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This is it, folks. The last fundraising numbers we’re going to see before we see the actual, verifiable results from all that fundraising. Fortunately for some candidates and unfortunately for others, things haven’t changed too much since the last time we talked about fundraising in this space. We said then that the lines in the sand had been drawn, and indeed, fundraising numbers have more or less held steady.

Chris Romer

As you’ll recall, Romer announced that he’s raised over $1,000,000 since the start of the campaign, hauling in about $282,000 this month alone. He’s got just about $500,000 on hand. It’s a huge development that you’ve got a candidate with that kind of fundraising in this kind of race. He’s almost raised double what some of his closest competitors have, and he’s easily spent more than a lot of the other candidates have raised. Make no mistake, these numbers all help to ensure that Romer will make it through to the run-off election. If he doesn’t, that will be a game-changing campaign shocker in an otherwise milquetoast race. We know Romer’s on TV and we can assume he’s gearing up for mail. What will really make or break Romer is how hard he and his team are hitting the streets. We have our own doubts about his doorstep manner, but even if he were terrible in walk and knocks, he’s raised enough to give him a huge buffer above the others. Oh yeah, some Democrats recognize his dad for some reason or another. That can’t hurt.

Carol Boigon

Boigon had another good month, raising about $150,000 with $232,000 on hand. As our readers pointed out below, Boigon actually only raised about $50,000, investing another $100,000 of her own money in the campaign. What this says about her fundraising is that she has indeed picked all the low-hanging fruit she can, but she is at least able to self-finance. Funding your own campaign is a bad way to show you can relate to voters and gives the impression of “buying your way into public office,” but it probably won’t hurt that much in this race given the minimal coverage from the media. It worked for Jared Polis, after all,  and we think it may be able to work for Carol if she can prove she’s competitive. Unlike Romer, most analysts don’t seem to think that she’s guaranteed to make it through to the run-off. We agree. But Carol’s fundraising and ability to self finance is good enough that she can target her more direct competitors. What will be difficult for the councilwoman to figure out is how to raise money if she ends up running against Chris and only Chris: she won’t be able to capitalize on that doomed City Council vote, and a lot of her low-hanging fruit has been picked. Regardless, Carol’s got a big enough wallet to have thrown herself $200,000 so far. If she makes it to the run-off, we’re pretty sure she can loan herself even more.

Michael Hancock

Hancock has really solidified his fundraising lately, and it’s already showing. Though he raised just under $140,000 this month, he’s raised more in total than Carol Boigon and now has about $140,000 on hand. We’re surprised. We perceive Boigon as a better fundraiser than Hancock, but he’s certainly got the numbers to prove us wrong. He hasn’t had to invest incredible amounts of his personal funds into the campaign, either. We know he’s spending his money, too: his campaign produced what we think has been the best TV ad in the race thus far and we know he’s preparing himself for a massive field push before ballots start to get returned. His ill-advised vote on pay increases will flesh itself out in the coming days, but Hancock has positioned himself well financially to give it his all…so long as he has managed his burn rate better. In February Hancock spent about as much as he raised, which is a killer when you need every last dollar for TV.

At long last, we’ve updated The Denver Line. We won’t delve into more detail on the other races here so that we can focus on the Mayoral Line and a quick explanation for how we see the race today. This all may change once the new finance reports are made available next week, but here’s our view today:

Chris Romer

Romer is the favorite at this point for two big reasons: Fundraising and name ID. This has been an incredibly quiet race for one of the biggest prizes in Colorado politics, and that gives a huge advantage to the son of a popular former governor (Roy Romer). Whether or not Romer can win a runoff is a different question, but it’s hard to see how he won’t at least make it into the top two in April.

James Mejia

For someone who started his campaign well before any of the other candidates, Mejia should be in a better position than he is. His fundraising has been disappointing, and that’s his biggest problem; Mejia has no built-in name recognition from holding prior office, so he must be able to have a strong paid media presence to have any hope of winning. If Mejia had a poor February raising money, he’ll need a minor miracle to have any real chance at winning.

Carol Boigon

We wouldn’t normally put much stock in a message of “Denver’s first female mayor” (ask Hillary Clinton how much the “first female” thing mattered), but the Mayoral race has been so boring and devoid of interesting story lines that it might actually get some traction. Boigon’s biggest advantage, however, is the fact that she’ll be able to raise or contribute whatever she needs financially — that alone puts her in a great position coming down the stretch.

Michael Hancock

Hancock’s campaign was clearly designed to make him look like the frontrunner from the beginning, but the problem with that approach is that it leaves you with nowhere to go but down. His comments that the Denver Mayor should oversee the school system looked like a bit of a Hail Mary to us, and in a close race it’s going to cost him dearly. Voters may not be happy with the school district, but the idea of putting all control in the hands of one person won’t ease their concerns. The fact that Hancock hasn’t heavily promoted his “Mayoral control” idea tells us that it wasn’t well-received.

Momentum is definitely not on Hancock’s side, but there’s time to fix that. The concern now is whether he’ll be able to afford the kind of TV presence to compete with Romer and Boigon’s money.

Doug Linkhart

Linkhart has not been raising much money and thus suffers the most from the lack of media coverage of the race. Linkhart’s not a bad candidate — he’s just not interesting enough to intrigue voters without paid or earned media support. Unless Linkhart has a couple of aces up his sleeve, we just don’t see how he’s going to be able to get attention once the TV ads begin.

Theresa Spahn

If there was ever a race where a relative nobody had a chance to pull off the upset, this is it. If she can go up on TV with a big buy, then anything goes…but we kind of doubt that’s going to happen. Her campaign touts that she “is on the list of the Top 6 Mayoral fundraisers,” which would be cool if there was a prize for sixth place.