Mitt's PAC Growing Up

My very first post on this blog nearly a year and a half ago was on Governor Mitt Romney's Commonwealth PAC, and how his spreading money around early primary states indicated that he'd be running for president in 2008. Since that time, Romney has continued fundraising for his PAC and what was then mostly a collection of Mitt's buddies from Bain Capital has now grown, according to the Boston Globe, into a $1.6 million group of state and Federal PACs. As a state-level figure, Gov. Romney is not prohibited from creating state-level PAC affiliates, which he has done in such key primary states as Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan. This creative solution allows him to raise money above and beyond the $5000 federal PAC limits. Now that Romney has declined to run for a second term for governor, he is also spending a lot more time fund raising for his PAC out-of-state. This is a huge change from a year ago when he denied that he had any control over what the PAC did with its money and who donated to it.

Of course, Romney is going to need a lot more than $1.6 million if he's going to win a presidential primary. He will be dogged by accusations that he is too liberal on abortion and gay rights (!) as he found out most recently in Idaho, and last year in his home state of Michigan. There is a certain 'truthiness' to the governor of Massachusetts being liberal, so Romney can certainly expect his primary opponents to spend millions on negative advertising portraying him in that light.