Mitt Romney’s $6.5 Million Day
by Patrick Ruffini :: January 8th, 2007 10:28 pmTime to add something new to the bag of tricks.
Today, Mitt Romney kicked off his fundraising campaign with a twist: a massive call-center for well-heeled fundraisers to dial through their Rolodexes and shake loose the early dough. The whole thing was masterminded by 28-year-old Romney aide Spencer Zwick and powered by ComMitt, an intranet for fundraisers powered by Salesforce (let’s hear it for COTS!). This is probably the kind of tool that wouldn’t be worth building unless you actually sat 400 people down in front of it, which is exactly what they did.
I was initially a skeptic. This is a great process story, but it doesn’t really give you the grassroots warm-and-fuzzies that you’d expect with a formal rollout. All of that said, you can’t argue with results, with $6.5 million pledged or raised for the Romney campaign.
Timing aside, this is the kind of thing we should be seeing more of in ‘08 and beyond. The most precious resource in any campaign is the candidate’s time. The first half of the year will see each of the Big Three traveling to an unholy number of cities to do an unfathomable number of fundraising events. What’s more, these events are very expensive to put on.
If something like this allows a campaign to shave a few fundraising events off the schedule, giving the candidate the opportunity to spend more time with the voters, then campaigns will have taken a significant step into the 21st century.
Tagged: 2008 
mitt romney strategy
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Agreed about the void of grassroots warm and fuzzies.
Romney’s bonanza, while yielding impressive results, was more Donald Trump than American Idol. Americans are grabbed by both, but it’s fear & loathing vs. love and adoration. Romney risks the northeast liberal stuffed shirt branding, so the more grassrootsy he can be, the better.
Btw, Rudy was on TV this weekend with the hosts of the Professional Bull Riding championship. They held this year’s PBR in New York City and Rudy attended and went on air during a break to compare bull-riding to running for office. The hosts said you try to spin as much as you can to hang on and win, and Rudy said yeah well, they also toss you around to try and knock you off and kick while you’re down. They’re ruthless.
Ah, presidential primary season. Rudy Giuliani dons cowboy boots and hits the rodeo trail.
Patrick,
With Romney raising that much money, I have a feeling there’s a lot more to come. With that being said, I don’t feel he’s getting the deserved publicity for what was done. I think major news stations and news media are trying to keep him out of the picture and under play his success. I’m convinced there’s still a turnaround to come in the future. Give him the due credit and respect he deserves just like any other canidate out there!
[…] Posted by Charlie Fugate on January 8th, 2007 Patrick Ruffini has an interesting post about Romney’s fundraising efforts. The article can be found here. I agree with Patrick on one point, the style definitely is less grassroots than corporate development, but if it works. Oh, I’ve been flip flopping between Brownback and Romney… I’ll try to keep things balanced. […]
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