PolitickerCO ran an early story this evening on today’s campaign finance reports released by the Shafroth, Polis and Fitz-Gerald campaigns and while there are a few conclusions to be drawn, the main one is obvious: Will Shafroth is hammering Joan Fitz-Gerald. “Hammering” may seem a dubious choice of words since they raised about equally in Q1 ($280K for Will, $260K for Joan; only $160K for Jared) and their cash on hand is about equal (far less for Polis), but then that would be ignoring context.
The context is that Shafroth outraised JFG and now has more cash on hand than JFG while having started this race with roughly zero name recognition and little chance in anybody’s handicapping books of pulling near Ms. Fitz-Gerald. Joan was the prohibitive favorite in this race and popular perception was that Polis was her only competition and only then because of his deep pockets. Common wisdom was that Joan had oodles of chits to call in from her days handing out favors as state senate prez. But the fact that Shafroth outraised JFG and JP in Q1, did it almost entirely on individual donors, and now sits with a roughly $100K lead in the bank says four things: 1- Shafroth is a serious contender and is here to stay; 2- he’ll have plenty of money to buy more name recognition, especially closer to August 12; 3- he’s out-hustling the other two candidates; 4- his campaign is handling its money better than the other two and is therefore probably being better managed.
As far as Polis, his numbers look bad by comparison. He did raise $160K but that’s roughly half of what Will raised and in lieu of an actual election, the ability to pull in money from many corners has to be seen as the best indicator of a candidate’s support. Most observers think Jared will dump loads of his own money in at the last second, but cash without deeper roots will only go so far in a summertime primary where only the really committed bother to vote.
More on the details later as they get parsed. The finance reports are hundreds of pages so it takes a week or so for details to drip out.
The PolitickerCO fundraising story points out at least contradiction to your characterization of the campaigns: Fitz-Gerald received contributions from about 3X as many donors as Shafroth (1500 to 500). This also crunches out to Shafroth’s average contribution being almost 4X larger than Fitz-gerald’s ($627 to $175). By this view, Shafroth’s supporters are fewer and wealthier than Fitz-Gerald’s.
Open secrets says they have the 4/18 data as well. Polis’s self funding and his high proportion of out of state funding are . . . striking? Also note Shafroth leads Fitz-Gerald about 3 : 1 in out of state funding. Speaking as a Fitz-Gerald supporter, the Open Secrets data shows some weakness in both of her opponents campaigns.
Finally, of course Polis & Fitz-Gerald have spent more money than Shafroth. Fitz-Gerald and Polis are actively duking it out in the caucus process, Shafroth is not. Shafroth hasn’t really begun to campaign.
As I said earlier, its shaping up to be an interesting 3 way race.
Sorry about the test above, had a problem with a comment earlier.
Just wanted to point out that Fitz-Gerald had about 3 times as many contributors as Shafroth, and the average Shafroth contribution for the period is 4 times the average Fitz-Gerald (total for quarter/number of contributors = average).
Also of note (via OpenSecrets.org ) Shafroth has considerably higher out of state contributions than Fitz-Gerald. Polis has higher out of state contributions than Shafroth.
No doubt Shafroth has done an impressive job as you observe, coming from obscurity. But Fitz-Gerald has a lot of support, and Polis has more money than Fitz-Gerald or Shafroth. In this year of unprecedented Democratic turn out, the race is up for grabs.
The difference in JFG’s and WS’s number of donors is noteworthy, and as you note, WS relying on out-of-state money is a warning flag for his campaign.
I assume the difference in # of contributors is that JFG’s labor base means a lot of $20 contributions here and there, but that those contributions may not be coming from within CD-2 even if they are close by. Thoughts?