Republican Jonathan Paton has struggled to raise funds for his District 8 congressional campaign over the last three months.

Paton raised somewhere around $165,000 between April and June—a lackluster quarter, especially compared to the nearly $600,000 that Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords announced yesterday.

Paton's take is a big drop from the half-million dollars that he raised in the first quarter.

It's little wonder that the Paton campaign picked today to release details of internal polling showing him neck-and-neck with Giffords. (We'll have more on the poll later.) He wants today's headlines to be about the poll numbers, not the financial numbers.

Paton still faces a primary that includes Jesse Kelly, Brian Miller and Jay Quick.

The Kelly campaign tells us they raised more than $120,000 in the quarter, while Miller reports raising more than $26,000.