Editors note: This is the Journals weekly roundup of campaign news.
U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, turned around his lagging fundraising numbers and beat his opponent, state Rep. Sal Pace, D-Pueblo, by nearly $100,000 in the first quarter of the year.
Pace, though, also had a strong quarter and set a record for a challenger at this point in the campaign.
Both men are campaigning for the congressional seat that covers most of the Western Slope, San Luis Valley and Pueblo.
Official reports are not yet available, but Tiptons campaign said he raised approximately $378,000.
Paces campaign, in a news release, said the Democrat raised more than $280,000, with 90 percent of the contributions coming from Coloradans.
Our fundraising shows that people are fed up with the partisan politics that have gridlocked Washington and our message of commonsense representation is spreading across the district, Pace said in a news release.
In the last quarter of 2011, Pace had beaten Tipton in the cash race, $208,000 to $181,000.
Strong numbers for Obama: President Barack Obama surged to a wide lead over Republican Mitt Romney in a poll of Colorado voters released last week.
Obama was beating Romney 53 percent to 40 percent, but the poll was taken just before Rick Santorum dropped out of the race and effectively ended what had been a bruising GOP primary for Romney.
Colorado flipped to the Democratic column in 2008 and it doesnt look like its going back where it came from, said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling, which conducted the survey. Obama is looking exceptionally strong there.
The survey of 542 registered voters from April 5 to 7 had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percent.
PPP generally works for Democratic candidates, and Colorado Republicans criticized the poll for oversampling liberal voters. But The New York Times pollster ratings show PPP to be one of the most accurate national polling firms.
Countdown: 73 days until the primary election. 206 days until the November election.
