No Surprises in Final Senate Fundraising Report Before Primary

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by: Colorado Pols

Ernest Luning of the Colorado Statesman reports on the final pre-Primary fundraising totals for the five Republicans running for U.S. Senate. If you’ve been watching this race at all for the last couple of months, you probably won’t be shocked to see the fundraising updates:

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet raised $1.65 million — more than 10 times as much as any of the Republicans hoping to unseat him — in the most recent reporting period, pre-primary finance reports show, although GOP candidate Jack Graham wrote his campaign a check for $500,000, bringing his self-funding total to $1.5 million.

With $5.7 million in the bank, the Democrat had more than six times the cash on hand of the nearest Republican. Reports covered the second fundraising quarter up until the June 8 reporting deadline ahead of Colorado’s primary.

Via Ernest Luning of the Colorado Statesman

As you can see from the graphic at right, none of the Republican candidates are remotely close to collecting the kind of cash that incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Denver) has continued to put together.

If we focus only on the Republican candidates, pre-Primary fundraising numbers are following the same general trend that we’ve seen throughout 2016. The only exception was foreseeable: Darryl Glenn is finally raising some decent money ($109k) in the first fundraising period since he captured top-line at the State Republican Convention in April.

A few other noteworthy items…Former Colorado State University Athletic Director Jack Graham loaned his campaign another $500k, and Jon Keyser inexplicably contributed another $50,000 to his own campaign. Keyser’s contribution seems particularly pointless; he needed a lot more money than this to catch his Republican rivals with any sort of significant advertising buy.

Here are the cash-on-hand totals for the five Republicans with one week to go in the Primary:

Jack Graham: $882,800
Robert Blaha: $278,177
Jon Keyser: $173,484
Darryl Glenn: $50,198
Ryan Frazier: $19,850

8 thoughts on “No Surprises in Final Senate Fundraising Report Before Primary”

James Dodd says:

June 22, 2016 at 9:06 am

Whenever you post this kind of stuff. I can't help but thiink that ColoPols ensdorses the concept that "Money is Speech."

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1. BlueCat says:
  
  June 22, 2016 at 11:13 am
  
  Really? Makes me think ColPols just recognizes objective reality
  
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  1. Duke Cox says:
    
    June 22, 2016 at 11:18 am
    
    the concept that "Money is Speech."
    
    just recognizes objective reality
    
    the two are mutually exclusive?
    
    …nope…actually, together they make a good sentence.
    
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    1. BlueCat says:
      
      June 22, 2016 at 11:48 am
      
      As long as it is what it is, we can't be bringin' butter knives to gun fights. That's all I'm sayin'.
      
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2. Phoenix Rising says:
  
  June 22, 2016 at 11:23 am
  
  Money is a proxy for support in this case – plus or minus.
  
  See: the Sanders campaign's massive cash inflow through most of the primary season.
  
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  1. Duke Cox says:
    
    June 22, 2016 at 11:30 am
    
    Money is a proxy for support in this case – plus or minus.
    
    Once upon a time, as you know PR, there was such a thing as losing an election because of the perception that you were "buying" it. Jack Eckerd lost in Florida in 1970/1972 (somewhere around there)…for that reason
    
    That, of course, is ancient history…..
    
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    1. BlueCat says:
      
      June 22, 2016 at 2:37 pm
      
      It demonstrates the strength of a candidate's support, whether from powerful moneyed interests or when lots of it is coming from many people in small contributions, demonstrating numbers of supporters.
      
      That's why the extremely rich, no matter how many checks they can write themselves, rarely are successful in buying their way, for themselves or their puppets, to the highest offices. See the serial failed attempts with different party designations of billionaire former NYC Mayor Bloomberg to reach higher. See the failure of the Kochs to buy a victory for their preferred candidate over Obama. Being very rich never works for a third party attempt. See Ross Perot.
      
      Even money isn't just about money. So far we've never had a billionaire President.
      
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davebarnes says:

June 22, 2016 at 9:58 am

I voted for the guy in last place. Money is not everything.

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