For a few moments, it looked like there was some happy news for the Randy Brock campaign today — the deadline for filling the first finance reports of this year. As his report was filed, we got the top line number: $527,000. That looked pretty darn healthy; Vermont Pundit Laureate Eric Davis had said Brock needed to raise $350-400K to stay competitive in the race.

So at first glance, it looked like had ha cleared that barrier with ease.

BUT… then we got the actual report. And it turns out that Randy Brock’s $527,000 includes a $300,000 loan from Brock to his own campaign.

Money bomb FAIL.

And there’s more bad news: Brock reported campaign expenditures of $282,000. Which means he spent more money than he raised — when you subtract his personal loan. I guess those “expert” out-of-state consultants don’t come cheap.

Let’s remind ourselves of the context: Peter Shumlin raised almost $700,000 and spent only $77K. So Shumlin has about $625K cash on hand, while Brock has $244K. And if he hadn’t loaned himself a buttload of money, his campaign would be significantly underwater.

Yikes. Allow me to be the first to say it: Randy Brock’s campaign is DOA.