Question: Polling aside, what is a good way to tell whether or not you’re losing when running for public office?  

Answer: When you spend the entirety of your stump speech whacking away at your opponent, and he doesn’t even feel the need to mention you when he’s on the campaign trail.

Such is the story of the race between Treasurer Walker Stapleton and former Congresswoman Betsy Markey.  According to our Democrat sources, Markey used up her stage time during recent county assemblies slinging desperate piles of mud at Stapleton.  Meanwhile, Stapleton’s stump speech focuses on his record of reforming the state’s broken pension system and how he’s beaten annual performance benchmarks for the state’s investment portfolio every year since taking office.  Markey isn’t even a consideration for him when talking to voters.

At most, we’ve seen Stapleton’s campaign take the time to correct factual inaccuracies from Markey about how the Treasurer’s office actually works.  Like this release from earlier today:

“Markey’s comments this weekend display a disturbing misunderstanding of finance and the core functions of the Treasurer’s office.” stated Stapleton’s Campaign Manager Michael Fortney. “For Betsy to suggest the State’s investment portfolio should react like the stock market to economic ebbs and flows is profoundly ignorant and misguided.”

This isn’t even the first time Markey has proved that her financial skills aren’t well honed.  In the past, she has called Obamacare the biggest deficit reduction bill to come before Congress in a decade.

In some ways we feel bad for the former Congresswoman who seems desperate to claw her way back to relevance.  If only she weren’t such an unapologetic liberal with no substantive knowledge of how the state’s finances work, maybe she would actually have a chance.