Scherer: subtract the money Romney gave himself and Romney had just as much cash on hand in June as McCain did, a little more than $3 million—“at the time, this was seen as a disastrous state of affairs for McCain, prompting the departure of his top advisors”

October 1, 2007 in 2008, analysis, campaign finance, campaign management, election, GOP, Iowa, media, mitt romney, republicans, romney, strategy, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
Tags: advertising, doations, donors, Giuliani, Huckabee, Massachusetts, McCain, Michael Scherer, New Hampshire, Salon.com

“As he travels the country, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney often boasts of his presidential campaign’s healthy finances. “I think our numbers have shown that we are able to raise the money,” he said at a recent press conference in Michigan. ‘And that’s essential to run a 50-state campaign,'” writes the estimable Michael Scherer for Salon.com in an article titled Mitt Romney’s money machine; The identity of his biggest multimillion-dollar donor, and how Romney could blow away his GOP competitors on campaign spending

It’s a story line the Romney campaign wants to promote. He is the popular front-runner who has been able to energize donors in the party’s base, raising more money than any other Republican candidate. Through the first two quarters, he hauled in more than $44 million, about $10 million more than his nearest rival in the money race, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The money has allowed Romney to spend lavishly on television advertising in early voting states, open the only fully staffed Republican campaign office in Michigan and even hire a full-time organizer in a state as obscure as West Virginia.

But Romney’s boasts do not tell the whole story. As much as he likes to talk about his campaign’s brimming coffers, he avoids speaking about his campaign’s biggest single donor — a man worth between $190 million and $250 million, who has single-handedly allowed Romney to break away from the pack by giving the campaign one out of every five of its dollars. That donor’s name: Mitt Romney.

Through June, Romney has already given himself nearly $9 million in loans to fund his campaign, a number that is sure to grow in the coming weeks when he announces his third-quarter fundraising. Under current campaign finance law, there are no limits to how much a candidate can donate to his own campaign, giving Romney a huge advantage over other candidates who are forced to collect donations with a maximum value of $2,300 per donor. If Romney so chooses, he will be able to blow his rivals out of the water in January campaign spending … more

For more on this theme see:

Romney’s self-financing an artifact of Romney’s self-deception—we call it the Madden Doctrine

yours &c.
dr. g.d.

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