July 15, 2009 11:34 PM UTC

Paging Mr. Diggs Brown: You're Getting Screwed Back Home

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• by: Colorado Pols

We’ve said before in this space that Fort Collins City Councilman and Special Forces Soldier/Colorado National Guardsman Diggs Brown could be a very strong candidate in CD-4 under the right circumstances. A Republican with a cool-sounding military background and a base in the district’s largest population center could, in theory, be a tough guy to beat.

But unfortunately for ol’ Diggs, he seems to be getting screwed right and left while he’s away on National Guard duty. The infamous (and not in a good way) Ft. Collins GOP operative Andrew Boucher is running the Draft Diggs effort, and he’s quite literally spending more money than he’s raising.

The Draft Diggs effort has raised an impressive $52,710 in two quarters of work, which is a strong amount for a candidate who isn’t even in the country. But that’s only part of the story, because the campaign has also spent more than $43,000 already, leaving just $9,558 cash on hand.

You read that right — Boucher and his Draft Diggs friends have spent $43,000 on a campaign that doesn’t even have its candidate in the damn state. Boucher paid himself $7,500 last quarter, and two other people (Andy Nickel and Blaine Gallup) were on the payroll as staffers. What, exactly, are they staffing? Most campaigns don’t have anybody on staff this far out from Election Day, let alone three people, because the idea is to save as much money as possible for television.

And while there’s nothing wrong with taking a salary to do fundraising, how in good conscience could you be spending more money in Q2 ($28,484) than you raised ($23,470)? Boucher might say that they need to spend more money to keep Brown visible since he’s not in Colorado, but that’s horseshit — no average voter is paying attention to this race now anyway. Saving money for television ads is Campaigning 101 for races like this. There’s no excuse. None.

We know one thing: Of all the candidates in Colorado running in 2010, Diggs Brown is the last one we’d want to screw with. We wouldn’t be pissing away money for a guy who could kill us with his pinkie.