December 15, 2017 08:28 AM UTC

Spinning It Hard With Donna Lynne

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• by: Colorado Pols

A fundraising email sent this week from Democratic gubernatorial candidate Donna Lynne’s campaign manager Ethan Susseles extracted some chuckles from political insiders, but you wouldn’t know why at first glance from the content:

I couldn’t wait to get you this really important update on the state of our campaign:

The latest PPP poll on the Colorado governor’s race has a Democrat beating the leading Republican frontrunner in next year’s election — now, we have to keep this momentum going.

Will you chip in $5 and help us make sure that we’re getting Donna’s message of progress out to all voters so we can win in this primary and next November?

And yes, all of that’s technically true! But curiously, there’s no link to the poll in question in this fundraising email, even though it’s publicly available. Although the reason the Lynne campaign didn’t include a link could be plain to see from…well, the poll’s results:

Early Republican primary polling has shown that Tom Tancredo is the front runner to be his party’s candidate for Governor, but he trails 4 prospective Democratic opponents by anywhere from 4 to 8 points. Jared Polis does the best of the Democrats with a 46/38 advantage, followed by Cary Kennedy who leads 45/38, Donna Lynne who leads 43/38, and Mike Johnston who leads 43/39.

The poll in fact shows Lynne coming in second-worst among the four principal Democratic gubernatorial candidates in a head-to-head matchup against presumed GOP frontrunner Tom Tancredo. She’d be tied with last-place Mike Johnston if, for whatever statistically insignificant reason, Johnston hadn’t moved undecided voters a point toward Tancredo.

Yes, the poll looks good for Democrats. But it doesn’t look particularly good for Donna Lynne.

Once you know that, the “momentum” behind this appeal dissipates pretty quickly.