HD-29 Race Back on Statesman's Watch List

Although we agree that Ramirez’s stronger-than-usual fundraising boosted his chances this month, re-election is probably still out of reach for the Republican. No matter how stridently Ramirez “vows that he’s in it to win it,” the fact remains that there are fewer five weeks left in this election. While the late-game fundraising injection certainly helped Ramirez’s campaign, it’s too little and too late to really move the needle in his favor. Put simply, Ramirez needed that money as a lifeline to stay relevant in the race at all, but he still lags far behind Kraft-Tharp with little chance of catching up before ballots go out in the next few weeks.

Let’s look back to 2010.  Robert Ramirez raised a grand total of $38,515. His former opponent doubled his fundraising with $78,207 that year.  In addition, Ramirez raised $14,000 from the beginning of October on last time. That means he only had $24,000 to run the majority of the previous campaign.  He has raised essentially 3 times as much as that already, which is more than enough to run an effective campaign.

Obviously, fundraising played a very minute role last time. It likely will again this time. It’s kind of scary, isn’t it, that money doesn’t have nearly the effect (positive or negative) as JeffCo Pols would like us to believe. In fact, take the money metric out, and there’s no proof that Robert Ramirez is behind in the race at all.

Ernest Luning realized that the likelihood that Rep. Robert Ramirez will be reelected is high, and he had to perform a mea culpa now to avoid embarrassment in November.  The opportunity is still there for JeffCo Pols to do the same.