Roughly $300,000 has poured into the 2018 U.S. House race between Republican incumbent and his Democratic challenger, , over the past three months.
Tipton, of Cortez, raised $150,000 between July 1 and Sept. 30, spending about $35,000 over that span, leaving him with $382,000 cash on hand heading into October.
Of those donations, a big chunk came from political action committees. That included contributions from the Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold Inc. Citizenship Committee, United Airlines Inc. PAC, Financial Planning Association PAC, and Lockheed Martin Corporation Employees PAC.
Tipton is a member of the U.S. House Financial Services and Natural Resources committees.
The Western Energy Alliance PAC also gave Tipton $2,500, while the Ernst & Young Political Action Committee and Farm Credit Council PAC each donated $5,000 to the congressman’s campaign.
Mitsch Bush, of Steamboat Springs, raised $141,678 between July and the end of September, spending $56,000 and starting out this month with more than $85,000 cash on hand.
She gave roughly $14,300 to her own campaign.
Also running for Tipton’s seat as a Democrat is Grand Junction City , who filed with the Federal Election Commission to join the race in mid-September, records show. As of Monday afternoon, a finance report for his campaign hadn’t been filed.
The — which includes Pueblo and nearly all of the western half of the state, from Grand Junction to Durango and beyond — is mainly Republican. The GOP has a significant advantage in voter registration.
Last year Tipton, who was first elected to Congress in 2010, won re-election by about 14 percentage points, despite by Democratic Gail Schwartz, a former state senator.