Signs of financial strain showing up for Romney

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney is inter­viewed by Megyn Kelly dur­ing a seg­ment of “Amer­ica Live” on the Fox News Chan­nel in New York, Wednes­day. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO — The long and increas­ingly messy Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial con­test is start­ing to hit Mitt Rom­ney where it hurts most: his wallet.

New signs of finan­cial stress are emerg­ing in Romney’s cam­paign, which has built a wide lead in del­e­gates thanks in part to the might of his bank account and mul­ti­state oper­a­tion. As rival Rick Santorum’s sur­pris­ing strength keeps extend­ing the nom­i­na­tion bat­tle, Rom­ney has scaled back expenses, trimmed field staff in some cases and begun to count more on free media cov­er­age to reach vot­ers. And he’s still rely­ing on an allied super polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee to sup­ple­ment his spend­ing on expen­sive TV ads.

This week, the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor was forced to spend two days pri­vately court­ing donors in the New York area, even as his Repub­li­can rivals were woo­ing vot­ers ahead of piv­otal elec­tions in places like Illi­nois, where he hasn’t been in four months, and as Pres­i­dent Barack Obama was stock­pil­ing cash for the fall gen­eral elec­tion fight.

On Wednes­day, Rom­ney had five finance events in New York, all packed, rais­ing about $3 mil­lion, with more set for Thurs­day. So the news is hardly all bad. Wednes­day “was the best day we’ve had so far,” said New York Jets owner Woody John­son, who accom­pa­nied Rom­ney to mul­ti­ple events, includ­ing a donor break­fast in New York City.

But it’s less encour­ag­ing for the cam­paign that the money is badly needed to re-fill cof­fers that had sunk close to their low­est lev­els since Rom­ney launched his pres­i­den­tial effort last year.

It’s unclear if he will tap his own per­sonal wealth.

The for­mer finan­cial exec­u­tive, whose per­sonal wealth is esti­mated between $190 mil­lion and $250 mil­lion, loaned his 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign $42 mil­lion. Top aide Eric Fehrn­strom says Rom­ney has not loaned his cam­paign any new funds this cycle and has “no plans” to do so.

Rais­ing money to get through a pro­tracted pri­mary fight is clearly not how Rom­ney wanted to be spend­ing his spring. He had hoped to have wrapped up the nom­i­na­tion by now, giv­ing him the free­dom to raise money for the gen­eral elec­tion against Obama. The incum­bent Demo­c­rat doesn’t have a pri­mary chal­lenge, and already is well into run­ning for re-election. He’s spend­ing 14 hours Fri­day rais­ing money; the biggest event is to be with actor/director Tyler Perry and musi­cian Cee Lo Green in Atlanta.

As Rom­ney reloads for his GOP fight, his chief Repub­li­can rival, San­to­rum, is show­cas­ing new fundrais­ing suc­cess. The once-lopsided money race between the top two Repub­li­can can­di­dates has never been closer. For the month of Feb­ru­ary, Rom­ney boasted his second-best fundrais­ing month ever, tak­ing in $11.5 mil­lion. San­to­rum, who has a vastly smaller orga­ni­za­tion to sup­port, wasn’t far off, with $9 million.

For months, the for­mer Penn­syl­va­nia senator’s cam­paign was marked by dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion and a shoe­string oper­a­tion that largely depended upon pas­sion­ate but inex­pe­ri­enced vol­un­teers. San­to­rum has finally opened a national head­quar­ters to replace the post office box that pre­vi­ously served that role. And he’s added sev­eral paid staff.

Rom­ney aides acknowl­edge they’re look­ing at ways to reduce costs.

The cam­paign stopped con­duct­ing expen­sive polling ahead of the Michi­gan pri­mary. Instead, it now counts on lower-cost voter ID phone calls, which aides con­tend are nearly as accu­rate as inter­nal polls. Rom­ney also stopped using the 150-seat plane that could accom­mo­date the press after Super Tues­day and is instead fly­ing with a small group of aides and Secret Ser­vice agents on a smaller and cheaper aircraft.

Fur­ther, his staff is purs­ing what it calls cre­ative ways to max­i­mize free tele­vi­sion cov­er­age to sup­ple­ment a flood of paid tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing. Rom­ney noti­fied local media, for exam­ple, that he’s sched­uled to arrive at the San Juan air­port Fri­day at 2:30 p.m., although there are no for­mal remarks or events planned for that time. That’s not typ­i­cal for the buttoned-down cam­paign with the tightly con­trolled media schedule.

Pub­licly, Rom­ney and his senior team have offered no hint of finan­cial stress.

Fehrn­strom said that “we started March with more cash on hand than any of our oppo­nents. Our fundrais­ing con­tin­ues to be healthy. We have all the resources we need to remain com­pet­i­tive in this race.”

Indeed, Rom­ney scored nar­row vic­to­ries over San­to­rum in Michi­gan and Ohio in recent weeks, draw­ing on his finan­cial advan­tage to out­spend his oppo­nents on the local air­waves. It was the same in Mis­sis­sippi and Alabama this week. But in those South­ern cases, San­to­rum over­came his cash deficit and scored twin vic­to­ries that threat­ened to re-set the Repub­li­can contest.

Henry Bar­bour, a Repub­li­can oper­a­tive who is help­ing Romney’s fundrais­ing in the South, said money won’t nec­es­sar­ily decide the nomination.

“Cash is always a fun­da­men­tal fac­tor, but if it becomes a one-on-one, it becomes a lit­tle less impor­tant,” said Bar­bour. “Rom­ney has sev­eral struc­tural advan­tages — cash is one. He also tends to have more staff, sur­ro­gates, party reg­u­lars and lead­ers who should make it eas­ier for him to fight on mul­ti­ple fronts. Santorum’s back is still against the wall, but we need to close the deal.”

San­to­rum hopes to main­tain momen­tum by defeat­ing Rom­ney Sun­day in Puerto Rico’s GOP pri­mary, which offers can­di­dates the oppor­tu­nity to score points with His­panic vot­ers, while build­ing a broad donor base with ties through­out Florida and New York.

But after his two days of fundrais­ing in New York, Rom­ney arrives in Puerto Rico on Fri­day with­out any finance events sched­uled. Aides were con­cerned that the trip might be por­trayed as an ATM with­drawal. Instead, only a hand­ful of deep-pocketed donors are expected to con­tribute the max­i­mum allowed under fed­eral law, $2,500.

Illi­nois, which hosts a pri­mary on Tues­day, is the next big test. And despite finan­cial strains, Rom­ney is show­ing lit­tle sign of aban­don­ing his tra­di­tional paid adver­tis­ing dom­i­nance, thanks in part to the Romney-aligned Restore Our Future super PAC work­ing on his behalf.

Rom­ney and that group have been run­ning Illi­nois tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing that, com­bined, exceeds $2.4 mil­lion. Santorum’s aligned super PAC is spend­ing $400,000 there so far.

And Rom­ney super donor John­son says the fundrais­ing com­mu­nity is as engaged as ever.

“You’d think you’d see some donor fatigue, but we haven’t,” John­son said. “From the begin­ning, we said we’d be in this a long time and we planned accordingly.”

Posted by AP News on Mar 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.