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 Pacedid 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.
Lynn Bartels at the Denver paper is reporting that Democratic Senators Brandon Shaffer and John Morse are both considering running in CD-6, where Joe Miklosi and some dude named Perry Haney are already seeking the Democratic nomination.
We're not terribly surprised to read this, as we have heard rumors for awhile that Shaffer may ultimately look to CD-6 and abandon what most observers believe to be an unwinnable race in CD-4. We're not sure where Morse really fits into this discussion, but we'd guess he's just throwing his name out there for the chattering class more than anything serious.
While Miklosi has pulled in a lot of endorsements from Democrats, he is not raising the kind of money that will get him on national target lists and lead to the really big funding a Democrat would need to beat Republican Rep. Mike Coffman. The incumbent Coffman raised $415,000 in Q4 and is now sitting on a million-dollar warchest.
Miklosi raised just $130,000 in his first quarter of fundraising, a paltry sum for a top challenger in one of the more statistically competitive districts in the country (the benchmark is closer to $200,000 per quarter, but top-tier candidates should be closer to $250k). Campaign finance reports from Q4 should be available anytime now, and the fact that Miklosi has not proactively announced his fundraising totals suggests that he did not do much better in his second three months.
Neither Miklosi nor Shaffer is particularly well-known in the new boundaries of CD-6, so there would be little built-in disadvantage for Shaffer to move his sights to the new district. Shaffer has, however, shown a better capacity for fundraising. And let's face it, folks: as much as anyone wants to complain about it, money matters a lot. It doesn't just matter because you need it to reach voters -- it is a show of support in and of itself. If Miklosi isn't raising it, then he cannot -- cannot -- beat Coffman in November. With a district this favorable for taking out a Republican incumbent, Democrats can't, and shouldn't, give a challenger the benefit of the doubt.
All this might be a moot discussion if it comes out in the next 24 hours that Miklosi really raked in the cash recently. Given the timing of this news, however, we're guessing that won't happen.
According to Allison Sherry at the Denver newspaper, Rep. Cory Gardner's Chief of Staff, Chris Hansen, is taking a leave of absence from the office in order to run Rep. Mike Coffman's re-election campaign in CD-6.
Hansen managed Gardner's 2010 campaign, and his move to oversee the Coffman campaign says a lot about both CD-4 and CD-6. Gardner is obviously not terribly worried about his re-election chances against Democrat Brandon Shaffer, while Coffman is rightly concerned about his new district.
We've mentioned before the bad timing on the part of Rep. Mike Coffman, who announced that he was the Colorado Chair of the Rick Perry for President campaign just as Perry was beginning to crater.
Coffman has been conspicuously quiet about Perry ever since, and as The Colorado Independent reports, he hasn't said anything since Perry's 5th place finish in Iowa, either:
The chair of the Perry campaign in Colorado, U.S. 6th District Congressman Mike Coffman, has yet to comment on the Perry loss, the plan going forward, or on the meaning for Colorado Republicans of last night's historic Mitt Romney-Rick Santorum caucus-race photo-finish.
Calls to Coffman's 2012 campaign staffers went unanswered today. Coffman is running for reelection against Democrat Joe Miklosi in a formerly safe Republican district remade this year as a tossup, equally divided among Republican, independent and Democratic voters.
Perry and his Super-Pac spent about $6 million in Iowa, or about $500 per vote. After initially saying he would return to Texas to "reassess" his campaign, Perry now appears to be moving on to compete in South Carolina.
We like to spread out our end-of-year retrospectives so that 2012 gets a little reflection time. It is with that in mind that we present the awards for Colorado's Top Politico (and Worst Politico for 2011, as well a look at who had a good and bad year in the last full year of human existence.
The Denver newspaper is reporting that Democrat Andrew Romanoff has decided not to run for Congress in the newly-redistricted CD-6.
We discussed yesterday that Romanoff didn't have too long to decide about whether or not he would challenge Joe Miklosi for the Democratic nomination and the right to challenge incumbent Rep. Mike Coffman. Romanoff's entry into the race may have forced Miklosi to the sidelines rather than face a primary against the much better-known former House Speaker, but the longer he waited to make a decision on running, the more he risked further alienating Democrats who were not pleased with his challenge to Sen. Michael Bennet in 2010. Romanoff's consideration of the race certainly didn't help Miklosi's ongoing fundraising efforts, and had he waited until, say, mid-January to make a decision and still opted against running, he would have severely hampered Miklosi's bid to take out Coffman.
While there may be a few more names floated on the Democratic side for CD-6, we would expect that Miklosi will go unchallenged for the nomination at this point.
Texas Governor Rick Perry made an all-time flub in last night's GOP Presidential debate, which you can view here. His inability to recall one of the three federal agencies that he himself has pledged to disband if elected President (the answer to his own question was "Department of Energy") was the most egregious example yet of his fatal flaw as a candidate.
Given his previous struggles, the question must then follow: is this the end?
At least one top Perry fundraiser said it was indeed. "Perry campaign is over. Time for him to go home and refocus on being governor of Texas," the fundraiser said. "Really unfortunate. His policies are a solid roadmap for the economy. But, clearly he can't articulate them in a coherent way."
Tweeted GOP strategist Tony Fratto: "Perry can end his campaign right now."...
...people simply need to have faith that a candidate has the smarts and the convictions to be president, and the way they present themselves matters immensely. Perry's flub just completed the picture of a guy who isn't ready for primetime, can't enunciate his platform and folds under pressure. Those aren't qualities people want in a president.
You quite simply don't see moments like that from candidates that are presidential material. A gaffe is a gaffe, but this was a GAFFE.
We wrote on Sunday that Mitt Romney's campaign was doing its best to stick a fork in Perry, so it certainly won't help that Perry is making their job so easy. Perry's faceplant is also a problem for several high-profile Colorado Republicans, particularly Rep. Mike Coffman, who just one week ago was announced as Perry's Colorado Campaign Chairman.
As Lynn Bartelsreported in her blog at the Denver newspaper, Rep. Mike Coffman raised more than $800,000 for the NRCC thanks to a visit from House Speaker "Orange" John Boehner.
Coffman's fundraising could be a big problem for Democratic challenger Joe Miklosi, who scraped together just $130,000 in the third quarter reporting period. Miklosi has about $96,000 cash on hand, compared to $602,000 for Coffman -- and that was before his take (whatever it is) of the Boehner event last weekend.
Miklosi's hopes at defeating Coffman hinge on redistricting that would make CD-6 more competitive, but ironically, that same redistricting could also create a competitive Democratic primary. Miklosi's fairly weak fundraising numbers, coupled with Coffman's strong fundraising, will likely have Democrats on the lookout for another candidate should CD-6 end up in a map with Adams County and Aurora, rather than South Jefferson and Douglas Counties.
(Seriously -- is Mike Coffman tryingto lose his seat? Or is he just hoping to make sure he can never win a statewide race again? - promoted by Colorado Pols)
Update: Politico's David Catanese posts Coffman's Ponzi-scheme comment and reports:
Even as recent as today, Democrats are attempting to link GOP candidates to Perry's Social Security position, but it appears some are willing to openly embrace it without prodding.
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On a Denver radio program, "Kelley and Company" Wed., Rep. Mike Coffman called Social Security a Ponzi scheme and aligned himself with Gov. Rick Perry over Mitt Romney and other candidates in the race to be the GOP presidential nominee.
That's news, if you ask me, especially the Ponzi scheme part, but it has yet to be picked up by other media outlets. Social Security is a hot topic, being the third rail of politics and all, but journalists could spice up this angle by interviewing Ponzi scheme experts, like Bernie Madoff. (Maybe not him, but his ilk.) Do they think Social Security is a Ponzi scheme?
Here's what Coffman told Steve Kelley, host of "Kelley and Company," on KNUS-710 AM:
I am obviously going to support whoever the nominee is. But I have to admit to you philosophically I am closer to Perry. Obviously, I hope he gets better on the debate stuff. I think he did good. I think he did better on Social Security. I think obviously it is a Ponzi scheme, but he has to say he is going to fix it. And he did that in the last debate where he didn't do that in the first debate. Now I think that was positive. [BigMedia emphasis]
Most of you probably don't remember deep gouges in vinyl musical records. The scratch would cause an infinite and irritating repetition. With the exception of rattling sabers towards the Chinese regarding rare earth, he rarely misses an opportunity to remind us of his Olympian heroism in a month long ground war. That he came away with only a Combat Action Ribbon, well I am about to cross a line.......MC
Definition of short on substance.
Coffman:
"I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran........................................................................."
"Democrats today proposed dramatic changes to Colorado's congressional boundaries, an effort they said is aimed at making districts more competitive.
In other words, Republican Mike Coffman will have a fight on his hands.
Coffman said he'd leave it up to the attorneys to argue the merits of their maps.
"Whatever happens, I'm a Marine Corps combat veteran and I look forward to running a tough race in whatever congressional district I'm in," he said."
