THE HITS KEEP COMING: Remember the difficulty some state-level campaigns had filing their quarterly campaign finance reports last month, including a couple whose initial reports listed some of their major contributors’ donations twice? It turns out neither the candidates nor their compliance agents were to blame.

Election officials at the Colorado secretary of state’s office tell Trail Mix they discovered after the filing deadline that the errors were due to a procedure on their end that was importing data from some campaigns’ spreadsheets improperly – counting “major” contributions twice if they’d already been reported during the 30-day period before the Nov. 7 local elections. The requirement arose last year because of a new law intended to boost transparency in odd-year municipal and school board elections.

Before the source of the glitch was apparent, some candidates took fire from their opposition, and the secretary of state’s office assessed several campaigns automatic $50 fines for filing their reports a day late because their agents had been trying to figure out how to work around the bug. Election officials say they’ve waived those fines, but the campaigns that went on the attack aren’t letting up now that the source of the problem is better understood.

A campaign spokeswoman for state Rep. Polly Lawrence, one of six Republicans running for state treasurer, tore into primary rival Brian Watson when his initial report listed around $35,000 in contributions twice, asking if the real estate CEO “needs someone to check his math.” After learning this week that the secretary of state’s office had claimed responsibility for the botched reports, Lawrence’s campaign doubled down.

“He thought he raised $35,000 more than he did. That’s more than a glitch. How divorced is he from the operation of his campaign to not know that his books were off by $35,000?” Lawrence campaign manager Sara Boyd said. “Voters should be terribly concerned that Watson’s level of mismanagement could make its way into our state treasurer’s office.”

A Watson campaign spokesman wasn’t impressed.

“Polly’s continued aggressive comments on our properly filed report well before the deadline are, quite frankly, shocking and disappointing,” said Kyle Forti. “We’d expect better from our friend and will yet again say we’d rather focus on the issues facing Coloradans instead of made-up inside baseball.”

Republican Secretary of State Wayne Williams’ initial report had the same issue, and it was his Democratic challenger, attorney Jena Griswold, who raised a fuss over what the error demonstrated about Williams’ ability to oversee the state’s vast campaign finance system.

Told what Williams staffers had determined was behind the problem, a Griswold spokesman stood by the Democrat’s criticism, maintaining Williams was to blame for the secretary of state office’s glitch, if not his campaign’s.

“I’m sure the nonpartisan civil servants who work their tails off every day will be thrilled to hear that Jena, a candidate with literally no relevant work experience in campaign finance, thinks they are underperforming. That’s true leadership,” responded Williams campaign spokesman Justin Prendergast.

FEAR FACTOR: The dust is still settling on the departure of two high-profile candidates from their statewide races this week.

After Republican Tom Tancredo, a heavyweight in state and national politics for decades, announced he was ending his run for governor – citing his inability to raise what he determined were sufficient funds to compete in what’s expected to be a doozy of an expensive general election – the Democrats scrambled to tie the remaining Republicans in the race to the polarizing hard-liner  but privately acknowledged they were going to miss having Tancredo to kick around. None of the still-standing Republican gubernatorial candidates have the trove of controversial statements that have stuck to Tancredo, and the Democrats worry they can only keep invoking his influence on the state GOP for so long.

Assessing the remaining field, one top Democrat told Trail Mix this weekend that Tancredo’s exit had suddenly made the task of keeping the governor’s office more difficult – by making it at least a bit easier for Attorney General Cynthia Coffman to win the GOP nomination. “She’s the one that scares us,” the Dem said, pointing to some Coffman attributes that could stymie her ability to get past the primary but would be tremendous assets in a general election, including her complicated positions on divisive social issues such as abortion and LGBT rights.

When Democrat Michael Dougherty suspended his campaign for attorney general Friday in order to apply for an appointment by Gov. John Hickenlooper to be the Boulder County district attorney, some Republicans heaved a sigh of relief.

Dougherty hasn’t amassed the enormous fundraising advantage enjoyed by primary rival Phil Weiser and might not be as well known among grassroots Democrats as state Rep. Joe Salazar, but the assistant district attorney for Jefferson and Gilpin counties and the former head of the criminal division under Attorney General John Suthers enjoys a reputation as a prosecutor’s prosecutor. And he would have been the toughest Democrat to run against, two Republicans close to the campaign of 18th Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler, the likely GOP nominee, told Trail Mix. “He’s the one that scared us,” a Brauchler confidant said in a sentiment echoed almost word-for-word by another top Republican strategist.

Hickenlooper is expected to name a replacement by Valentine’s Day for Boulder DA Stan Garnett, who is stepping down on March 1 to take a job at one of the state’s leading law firms. Two of Garnett’s deputy DAs – State Rep. Mike Foote and Tim Johnson, both Democrats – are also among the applicants for the position.

THE OUTSIDERS: Colorado Democrats were working overtime this week to make sure Tancredo didn’t get to leave the gubernatorial race quietly, but they were getting plenty of help from the Republicans still running, including two remaining candidates who are leading the field by at least a few measures.

State Treasurer Walker Stapleton has raised more money than any other Republican in the race – topping $1 million, all brought in during the final few months of the year, on top of hundreds of thousands of dollars hauled in by a super PAC to support his campaign – and appears to have inherited frontrunner status after Tancredo relinquished it.

He’s won election statewide twice and has some illustrious relatives – he is a cousin to the two most recent Republican ex-presidents, the George Bushes, although he likes to point out Grammy-winning country singer Chris Stapleton is also a cousin – but hastened to make sure Colorado Republicans understand he, too, has been an outsider, and a Tancredo-backed one at that.

Visiting with 710 KNUS talk show host Dan Caplis the afternoon news about Tancredo’s withdrawal had broken, Stapleton recalled when he first ran for state treasurer in 2010 and got Tancredo’s endorsement early in the primary, before a single Republican lawmaker or former governor had gotten on board the Stapleton train.

“We were the outsider,” Stapleton said. “We had the support of tea parties and Tom Tancredo. So, you know, it’s funny how things things change, or the perception of things change.”

In the next hour, Caplis heard from another Republican gubernatorial candidate with a similar take on where things stood in the field.

Victor Mitchell, the wealthy former state lawmaker who wrote his campaign a check for $3 million when he launched it about a year ago, hasn’t been ranking high in the few available polls – Tancredo held double-digit leads over the rest of his primary rivals, who were mostly bunched up within the margin-of-error of each other – but has at least one thing the others lack: more than $2 million in the bank. He’s also claiming the mantle of outsider and Tancredo heir now that Tancredo is gone.

Mitchell called himself the “real outsider” in the race and declared that he was the “obvious choice” for Tancredo’s voters.

Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.