September 01, 2020 01:44 PM UTC

Colorado and Arizona are Looking Blue

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• by: Colorado Pols

The re-election campaign for President Trump seems to be having trouble raising more money than it spends these days. As The Associated Press reported, Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden is outspending Trump by a 10-to-1 margin on political advertising.

The Trump campaign made it known on Monday that it is preparing to go on TV with ads in a handful of states — which says plenty about how the campaign is feeling about 2020. As NBC News explains:

The Trump campaign is going on the air this week with TV ad buys in five key states: Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Minnesota, senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters on Monday, returning to the airwaves in battleground states it pulled out of during the GOP convention.

All but Minnesota are seen as essential to Trump’s path to re-election as he trails Democrat Joe Biden nationally and in most battleground state polls.

You may have noticed that Colorado is not included on that list. This isn’t a huge surprise — Colorado has appeared to be out of reach for Trump for some time now — but it’s still interesting to see that the Trump campaign isn’t even feinting in our direction anymore.

It’s also worth noting that Arizona doesn’t appear on this new ad buy, but Georgia remains in the mix; that’s not good news for Trump, who shouldn’t have to worry about a traditionally-red state like Georgia but should be more competitive in traditionally-red Arizona. It would appear that these 6-week-old numbers from Morning Consult are still fairly accurate:

None of this is welcome news for Trump or Senate Republicans, who desperately need somebody on the right to invest more coin in saving Arizona Sen. Martha McSally and Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner. As we wrote in early August, Senate Republicans aren’t investing heavily in Colorado to help Gardner, who has steadily trailed Democrat John Hickenlooper in the polls for many months. Republicans also seem to be backing away from Arizona, where McSally is behind Democrat Mark Kelly in both the polls and in fundraising.

If the Trump campaign isn’t going to play much in either Arizona or Colorado, then McSally and Gardner are basically on their own now. Trump was already an albatross for both Senators, but now he’s an albatross that isn’t even spending money to excite the base.

This could also be a major factor in Colorado’s most competitive congressional district in 2020: CO-3. Like Gardner, Republican Lauren “Q*Bert” Boebert has tied herself firmly to Trump; unlike Gardner, Boebert doesn’t have many millions of dollars to spend on advertising and really needs a national effort to keep Trump supporters engaged in Colorado.