U.S. Senate

•2012 Presidential aspirants are “not showing the Tea Party candidates the money”:

Senate GOP candidates backed by the Tea Party movement have received much less financial support than more established candidates from their party’s leading contenders for the White House.
The GOP figures jockeying for a 2012 bid have largely avoided contributing from their political action committees (PACs) to Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Joe Miller in Alaska, Mike Lee in Utah, Ken Buck in Colorado and Sharron Angle in Nevada.
All six won GOP contests against rivals backed by the Republican establishment, largely because of support from the Tea Party movement. O’Donnell knocked off a sitting GOP House member, while Miller and Lee bested incumbent GOP senators.
But the six have received only a combined $38,000 from 10 leading Republicans thought to be eyeing a White House run. In comparison, Rob Portman, a former congressman and Bush administration official who is the GOP Senate candidate in Ohio, has received $29,400 alone.

House

•RNC Chairman Michael Steele also made a stop in Pueblo late last week to boost CO-3 Republican challenger Scott Tipton:

“It’s a whole different ballgame today,” a pleased Tipton said as the crowd of about 75 people followed Steele into the local GOP “Victory” headquarters at the Midtown Shopping Center.

•Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, featuring Rep. Betsy Markey and Cory Gardner, gets the profile treatment from the Denver Post. So does the 7th Congressional District, which will see Rep. Ed Perlmutter face off against Ryan Frazier. Both seats are held by Democratic incumbents, and both challengers have received the National Republican Congressional Committee’s “Young Guns” status.

Governor

•From the New York Times, in the hunt for “most appalling campaign season”:

Colorado voters, in the fun-loving spirit that has filled so many Republican primaries this season, gave the gubernatorial nomination to a newcomer named Dan Maes, who had already been hit with one of the largest campaign finance violation fines in state history for claiming more than $40,000 in mileage reimbursements — which would suggest that he spent the last year driving the equivalent of more than a third of the way to the moon.
Now Maes is in résumé trouble, too, for apparently making up a story about being an undercover operative for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation in Liberal, Kan. Liberal is best known as the home of a “Wizard of Oz” Museum, although, unfortunately, that had nothing to do with the investigation, which involved a drug ring but did not involve Dan Maes.