New York City and Romney Money

Who would have thought that red state Georgia -- Atlanta, to be precise -- would be a cash cow for the President. And who would have thought that New York would be raising money hand-over-fist for a Republican. From the salmon-colored weekly:

"Last February, back when Rick Santorum shocked Republicans with a string of primary victories and the once-inevitable campaign of Mitt Romney was teetering on collapse, Woody Johnson held a private meeting in his office in Rockefeller Center.


Mr. Johnson is the heir to the Johnson & Johnson family fortune, the owner of the New York Jets and, over the past year or so, the head of Mr. Romney’s fundraising efforts in the political goldmine that is New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

The meeting was one of several he had held over the course of the campaign with those whose names had shown up on campaign finance filings for some of the other GOP hopefuls, donors who had cast their lot early on with Tim Pawlenty, or Herman Cain, or Rick Perry.

The message was always the same: Mitt Romney will be the nominee. He is only one who can keep Barack Obama from sinking the economy further. There was no political deal-making, no hard sell that said, “Come on, board now, before it is too late.”

“'Woody takes the long-term approach,' said Spencer Zwick, Mr. Romney’s national fundraising director, 'which is, ‘We need all of these people. Maybe they are working for another candidate today but I am very optimistic Mitt is going to be the nominee, so I can let them know that when their candidate sinks we are going to welcome them on.’'

Five months later, Mitt Romney is indeed the nominee, and his fundraising is going gang green busters: close to $300 million already, leaving President Barack Obama lamenting to supporters that he is at risk of being the first sitting president in modern American history to be outspent. And nowhere has Mr. Romney scored better than in New York City and points nearby. There was the $3 million haul in the Hamptons last weekend. A $10 million tristate swing in May. Three million dollars from a series of fundraisers in March, back when the governor was still struggling to dispatch his Republican rivals."

More here.