July 13, 2005 08:00 AM UTC

Fundraising Rumors Trickling In

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• by: Colorado Pols

We won’t know until Friday how much money Colorado candidates raised in Q2, but rumors are now starting to surface. We hear that Democrat Bill Ritter will report $150,000 raised, which is an interesting figure for him.

$150k doesn’t make Ritter a big player yet, but it’s enough to keep him breathing and enough for him to still be a thorn in Democrat Rutt Bridges’ side.

When you consider that Republicans Bob Beauprez and Marc Holtzman are both expected to report more than $300k raised, Ritter’s $150k – if that report is true – doesn’t look like much. But considered in another light, $150k for Ritter really isn’t bad. He didn’t announce his candidacy until early May, so he lost a month of fundraising time. Ritter is also clearly candidate number four among Bridges, Beauprez, and Holtzman, but $150k shows that he isn’t a distant fourth.

Still, Ritter will need to dramatically increase his fundraising in the next 2-3 reporting periods because he can’t afford (no pun intended) to continue at this rate. Ritter can’t finish 2005 with less than $500k raised and expect to still be in the game once things really start heating up; come January, he’ll have to start spending a lot of coin on staff, an office, etc.

The big comparison will be with Bridges when his numbers are released. Bridges can self-fund to an extent, so his fundraising reflects more about his support than it does his financial position. But if Bridges and Ritter are close in Friday’s report, Democrats are going to have a few raised eyebrows.