Fundraising quarter ends today for federal candidates

Today marks the end of the first fundraising quarter of the year in federal races, and there are a lot of interesting questions that will be answered by finance reports that are released in the next two weeks.

In the U.S. Senate race, for example, Democrat Tom Udall raised more than Republicans Steve Pearce and Heather Wilson combined in the fourth quarter of 2007. Can he do it again, or will one or both of them keep up with Udall? In addition, Wilson began the first quarter of 2008 with more money in the bank than Pearce. Can he catch her?

For most U.S. House candidates in the state, this was the first full quarter raising money, so the reports will paint a good picture of the money game. Some things to watch:

• It will be interesting to see how much of a financial boost the winners of the March 15 preprimary conventions got in the last two weeks of the quarter. Most interesting will be the races in the Second Congressional District, where Bill McCamley won the Democratic preprimary and Aubrey Dunn won the Republican preprimary. Both were considered by many to be underdogs going into the preprimary conventions, so the finance reports will be the first indicators of whether their preprimary wins were game-changing events in the eyes of donors.

• In the GOP Second Congressional District primary, C. Earl Greer gained a respectable amount of support at the preprimary nominating convention. He didn’t enter the race until the start of this quarter in January, so this finance report will be the first real indicator of whether he has the funding to keep up in a race that features three candidates who have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to their own campaigns.

• Were others who aren’t considered by most to be in the top tier of candidates, including Republican Monty Newman in the Second Congressional District and Democrats Michelle Lujan-Grisham and Rebecca Vigil-Giron in the First Congressional District, able to raise enough money to compete with the top-tier candidates?

Reports will appear on the FEC Web site by April 15, but numbers may be released by campaigns earlier than that. I’ll report on them as they’re made public.