Romanoff Campaign Off to Strong Start After First Quarter

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by: Colorado Pols

This is the face you make when you raise $500k in 2 months.

Democrat Andrew Romanoff is off to blazing start in his bid to unseat Republican Rep. Mike Coffman in CD-6. Even though Romanoff just announced his candidacy in February, he managed to raise more than $500,000 for the fundraising quarter that ended on March 31. And as the Colorado Statesman reports, Romanoff has picked off one of Coffman's key 2012 supporters:

Attorney and Democratic Party power broker Steve Farber, who about this time last year caused a flurry in Colorado political circles by hosting a fundraiser for Republican Congressman Mike Coffman’s reelection in CD 6, has jilted the incumbent and on April 4, co-chaired a big name $1,000 to $5,200 a-person fundraiser for Andrew Romanoff, Coffman’s likely Democratic challenger in 2014.

A registered Democrat, Farber co-hosted last year’s fundraiser for Coffman at the private home of Blair Richardson, along with well known Republicans including Alex Cranberg, Larry Mizel, Patrick Hamill and Mike Shaw, and contributed $2,500 to Coffman’s campaign at the time. U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., was the special guest at the event…

…Farber said he recently told Coffman that he was planning to sit down with Romanoff, with whom he’s always had a good relationship, and see which one of them shared the most similar standings on issues with him. Romanoff easily won out, Farber said.

“There’s a true distinction between Andrew and Coffman,” Farber said without going into details on the record.

Steve Farber

Steve Farber has long been one of the most important figures in Colorado politics because of his ability to raise vast sums of money for candidates and causes. He normally supports Democrats, with some notable exceptions such as his backing of Coffman in 2012. Whether Farber is a "true" ideological Democrat (whatever that might mean) is really irrelevant when it comes to the political meaning behind where he puts his support.

Farber says he chose not to support Democrat Joe Miklosi in 2012 because he had known Coffman for decades and had no connection with Miklosi, and we don't doubt that he is telling the truth here. But Farber is also a smart businessman who understands the benefit of backing the winning horse, and it wasn't hard to tell that Miklosi was a bad candidate running a poor campaign. Miklosi's first two fundraising quarters were awful, while Coffman began 2012 with nearly a million dollars in the bank. It's also important to remember the broader context at the time: Coffman was considered to be the likely Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in 2014 (until he started to regularly shoot himself in the foot with idiotic statements), which also made Coffman the more attractive horse to choose in 2012.

The fact that Farber has ditched Coffman in favor of Romanoff is more important than you might think at first glance. Yes, Romanoff will have Farber's significant fundraising help, which is critical in itself. But Farber's decision to back Romanoff also means that he has little confidence in Coffman's ability to fend-off a much better Democratic opponent in 2014. In essence, Farber is a canary in the dangerous mine that is Coffman's re-election campaign.

9 thoughts on “Romanoff Campaign Off to Strong Start After First Quarter”

Voyageur says:

April 5, 2013 at 2:50 pm

Nice piece, Alva. I think the canary in the mine anology actually works.

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BlueCat says:

April 5, 2013 at 3:41 pm

OK. It's nice to know Andrew and Ken aren't so pure as to eschew the bundling of rich folks. I'm sure none of them will have any expectations based on backing a winning horse and I'm sure their money is much purer than money from citizen's PACs, even those with very worthy goals. But hey, I'm with Voyageur. there is a definite canary in the coal mine quality to this story and it makes me feel a lot better about Andrew's chances. It will be interesting to see how much big national money the Rs counter with as the election gets closer to hang on to one of the few seats in play.

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Davie says:

April 5, 2013 at 6:06 pm

Wow! Good news/Bad news. That really means Romanoff's candidacy is being taken seriously — by all sides.

But that also foretells this could be one of the most expensive ($10mil?) House races ever.

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1. DavidThi808 says:
  
  April 5, 2013 at 6:35 pm
  
  Depends… If next year leans Dem, which it well could, then there could be a lot of seats in play. If that happens they'll abandon Coffman and be fighting to hang on to same safer seats.
  
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  1. Davie says:
    
    April 5, 2013 at 8:27 pm
    
    Picking up a few seats in the House will be great. Honestly, I'm worried about all the Senate seats we have to defend (not Udall's fortunately — I wish other states had the depth (hee, hee) of talent that the Colorado GOP has to offer).
    
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  2. BlueCat says:
    
    April 7, 2013 at 12:13 am
    
    Ummm…David ( It will have to be "David" since the variations on that name are really piling up up around here). Hate to break this to you but the way districts have been gerrymandered there aren't going to be "a lot" of seats in play. Not in 2014. Coffman is in nowhere near a hopeless position so the GOP will be quite willing to pump in the big bucks.
    
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2. BlueCat says:
  
  April 6, 2013 at 5:09 pm
  
  There aren't very many seats that have anything close to a decent chance of swinging so, any way you cut it, CD6 is going to be one of most expensive races in the nation. Dems want to take the majority desperately and the GOP wants to hang on even more desperately for the last two years of the Obama administration. No figure would surprise me in this race. It will take a lot of bundled sugar daddies (and mommies) to win this one without PAC money.
  
  Don't let the fact that Miklosi got so close in the newly drawn district fool you. The GOP is nowhere near letting this one, or any of the truly up for grabs CDs, go without a no holds barred fight.
  
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  1. Davie says:
    
    April 6, 2013 at 8:29 pm
    
    Agreed. I wonder how many times we'll see Obama, Bill and perhaps even Hillary take a swing through CD6?
    
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Igor Shumskiy says:

April 29, 2013 at 3:27 pm

Andrew Romanoff, former Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives, has developed an organization called The Greenhouse Project. The objective of this project is to provide a physical space for local NGO’s with an emphasis in global development to collaborate and utilize pooled resources. The Greenhouse Project will open in the Curtis Park Neighborhood of Denver in June 2013. This project will be one of the first centered around the idea of uniting organizations in a variety of global development fields. Andrew Romanoff will be speaking more about how this project makes a global impact while also contributing to the local community at the 5th Annual Spring Soiree, hosted by one of the Greenhouse organizations, Comunidades Unidas Peru (CU Peru). CU Peru is an interdisciplinary student-led organization that focuses on training local health care workers in the Peruvian Amazon. All proceeds from the event will go towards training community health care workers in the Peruvian Amazon. The event will take place at the Robischon Gallery on Saturday May 4th from 6pm – 9pm. For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit https://www.cuperu.org/5th-annual-spring-soiree

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