June 18, 2012 11:13 PM UTC

Miklosi's $175,000--The Bare Minimum

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: To clarify, these numbers do not reflect a whole quarter of fundraising for either Rep. Joe Miklosi or Mike Coffman. These are pre-primary period reporting numbers from April 1-June 6, with most but not all of the second quarter included. There are still eleven days left in the second quarter, so both Miklosi’s and Coffman’s Q2 totals will presumably be greater.

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Brian, for example, has 37 pieces of flair.

Democratic CD-6 candidate state Rep. Joe Miklosi reports $175,000 raised in the pre-primary April 1-June 6 period based on numbers now available on the Federal Election Commission’s website. Once again, Miklosi was significantly outraised by GOP incumbent Rep. Mike Coffman, who raised some $325,000. Miklosi reports $394,000 total cash on hand, Coffman over $1.5 million.

We’ll start by stating the obvious, Miklosi needs to raise more than this to convince outside observers that he is a serious contender for Coffman’s seat (not to mention that he can’t really compete with Coffman for paid media at this rate of fundraising). We’ve set a floor of $200,000 per quarter for Miklosi in previous commentary, with the expressed opinion that he would need to show consecutively improving totals to really make backers feel comfortable.

But $175,000 in this pre-primary report is not a total faceplant–call it “the bare minimum,” preventing Miklosi from being written off if not anything to write home about. This is enough for him to stay in the race; he’s not expected to outraise Coffman, and if he invests his resources smartly, doesn’t need to to in order to win the election in this newly competitive district. But he needs more than this, and it’s striking that he didn’t raise more money even with all of the free media attention the race received from Coffman’s bungling.

Miklosi’s campaign still needs to kick the fundraising into higher gear, right now–because nobody wants to be known as the one “who only does the bare minimum.”