February 01, 2012 12:51 AM UTC

Miklosi Lays a Fundraising Egg; Haney Lays a Loan

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: The Miklosi campaign issued a rather silly press release this afternoon. Full release after the jump, but here’s the opening sentence:

In a sign of growing momentum, the Joe Miklosi For Congress campaign announced it has $173,000 cash on hand and more than 1,300 grass roots supporters who have already contributed to the campaign.

It’s a very good idea to point out the number of individual donors that Miklosi received in Q4 — that’s always the best approach when you can’t point to impressive totals. But you shouldn’t point out a weak cash-on-hand number, and it does more harm than good to say something like “In a sign of growing momentum…”  

Remember, a press release is not something sent to the general public — the people who receive press releases are generally folks who have some idea of what is going on in the race, and when you try too hard to spin horrible news in the other direction, you just end up looking silly.

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Earlier this month Republican Rep. Mike Coffman announced that his campaign had raised $415,000 in the final quarter of 2011. When Democrat Joe Miklosi never sent out a news release discussing his Q4 fundraising numbers, it was a pretty safe assumption that the figures weren’t going to be good.

Today is the deadline for Congressional candidates to file their end-of-2011 reports, and FEC reports show that Miklosi raised a meager $104,451 in Q4. Miklosi raised just $130,000 in his first fundraising quarter, and we’ve said since then that it was absolutely vital for his campaign to have a much stronger Q4. Altogether Miklosi now has $173,700 in cash on hand, significantly less than Coffman’s warchest of $961,374.

Unfortunately for Miklosi, there’s no positive spin that can help him at this point. In order for him to be a top-tier contender that receives the kind of national help and attention needed to defeat Coffman, Miklosi had to be raising at least $200k per quarter by now (which is what Sal Pace did in Q4, and why Pace is on the top of the DCCC’s takeover list). Numbers this low will almost certainly cripple future fundraising, because nobody wants to write a big check to someone who doesn’t look like they can win; money begets money in politics, and Miklosi doesn’t have the warchest to convince big donors to get on the bandwagon. Miklosi’s poor Q4 will also embolden Senate President Brandon Shaffer to make the jump from running in CD-4, where he would almost certainly lose to incumbent Rep. Cory Gardner. Shaffer didn’t have a great Q4, either, but he has shown that he can be a better fundraiser than Miklosi by bringing in nearly $300,000 — a race that is much less plausible for Democrats to win than CD-6.

There are probably a lot of factors contributing to Miklosi’s weak fundraising numbers overall, but when you do this poorly it usually means you didn’t have the necessary connections to put a big-time campaign in place to begin with. We can’t fault Miklosi for trying, but his campaign is all but over now.

The other Democrat currently running in CD-6, unknown chiropractor Perry Haney, raised just $16,025 in Q4 but loaned his campaign $370,000. According to the FEC, Haney now has $684,215 cash on hand — nearly all of it from his own wallet.

 

MIKLOSI CAMPAIGN BOLSTERED WITH STRONG CASH ON HAND AND 1,300 SUPPORTERS GOING INTO2012 ELECTION

GREENWOOD VILLAGE, COLORADO – JANUARY 31, 2012 — In a sign of growing momentum, the Joe Miklosi For Congress campaign announced it has $173,000 cash on hand and more than 1,300 grass roots supporters who have already contributed to the campaign.

“Grassroots donors have been, and remain, a strong source of support for our campaign,” said Joe Miklosi, candidate for Colorado’s 6th Congressional District. “Our supporters didn’t get involved because of lines on a map or numbers in a poll. We are committed to idea that we can and should be working together to reignite the American Dream and restore job growth.”

The campaign reported raising $104,000 in for the 4th quarter despite the eleventh-hour finalization of the congressional map, for a total of $230,000 since the launch of the campaign with a large majority of donations coming online.

The campaign also announced this week the addition of Joe Livoti as Finance Director. Mr. Livoti, a veteran fundraiser who worked on Congressional and statewide races around the country, was referred to the campaign by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).