Republican Rep. Scott Tipton continues to underwhelm in his bid to win re-election in CD-3. According to his fundraising report for Q4 filed late yesterday, Tipton raised $176,532 in the last three months of 2011. That’s a pretty weak quarter for a targeted incumbent, but what’s even stranger is that Tipton spent $435 more than he raised ($176,967 in expenditures for Q4). Tipton’s campaign spent $11,388 on media production, which we assume is for future TV ads, but the bulk of his money was spent on fundraising, via consultants and events. You don’t need to be handy with an abacus to know that you’re not getting a good investment when you spend more than you earn on a service.
Democrat Sal Pace, on the other hand, outraised Tipton in Q4 ($206,482) and managed his money much better, with only $77,678 in expenditures.
All told, Tipton begins 2012 with a total cash-on-hand amount of $510,384. Pace starts the year with $341,430 in the bank.
Tipton has been a bit of a mess in his first year in Congress, sticking his foot in his mouth on several occasions. And while recent polling shows that he holds an early lead over Pace, Tipton is not popular in CD-3. Maybe Tipton will wake up in Q1 and post numbers that show national Republicans that he is truly prepared to fight for his seat; if he doesn’t change the momentum in this race soon, the NRCC may decide that they don’t want to expend a lot of resources helping a candidate who isn’t helping himself.
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National GOP pledges to help Tipton hold seat according to the Chieftain’s Peter Roper in today’s paper.
http://www.chieftain.com/news/…
I don’t know long the NRCC will stick with Tipton, but I would bet longer than you might think.
Tipton has until April. If his fundraising is still underwhelming after Q1, the NRCC will have no choice but to reallocate resources.
Also, we never pay attention to what the NRCC or DCCC say publicly. What else are they going to say? They’re not going to admit that they aren’t helping Tipton, even if it’s true. Even when they pull money out of a race, like the DCCC did with Betsy Markey in 2010, they’ll never admit to withdrawing support.
It’s one thing to stop supporting a candidate. It’s another thing entirely to publicly kill their campaign — there’s no reason to ever do that.
That might explain his problems with fundraising.
My guess is a lot of those bills were cans kicked down the road from the 3rd quarter.
Of course they are going to publicly back him for as long as possible, but I bet the NRCC has been tanning his hide over the past few weeks.
But Tipton’s definitely put himself in the position where he could face this fall what Musgrave did in 2008: all ads and financial support pulled right in the thick of the fight.
from his campaign in ’10