I guess I’m just nosy

There’s something slightly odd about this election analysis. I don’t quibble with the theory that defining Romney early in 2012 as a rich and out-of-touch capitalist was smart, but something puzzles me. The article says

The strategy also caught Mr. Romney at his most vulnerable time. The Republican nominee had been damaged by the bruising primary season. He limped out of it in mid-April battered and short on money to defend himself.

His top advisers faced the harsh reality that no matter how much money they raised for the general election, they couldn’t, under election law, spend it until Mr. Romney officially claimed his party’s nomination in late August. Mr. Romney would have to weather months of negative ads without the financial resources to respond forcefully.

Now, we just saw Linda McMahon blow through approximately $100M of her own money on two losing campaigns for Senate in Connecticut. We were told Romney’s got approximately $250M of net worth. So how come he didn’t lend his campaign money from his personal fortune to cover that time period when he couldn’t use the money collected for the general election? We’ve seen plenty of candidates do that in prior elections. Did he make a deal with his family that he wouldn’t spend private funds trying to get elected? Was he a little unsure he could win, and thus reluctant to spend his personal capital?

It’s not really important, I suppose, but it’s curious.

Update: Alec MacGillis of TNR speculated about the same thing at about the same time I did.

3 Comments

  1. Do venture capitalists ever spend their own money or are they just adept at spending other people’s money? I think he, like everything he has ever done, was hedging his bets, just like Paul Ryan pumping money into his house race……….I don’t think Romney intended to spend one dime of his own fortune………

  2. Well, this time, maybe. MacGillis points out that Romney spent $42M of his own money the first time he ran for President back in ’08. Maybe he and Ann decided that was it: no more of their own cash. Use Other People’s Money to try to win.

  3. Romney accepted his defeat so graciously. At first this warmed my heart, and made me think that maybe THIS was the “real” Romney, the one that had been hidden away behind a thousand masks during the election. And then I got to wondering if maybe this was just another mask, another act.

    And THEN I got to wondering if maybe Romney had worked out a way of profiting from this loss, Bain-style.

Comments are closed.