Mitt Romney, the chameleon-like former Governor of Massachusetts and darling of the SCV Republican establishment, has suspended his campaign for president of the United States leaving hundreds of distraught SCV Republicans in his wake.
During his year long campaign to be the Republican party’s nominee, SCV supporters donated close to $200,000 to Romney’s campaign fund in hopes of buying influence with the handsome LDS candidate.
“He’s just really a swell guy, and when he asked for my money for the cause of freedom and democracy, I just couldn’t say no,” one influential local Republican told SCVTalk on condition of anonymity.
“Now though, Mitt’s out of the race and for my $2,300 all I got was this lousy Mitt Romney t-shirt,” the source said, adding that he’d now support the candidacy of Mike Huckabee over “that lying RINO SOB McCain.”
A source at Romney’s headquarters tells SCVTalk that it’s possible to track exactly where the money, hopes, and dreams of the SCV were spent in the Romney Campaign.
Data from the campaign released today shows that $35,000 from SCV donors went to fuel Romney’s personal jet on his way out of Los Angeles International after the candidate appeared at a fundraiser in tony West Ranch.
Another $10,000 was spent on a full-page ad touting Romney’s business experience in the Concord Monitor, the paper of record for the State of New Hampshire ahead of its first-in-the-nation primary.
” If only those donors from Santa Clarita had dug into their pockets a little deeper, we might have been able to afford two full page ads,” a senior campaign staffer told SCVTalk. “It might have made the difference,” he said.
Much of the remaining money donated from SCV political junkies and hopeful hangers-on went to pay for tanning bed fees, custom black hair dye, manis/pedis, a personal masseuse for Romney and his wife, and skiing, yachting, and moutnain sports excursions for Romney’s five sons. Each of those excursions was used in ads showing the entire Romney family as dynamic, attractive and athletic.
“Coattails at this level of the game are always expensive and have no money back guarantee,” a senior Romney staffer said of the way the SCV’s money was spent.
The remaining 10%, or $20,000, was tithed to the LDS church, as is customary in the Mormon religion.
Revelations that the SCV’s money went to good use in the campaign didn’t console local Republicans though.
“We gave him so much, he shoulda been a contendah,” one distraught Republican told this reporter as he peeled a Mitt Romney bumper sticker off his Hummer SUV outside of the Republican Headquarters at the IHOP on Pico Canyon Blvd.
Back in Washington, an insider in Congressman Buck McKeon’s office reported that the news hit McKeon “like the slap of a wet fish.”
“The Congressman had no agenda for 2008 other than campaigning for Mitt,” the insider said. “Now that Mitt abandoned his campaign in the middle of February, Buck’s got to figure out something to do for the rest of the year,” he said, adding that McKeon might actually have to run for Congress again since Romney won’t occupy the White House.
Stunned local Republicans were in too much shock to say whether they would eventually get behind front runner John McCain.
Developing…