July 12, 2005 08:00 AM UTC

Tipton Breaks the Century Mark

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• by: Colorado Pols

First off, let us apologize for being a little slow on the uptake lately while we’ve been focusing our attentions on building this new site. With that out of the way…

The Cortez Journal first reported on Saturday that Republican Scott Tipton, candidate for congress in CD-3 against incumbent Democrat John Salazar, broke $100,000 raised in the second quarter of the year.

Tipton filed $102,035 for Q2, which is an impressive number given that most of the focus in Colorado congressional races is elsewhere this early in the game (namely in CD-7 and CD-4). Red Hawk discussed the rumors surrounding Tipton’s fundraising last week. The official word comes from The Journal:

The $100,000 figure was a barometer set by some national Republicans in Washington, D.C. It was suggested to Tipton that if he could reach that target it would help members of the GOP brass potentially identify him as the 2006 nominee.

“It shows them I can raise some money,” Tipton said.

Some of you like to accuse Colorado Pols of being overly fascinated with fundraising, but the reason we pay so much attention to fundraising this early in the game is for the exact reason mentioned above. Early fundraising is a barometer for the bigger players to see which candidates they’ll come out and play for; it doesn’t mean you’re going to win in November, but it does mean that the big donors and supporters will be more willing to play along.

Conversely, slow early fundraising can be a death blow to candidates facing a primary and general election. Mike Miles, the Democratic Senate candidate in 2004, is a good case in point; the big players didn’t pay attention to him because he showed early on that he couldn’t raise enough money himself to give the impression that he was a competitive candidate. You can hate the game, but that’s how it’s played.

Getting back to Tipton, breaking $100k this early in the race should help him keep out any further primary challengers, and it will certainly pique the interest of national players looking to see if it is worth spending big to go after John Salazar.