Diana Irey has her work cut out for her if she wants to unseat longtime incumbent John Murtha in PA-12. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that she trails far behind Murtha in fundraising, although she still qualifies as the best-financed challenger in the state:

While Republican challenger Diana Irey accelerated her fund-raising pace in the second quarter of the year, she still trailed far behind U.S. Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Johnstown, the veteran incumbent in the 12th Congressional District.

Entering the final four months of the campaign, Mr. Murtha's campaign committee had a cash advantage of more than 10-to-1 over the Washington County commissioner. The Democrat entered July with $1,804,695, while Ms. Irey had $159,138, according to a digest of Federal Election Commission filings compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Murtha funds include money leftover from his last campaign.

Mr. Murtha had raised a total of $2,452,426 during that election cycle and spent $1,481,352 by June 30. Ms. Irey, who has tried to build a national fund-raising effort based on opposition to the Democrat's anti-war rhetoric, had raised a total of $305,541 and spent $146,403.

Irey's race is one of the eighteen focus campaigns supported by the Rightroots initiative. In fact, so far she's proven one of the most popular of the candidates, with over $1200 in donations in the first 24 hours. As is obvious from this P-G report, she will need much more support to erode Murtha's fundraising edge. She has a tough fight, but with enough support she could win this seat and help the GOP retain control of Congress.

One of our other candidates has noticed the Rightroots support already. Ray Meier, running in NY-24, has a press release on his site:

State Senator Ray Meier is breaking new ground in his campaign for New York’s 24th Congressional seat as he receives a boost today from Rightroots, a new fundraising effort organized by bloggers from across the country.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist endorses the Rightroots on his own Volpac blog today as well. Volpac becomes the eighth official endorser of Rightroots, and has been added to our site at ABCPac.

UPDATE: I think we can take Michelle Malkin's challenge and agree that we won't be photoshopping people into racist blackface images, like the netroots of the Left.

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