Romney Plans Major Arena Fundraiser To End Quarter

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Romney Plans Major Arena Fundraiser To End Quarter

14 Jun 2007 04:35 pm

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."

And once again, reporters are invited.

A couple hundred Romney supporters will attend the official National Call Day on the 25th after a massive bar-b-que at Fenway on the 24th.

They'll be seated around tables on the parquet floor of the Boston Garden (er, the TD Banknorth Garden, a bastard child of the old Bank of Boston, Bay Bank, North Bank, Bank North and TD Waterhouse), home of the Celtics, with the charge of raising $5K each. The campaign hopes to raise at least $2.5M, according to one Republican familiar with the goals.

The first 100 to sign up will get their hotel rooms comped.

When the campaign held its first national call day in January, Romney finance director Spencer Zwick told his boss, cautiously, that he expected to raise a little more than $1M. The campaign would up securing more than $6.5M that day. So this time, Zwick might be a bit more, eh, liberal, with the estimates.

The national political press corps was beckoned to Boston to watch the proceedings and dutifully chronicled the day, which began with a teary speech from Ann Romney and ended with a triumphant press conference. The scope of Romney's fundraising network began to sink in: he can raise money from his business contacts, his Bain Co. contacts, his co-religionists, donors to the Republican Governors Association, a healthy chunk of Bush pioneers, old Romney family friends from Michigan, Harvard lawyers and MBAs and Massachusetts technology concerns. Pardon the passive voice, but expectations were raised.

Romney should have no trouble raising money this quarter, thanks to good press, good polls and other candidates' bad slumps. But it's not clear whether he'll raise more than he did last quarter, when he took in $20M in contributions from individuals.