August 02, 2022 12:59 PM UTC

Tina Peters Improves Fundraising Totals AFTER Losing

• 7 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Marianne Goodland of the publication formerly known as the Colorado Statesman reports on a very weird fundraising story involving Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters, who was soundly defeated on June 28th in her bid to be the Republican nominee for Secretary of State:

Campaign finance reports show embattled Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters has raised more than $519,000 since June 23, nearly all of which flooded into her campaign coffers a month after she was defeated in the Republican primary for Colorado Secretary of State. [Pols emphasis]

According to campaign finance reports filed Monday night, nearly $504,000 of the total $519,000 came in during a seven-day period between July 21 and July 27.

Out of 5,612 reported contributions, all but some 200 came in well after the June 28 primary. About 21% of those contributions came from Colorado residents, and more than a dozen appear to conflict with Colorado’s campaign finance rules.

We noted last week that Peters had raised more than $250,000 in order to pay for a doomed recount in the SOS race. That recount is currently underway and expected to be completed on Thursday. Peters has repeatedly asked that any recount be conducted by a hand count, but state law and election rules — implemented under former Republican SOS Scott Gessler — require that recounts can only be done via existing machines.

Historically, recounts only find — at best — that tens of votes were inaccurately counted; Peters needs the recount to change about 89,000 votes from winner Pam Anderson. Needless to say, this ain’t happening.

The more interesting part of this story now is the amount of money that Peters continues to raise for a dead campaign. Peters’ campaign for SOS has now raised a total of $733,135, which means that 70% of all of the money collected this cycle has come AFTER SHE LOST THE PRIMARY ELECTION.

We can’t say for sure that something like this has ever happened before in Colorado…but if it has, we don’t recall any of the details. As you can see from the chart above, Peters is crushing the other statewide Republican candidates in fundraising since June 23 even though her name won’t appear on the November ballot.

The major difference here is that Peters is getting fundraising help from acolytes of Steve Bannon, who have been duped into believing that she has a chance to see the Primary Election results overturned after a completed recount. Had Peters been able to tap into this fundraising source ahead of the June 28th Primary, she might have been able to beat Anderson the first time; if nothing else, Peters would have certainly had more than the $230,000 that she managed to raise on her own.

The moral of this story, other than “never give money to Tina Peters for any reason,” is that it is always better for candidates to raise money before Election Day.