CO-Sen: Bennet, fresh off his disastrous "Bannock Street Project" where he was in charge of the DSCC's efforts to elect and re-elect senators has turned his back on the record fundraising accomplished by Mark Udall's campaign. In 2014, Udall raised over $20 million. Many criticized how that money was spent, but no one can argue with the fundraising numbers. In a small state, bringing in $20 million was truly a great feat. Folks close to Udall's campaign acknowledged that it was Udall's deputy finance director who was primarily responsible for accomplishing the record-breaking numbers as the finance director was largely absent the last month of the campaign.
Bennet, has decided not to hire any Udall fundraising staff and instead hired Gov. Hickenlooper's chief fundraiser, Laura Warren (his finance director in 2014). Hickenlooper nearly lost the governorship to a second-tier candidate, Bob Beauprez who had previously overwhelmingly lost the 2006 governor's race to another democrat, Bill Ritter. Hickenlooper only raised about $5 million in his quest for Governor, but that amount included donations from joint events with Udall, including fundraisers with Hillary Clinton, Obama, Bill Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Elizabeth Warren. Udall's campaign was known to have done all the heavy lifting on those fundraisers.
Bennet's campaign claimed it wanted "new blood" to help with fundraising. But hiring in-state someone who barely out-raised an unpopular Republican candidate hardly seems like new blood. And Bennet will need as much money as he can muster as he's already been tagged as one of the most vulnerable Democrats in 2016.
It's one thing to reject the campaign manager of a failed campaign - that's typical - but to reject the wildly successful fundraisers seems suicidal.