Mayoral candidate Karl Dean reported via email this morning that his campaign has raised $165,000 since mid-January, the previous reporting deadline for fundraising. Dean has effectively doubled his campaign funds, but he still trails Bob Clement, who raised around $600,000 by the first reporting deadline. Here’s Dean’s take on where the campaign stands today:

This recent reporting period is the first opportunity for all of the candidates to raise money on an equal playing field. In the last report, we were able to raise the second largest amount of contributions among all the candidates, having only been in the race for two weeks of the six-month period. Now we’ve all had the same amount of time. 

While Dean is obviously looking at this from a point of view that is beneficial to his relatively late entry into the race, I tend to agree that the race is just getting started. Recent polling information shared a few weeks ago in the Scene indicated that even Clement, who is currently the best-known candidate in the large field, led the pack with the support of about a third of those polled. (Dean scarcely registered at around 3 percent, but I suspect that’s about to change.) I’m curious to see the other candidates’ tallies as we get closer to the April 15 disclosure deadline.