Portman makes the grade.

Chris Cillizza maintains the premier political blog for the Washington Post called The Fix. It's an unbiased source updated daily with campaign and political analysis and easily one of the best political blogs out there.

Yesterday he published a post that graded the fundraising prowess of many of the high profile federal races based on their totals raised over the past three months.

And what did Ohio's own Rob Portman earn? An A.

Damn right.

And it's not just the Washington Post giving him high marks. It's everywhere.

While raising $1.7 million over the course of just three months he has given himself quite a lead over his potential Democrat opponents as we head into the 2nd half of 2009. That's slightly more than even Mitt Romney has been raising nationally over the same period to continue his push for the 2012 Presidential nomination.

The question now becomes, how much of his fundraising haul will Portman have to use to defeat Ohio rich guy, primary opponent, and political newcomer Tom Ganley.

While Ganley has all the cash he needs to mount a credible challenge, it's TBD whether Ohio voters will afford him any sense of legitimacy. I'd expect Ganley to start up with some advertising in the last quarter of 2009 in order to gauge any poll movement before deciding whether to spend even more of his own wealth to aggressively go after Portman.

Let's hope he fails.

Portman is a quality candidate. It would be ideal to take advantage of his fundraising prowess to attack Democrats rather than defend himself against a political novice.