The Daily Background
| Romney’s personal $6.5M donation closed gap between fundraising & spending
by Arlen Parsa
On Sunday, I wrote about Mitt Romney’s burn rate in terms of how quickly his campaign is using up the sizable fundraising receipts it has been reporting recently. Now the Associated Press has an interesting article out echoing many of the same themes. Notes the AP:
… Romney has dismissed financing his own campaign, saying in January that donating any of his personal wealth to his campaign would be “akin to a nightmare.” Rather, he said he planned to seek support from a broad grass-roots network.
Romney ended up lending the campaign $2.35 million in the first quarter, and as of July 1, the total had climbed to $8.9 million.
That makes Romney the largest source of money for his campaign. He and his staff have also been no slouches at spending.
Somewhat ironically, the former Massachusetts governor spent a significant chunk- “tens of thousands” on consultants who then gave him advice on how to spend the rest of his money. Another interesting tidbit if you’re confused about why Romney donated $6.5M to his campaign in the 2nd Q, rather than just 6 or 7, the answer it seems is that that was the exact amount needed to bridge the gap between the “$20.5 million he spent and the $14 million he raised.”
Spending money at a faster rate than you get it is an awful way to run a government and a pretty bad way to run a campaign as well, so fiscal conservatives should think twice about Romney’s tendency to splurge. Take for example the extravagant party he threw (using campaign funds) for top-dollar donors recently:
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign will commandeer Fenway Park and a Boston arena for a night and a day late next week for a major last-minute fundraising extravanganza. It even has a fancy title: “America’s Calling.”
Romney apparently spent more than $30,000 on that event alone (not to mention catering fees or the 100 free hotel rooms he supplied to the first donors who RSVP’d), although his people calculated they were going to bring in far more money than they spent that night.
