On Friday Darcy Burner, the Democrat who’s trying to unseat Republican Congressman Dave Reichert in the eastside’s 8th District, announced she will meet (and likely beat) her first-quarter fundraising target of $320,000 cash on hand.

On Saturday, Horsesass said a few words about the role the liberal “netroots” played in helping Burner meet this important goal—an accomplishment that makes her campaign eligible for a grant of $250,000 in “Red to Blue” money from the national party. And yesterday, the New York Times ran an interesting and much-discussed article about how the Internet is reshaping politics.

Burner, a former Microsoft executive, is clearly trying to harness the power of the web to help her campaign, and her campaign manager, Zach Silk, is crediting the “netroots,” in part, for the deluge of money Burner received in the last 24 hours before the first fundraising quarter ended on Friday.

“The blogosphere was instrumental in taking us to the next level,” he told me today in an e-mail. Burner will be at Drinking Liberally in Seattle tomorrow to thank the netroots in person, and perhaps participate in an edition of Podcasting Liberally.

Silk told me Burner’s team of treasurers is still tabulating her official first-quarter take, but he’ll have a rough number later this afternoon (I’ll update when it comes) and an exact number mid-week.

There’s been considerable debate about whether the liberal blogosphere is really any good at raising money, so I’m particularly curious to see if the Burner campaign can break out how much it made via online donations in the last month, when liberal bloggers (including The Stranger’s Dan Savage) were soliciting pledges via their blogs. I’m also curious to know what percentage of Burner’s money is coming from Democrats in Seattle who can’t vote in Burner’s race, but who want to take back Congress so badly they’re willing to send their money across Lake Washington to help her.

UPDATE: Looks like we’ll have the rough number for Burner’s first quarter fundraising tomorrow, not today. I’ll do a new post when it comes in.