January 22, 2010 07:48 PM UTC

Romanoff's Fundraising Expectations Helped By Dismal Norton Q4?

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• by: Colorado Pols

As you know, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet posted his fourth consecutive quarter of $1 million or better in fundraising. In a unexpected development that political observers are still trying to fully understand, GOP (putative) frontrunner Jane Norton managed to raise less than half Bennet’s total–a very clear signal of something not firing right in her campaign.

Obviously Norton needs to retool, and fast–we’ll be watching for numbers from both of her remaining primary opponents, Ken Buck and Tom Wiens, to see if they can stay in it (a much better chance of that now). But the question is, where do these unexpectedly disparate totals leave Bennet’s primary challenger, Andrew Romanoff?

If Norton had topped a million dollars, or at least drawn closer to even with Bennet than south of fifty percent, we think the bar would actually be much higher for Romanoff than it probably is. As it happened, Bennet looks like a superstar, but Romanoff can make a credible argument that performing at least on the level of the GOP’s top candidate is respectable and deserving of consideration. If Romanoff posts a total equal to or better than Norton’s $550,000 in the next few days, he could be in a much better position to fend off attacks on his legitimacy. It wouldn’t be parity with Bennet, of course, but it would be something tangible to hold up and say, “I can compete.” As we’ve said many times, fundraising is not the sole barometer of a campaign’s success but it’s a very important one–a hard number to gauge support, but more importantly reflective of the ability to put together an effective organization.

Of course, if he can’t even match Jane Norton’s universally-acknowledged poor results for the 4th quarter, then everything said in the last couple of weeks in news reprinted around the country–about Romanoff not being ready for a U.S. Senate race–is underscored.