to his 2004 re-election campaign from out-of-state donors. In fact, the only other Colorado Representative to even reach 50% was Tom Tancredo, who gets a large chunk of his campaign contributions from anti-immigration donors nationwide.
Here’s the list:
2004 Campaign Cycle
In-State vs. Out-of-State Campaign Contributions
Bob Beauprez
82% out-of-state
18% Colorado
Tom Tancredo
50% out-of-state
50% Colorado
Marilyn Musgrave
41% out-of-state
59% Colorado
Mark Udall
31% out-of-state
69% Colorado
John Salazar
30% out-of-state
70% Colorado
Diana DeGette
23% out-of-state
77% Colorado
Joel Hefley
16% out-of-state
84% Colorado
That Musgrave amount is easy to rationalize – but I have to say that Beauprez amount it staggering. Does he not have a fundraising base in the 7th? Anyway to do that research? See how many of his constituents contribute to his re-election bids?
This news doesn’t reconcile with what the Beauprez Campaign said last week:
Beauprez’s campaign downplayed Holtzman’s fundraising efforts.
“He’s from the East Coast, and he’s going to raise East Coast money,” said Beauprez’s campaign coordinator, John Marshall. “We’re going to earn support the grass-roots way.”
Obviously John didn’t realize he lives in a glass house.
You can get the facts at the State of Colorado’s web site on the Secretary of State Election pages. The pages were down this morning but they should be accesable soon.
http://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/main.htm
Click “file and search campaign finance documents”
at the bottom of the left column
This “analysis” is deceiving. The only way to get a true understanding is to include the actual dollar amounts. The Beauprez race cost MUCH more than the Hefley race, so perhaps both candidates raised one million in their districts. I don’t know, but it’s not helpful to just compare raw percentages.
Colorado Pols is extremely misleading on this. When you look at individual contributions in the 04 cycle, the story is quite different.
DeGette 66% Colorado
Udall 31% Colorado
Salazar 48% Colorado
Musgrave 15% Colorado
Hefley 60% Colorado
Tancredo 18% Colorado
Beauprez 76% Colorado
By individual contributions, do you mean money from the candidates own pockets?
FOB Said: “When you look at individual contributions…”
So we’re supposed to pretend that contributions from corporations and PACs don’t exist? We’re supposed to pretend that these organizations don’t expect a return on their “investment”?
Spin, baby, spin. Look at those Beauprez people go!
In 2004 Beauprez raised a total of $2,967,373. $1,541,832 from individuals and $1,176,665 from individuals from Colorado (according to Political Money Line). Someone please tell me how to do the math to make that equal 82% out of state money. It’s not spin – it’s math. And Colorado Pols isn’t very good at math apparently.
Why is it you continue to call Tancredo and any supporters of his “anti-immigration” ?? anti-illegal and anti-immigration are two separate things.
One more note — Check out http://www.opensecrets.org as well for financial/contribution info on candidates and elected rep’s.
Look – best to leave that pac baby alone.
I’m more curious about the debt listed. Can Beauprez use some of his governors money to pay that down? Becuase if not – I’m worried it’ll make him look like he’s leaving congress with unfinished business.
Dead Govs – Please show me your work, because I don’t get where you got those numbers, Beauprez’s are really wrong. I went and looked at Moneyline.
For the 2004 election cycle, BB took in $1,541,832 from individuals
of that $1,176,665.00 was from Colorado. Last I checked, that was around 76% of the contributions from indviduals came from Colorado.
Last I checked, there weren’t a lot of PACs located here in Colorado (yes, there are a few). If you want to complain about PACs v. Individuals, ok. But combining the two is totally misleading.
If you want to toalk about PACS, let’s go.
As far as PAC money goes, DeGette took in more PAC money 54% (in terms of percentage of receipts) than Beauprez, 41%.
Political Money Line breaks it all down by contributions by state – there’s a neat little table they set up for that purpose.
Go here: http://www.tray.com/cgi-win/x_candpg.exe?DoFn=H2CO07063*2004
Then scroll down. About halfway down the page there is something called “Top 10 States of Itemized Contributions From Individuals
(as reported by filer).” If you click MORE, it breaks it out into percentages at the bottom.
That’s their data, friends. We didn’t do any of the math ourselves.
Yeah, something wrong with the Moneyline math here, their tables aren’t linking up right. Total receipts= $2.9, but state breakdown has receipts of $6.2?!?! Whoever the anti-Beauprez dead gov is should have spent 2 minutes checking the math.
Whatever the numbers are actually turn out to be, Beauprez is actually from Colorado. Marc (with a “C”) has a very nice vacation home near Aspen and a swinging bachelor pad in Cherry Creek, but being “Western” for a couple years doesn’t take the East Coast out of the boy.
Alva, no excuse for sloppy reporting.
I found the real page for you, Alva. Not sure why the other one is so screwed up. Check this link on the left side about half way down the page. http://www.tray.com/cgi-win/pml1_sql_efview.exe?DoFn=C003761522004&server=PML2
Moneyline is basing their numbers on this breakout. Alva, if you had looked, you would have noticed that BB reciepts were $2.9 m.
From CO : $1,176,665.00
From individuals not from CO: $5,201,929.00
Something is really wrong with those numbers and the reporting.
I figured it out. Joint fundraising committees are a fairly new thing these last couple of cycles. The take donations from individuals and then split up the money between targeted races. They report their donations as e.g. $2000 from Mrs. Smith and then send pieces of that amount to 5, 6, 8 maybe 10 candidates all over the country. So Mrs. actually ends up giving $387.20 to Beauprez and 6 other candidates.
For some reason Moneyline’s table on the page you posted is picking up the total contribution, not the split that Beauprez and other Republican candidates actually received.
Dead Presidents, shouldn’t you fix the story to reflect this information?
If that’s right, great find, jon.
Come on, Alva. Give us the retraction.
Hey Dead Govs, is this going to get fixed??
Of course it’s not, surely by now you know that ColPols is anti-BB? that’s not exactly a secret….
It is very disheartening that you all are still posting incorrect information.
I thought you all had more integrity than this.
The numbers you sited are just plain wrong, there is no question. The link you went to doesn’t add up and you based your post on that.
Disheartening is a good word Jake, frankly i’m really surprised myself, I’ve always figured CP leaned anti-BB but I always figured they’d make an effort to at least appear somewhat neutral on the surface. I guess shame on me for assuming.
Candy – There is bais and then there is just plain wrong.
To me, the folks that run this site have some obvious leanings, I have posted on that before.
But, it is their site and they didn’t start out saying they were non-partisan. However, posting information that is proven false (as opposed to rumors that never come true) is something else.
The facts are the facts, without spin or manipulation Colorado Pols got the facts wrong. It isn’t really their fault, Moneyline breakdown is wrong. However, it is their fault if they leave it up. They should be able to admit their mistake.
Please, let’s not cast aspersions on the motives of the dead guvs. the page on tray.com really does say 82%. Perhaps we just need to explain this to the guv’s a little more explicitly.
The page that says 82% itemizes by state – and adds up to over $5 million. You dead guv’s seem to put such a huge stock in fundraising, you should have noticed that number was more than a little off for a congressional race in Colorado. The total receipt listed for the cycle on every other page is a little over $2 million. Much more realistic.
PoliticalMoneyLine goofed – take it off your site already.
No casting, just reeling.
I guess it’s only a matter of time until we see the ‘Holtzman for Governor’ ad on the sidebar. Apparently, money well spent.
I think you are overlooking one point. In a congressional race, since it’s a Federal race, you would naturally assume a candidate would get some funding nationally. However, wouldn’t you like your candidate for Governor to get most of his money from the state in which he’s running?You would like to think the people of our state would show their support for a candidate by donating to his campaign. So the obvious is clear, MH needs to go out of state for most of his support.
I guess it’s time once again for everyone to air out their theories on the Dead Guv’s biases.
They’ve been shamelessly plugging Hickenlooper forever, and have always put more stock in Holtzman than anyone else. Both these hint towards a desire for a Dem takeover of the Governor’s mansion.
They know Beauprez can beat any of the Dem candidates but Hickenlooper, and with Hickenlooper out of the race, they know they need a Holtzman/Bridges race to have any hope. None of the rest of their candidates can beat Holtzman, and Bridges can’t beat Beauprez.
There is a glaring bias towards Holtzman on this site. There is a pattern of overly favorable reports about his campaign, and he only climbs up or stays where he is at on the governor line even when he has a disastrous week like the last one. This site is becoming less objective, and thus less credible, as the Gov. race progresses.
All of which isn’t a big deal until the press starts using this site as a credible source which clearly it is not.
They already have a quote from Holtzman praising the site on the first page.
There have been several stories that past few weeks that have been started from, if not just rehashed from, this site.
If more interesting, there is no mention of the story about Tipton’s fundraising for the 2nd quarter than ran today in the Durango Herald.
Anybody think that Tipton raising over $100k is the least bit interesting?????
Alllllva, Allllva, are you paying attention?
I would guess that the reason no-one’s getting responses from the Dead Governors is that they’re working to finish up the site move.
Give them a bit of a break…
Still waiting for that retraction. Come Dead Govs, what’s with the lack of response?
wow i figured for sure i’d come home from dinner to a response. Dead Prez’s silence is deafening imo.
The response has been up there, candyraver. How’s life on Beauprez’ staff, you shill?
Ter Duck, you obviously didn’t read the comments. Alva of course did defend her numbers, but the fact is that tray.com has a glitch in their software, and the numbers are wrong. This is patently obvious: the numbers tray posted, on the page Alva indicated, add up to over twice the amount of money Beaprez raised as indicated by tray’s own records.
Someone found a page on tray that had correct numbers. A correction should be posted. The amount of out-of-state money Beauprez gathered in 2004 was more like 60% (if I recall correctly) than 82%. Still the highest in the delegation, but a far cry from what the Guvs have posted.
This is not a bunch of partisans hoping to hide an ugly truth – it is a factual inaccuracy, and proper journalism demands a correction.
I read it all, and apparently more than you did. There is a correction posted, and has been for awhile.
I just get annoyed with people like candyraver who are so clearly shills for Beauprez pretending not very well to hide their intentions.
So let me get this straight. It is ok to say, hey the numbers don’t look right, and then leave the numbers up?!?!?!?!?
That is the goofiest thing I have seen on this site since Herb!
Alva, I think everyone that reads this site should expect more.
Ter Ducken – before you say it, I don’t work for Beauprez, or the republican party.
This ter ducken spent too much time in the oven. You’re a bold one to call somebody else a shill…
Ter – I saw the “update” at the top of the page; my beef (and others’) is that the WRONG NUMBERS are still posted. if the numbers are wrong, why leave them up? *cough* anti-BB site *cough*
For the record, i support BB and i think that’s always been pretty clear to regular readers of CP. i am not on the BB staff, although i’m not sure why that would make a difference. i’m also not sure why you “get annoyed with people who are so clearly shills for Beauprez pretending not very well to hide their intentions.” I’ve never tried to hide anything. I support BB. Last i checked, this is a place to voice opinion (and false information if you’re a Dead Prez). IMO BB should be our next governor.
FWIW Ter, up till now I figured you were a dyed-in-the-wool fan of the democratic process. However now i’m starting to think you’re just another rabid partisan; foaming at the mouth at the very thought of your enemies gaining even a few inches in the trench warfare of your life. That’s too bad. This site could use a few more level heads. C’est La Vie.
Right on Candyraver.
What is amazing me to is that this site’s popularity (at least initially) was based on the posting of inside information and, well, gossip. Many of the things posted on this site have been true many have not.
Now we see a situation where the folks who run this site have been shown that they have posted incorrect information. The folks that have shown this, in my opinion, haven’t been trying to spin those facts, rather they are trying to ensure that the correct facts are posted.
That isn’t shilling, rather defending.
In my mind, and hopefully the mind of many other readers of this site, this episode is very disappointing and casts the validity and veracity of all of ColoradoPols into question.
We’ll explain this once, and that will be the last we’ll get into it. We posted this story based on the information on Political Money Line, and we were very clear about where the information came from. After looking back at PML last evening, which was the first chance we had to get to your concerns, it did appear as though the numbers didn’t add up entirely.
However, we don’t know what all PML is counting and what they are not. We were reporting what PML has posted. Reporters do this all the time when they say, “CNN is reporting…” We’re not going to say that PML is absolutely wrong, because we don’t know the background of all of those numbers. But they certainly don’t look to be entirely accurate, and that’s what we said in the update.
We’re not going to take the whole post down because that would be pretending like this entire discussion didn’t exist. You can talk up every conspiracy theory under the sun if it makes you feel better, but this was really a simple case. We posted something that we got from a campaign reporting site, and upon further review, not all of those numbers seemed to add up. That’s it. It’s cut and dry.
We’re not going to take the post down, because it’s more important to leave it up to show that there is a problem with these numbers – and that should be recognized. We’re not going to change it, because we don’t know what the complete, accurate numbers are. What we did do is acknowledge that there appears to be a problem in these calculations.
If that’s not enough for you, we’re sorry to hear that, and we know that some of you just WANT to find a big conspiracy here. But in our view, this is the only responsible way to handle addressing what may be inaccurate information from Political Money Line.
Alva – So if I get this right, you are saying that you are reporting what PML says and therefore you are comfortable leaving incorrect and inaccurate numbers on your site.
Personally, I think that is just plain wrong. It has nothing to do with any conspiracy theories or bias (as I said in an earlier post).
I think you would be better off either correcting or removing the breakdown, since it is clearly wrong.
Granted the discussion of out of state v. in state money in the gov’s race, or any other race in the state is an issue that will come up and the discussion is important. That should stay, along with the discussion of PML.
It is a question of integrity in what ColoradoPols is reporting. I am not aware of reporters standing behind an “as reported by” story when it has been proven wrong.
Why should they take it down when they say right above it that it’s probably not accurate? THAT would really have the ‘coverup’ freaks up in arms.
They’re clearly doing the responsible thing by disclaiming it and leaving it alone. It also means they’re not trying to hide their mistakes. What’s the problem?
This probalby isn’t accurate, but we hear that Representative X was arrested for have carnal relations with a hamster.
Same difference. You can’t disclaim and then report what you know is inaccurate.
you guys are only going to be happy if they just take it down because you’re all beauprez supporters. i completely agree with irene that the only responsible thing to do is address that the facts might be wrong, which they already did above, and then leave it up there. that is exactly what a responsible news organization would do. they would point out where things went wrong. they wouldn’t just sweep it under the rug.
Thanks for at least commenting AA – better late than never.
to use your “CNN is reporting” analogy, news outlets who later find out that CNN was wrong typically take stories down or at least report another angle rather than simply leaving the incorrect information up.
Like Jake and others, my issue with this has more to do with getting facts right than it does how it affects BB (which will be zero). I would feel the same way regardless of which candidate was affected.
As FOB posted earlier, these are the correct numbers for individual contributions from Colorado.
DeGette 66% Colorado
Udall 31% Colorado
Salazar 48% Colorado
Musgrave 15% Colorado
Hefley 60% Colorado
Tancredo 18% Colorado
Beauprez 76% Colorado
There is not “might be wrong.” The earlier post is dead wrong.
I’ll use a different example; Tancredo raised $852,564 from individuals, yet the breakdown that shows a 50/50 split only has $308,687 in its total!!!
These numbers are actually very interesting from a lot of different points of view and are worthy of quite a bit of discussion.
As far as a retraction goes, there is a difference from a newspaper running a retraction the next day (it can’t go out and reclaim the papers) and a website continuing to post incorrect information and hiding behind the “as reported by” excuse.
They know it is wrong, but they are leaving it up there anyway.
I am making a fuss about this not because of BB or anyone else but because fundraising numbers will be a much discussed topic for the next 16 or so months. If this site can’t get it right now, then why should anyone who reads this site trust that they would get it right in the future?
I think that is unfortunate because I actually like this site and think that they are diminishing its reputation by not correcting the record.
For shame, Alva. I’ll be watching your “facts” more closely from now on. Your unwillingness to admit error and make a real attempt to correct the error has put me in a very bad mood.
What the hell are you guys talking about? They admitted the error in the update. It’s clear as day.