The latest round of campaign finance reports is in, and it looks like Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amanda Janoo is suffering the same fate as the other challengers to Gov. Phil Scott. She’s getting the cold shoulder from her party’s top officials and elected leaders.

Janoo raised $112,000 in August, bringing her campaign total to $415,000. Even if she still had all that money in the bank, it wouldn’t be enough to seriously contend with the governor. But she spent most of it in a costly primary against Aly Richards, so she enters September with a measly $59,000 in cash on hand.

Scott, who has barely even tried to mount a campaign, has five times as much in his kitty. And we’re practically in the home stretch; a bit more than two months remain before Election Day.

I ran into fellow Vermont Political Observer Kevin Ellis in the food coop earlier this week. He asked me what Janoo needed to do to win. “Everything,” I said. For starters, I said she needed a strong September 1 finance report: a minimum of $200,000, and preferably something north of $500,000. I didn’t honestly expect her to crack a half mill, but she certainly needed to do better than one-fifth of that.

Caveat: Money isn’t everything. Grassroots enthusiasm helps. But you can’t run an effective statewide campaign without at least some cash. You’ve gotta get on TV in a substantial way, to try to eat into Scott’s huge advantage in familiarity. Janoo doesn’t have nearly enough, and her shortfall sends a loud signal to the monied class: Don’t waste your money.

Janoo did very well with small-to-medium donors, racking up page after page of gifts in the range of $50 to $500. She got very few large donations. Conspicuous by their absence from her donor list: Democratic Party bigwigs and elected officials. That’s a dirty goddamn shame, and a stain on the party’s soul. If it has one.

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