Markey rakes in cash and good press

Freshman U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey raised a record-breaking ton of cash this quarter for her re-election in 2010.

And despite announcing his CD 4 candidacy to oppose her mere months after she was elected, University of Colorado Board of Regents Vice Chair Tom Lucero, a Republican, has been relatively invisible — at least when he wasn’t ducking impropriety charges on the stand in the Ward Churchill witch hunt trial. Lucero’s fund raising, like his record of experience, will surely be no match for Markey’s.

According to a Markey press release, the Fort Collins Democrat drew cash from an expanding bipartisan base in the 4th District:

Today Congresswoman Betsy Markey announced that she has raised more than $340,000 in the first quarter of 2009. Markey’s total is the highest amount ever raised by a freshman representative for the first quarter in Colorado history.

[…]

Markey’s fundraising numbers represent support from nearly 600 individual donors-Republicans, Democrats, and Independents-from across the 4th congressional district. Over 75% of the campaign’s contributions came from donors inside Colorado.

Markey has already established a voting record of note. She seems either refreshingly non-ideological or extremely savvy or both. She has already voted for guns and against the Obama budget, for example. Newspapers are writing about her record, and she’s been making news for weeks for supporting rancher property rights against the Army’s plan to gulp up land in Pinon Canyon.

Contrast that with Lucero’s version of glib on the stand at the Churchill trial:

Lucero testified … that he never told then-CU President Betsy Hoffman — at the height of the controversy over Ward Churchill’s 9-11 essay — that he wanted the professor fired…

He said he actually hoped Churchill wouldn’t be fired so he could continue using the ethnic studies professor as a “poster boy” for campus reforms he favored, including bringing more conservative faculty members to universities and overhauling the system of tenure.

So the first quarter of the long race goes to Democratic incumbent Markey by leaps and bounds.

Also a note: What happened to the YouTube of Markey standing by the fence at Pinon Canyon and making assurances about fighting for the land? It’s gone from her government site. …

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