A lighter touch, an easier sell

Pretend that you had about $2 million to spend and were eyeing a bid for president. What would you buy?

Would you give a comic $2,200 to write jokes so you could knock them dead at Boston's St. Patrick's Day breakfast? Would you pay $130,000 for the advice of leading political sage Mike Murphy? How about $5,700 to buy supporters copies of your memoir?

These are just some of the ways Governor Mitt Romney has plunked down cash from his state campaign account this year. Although the money was given to him for a run for governor, there are few limits on how he can spend it, and political observers say Romney is opening his checkbook like a savvy shopper.

An examination of Romney's campaign expenses provides a glimpse into his approach as he mulls a run for the White House. Election rules prohibit using state campaign dollars to vie for federal office, but shrewd spending from one's state money can yield many intangible benefits for a national run.

Romney has, for example, spent almost $100,000 on flights, hotels, and other travel costs in about a dozen states, including several thousand dollars for a stay at the waterfront Omni Hotel in Jacksonville, Fla., the host city for the Super Bowl last February.

But Romney got more out of the trip than a Patriots win: While in Jacksonville, he attended a Republican reception, impressed local activists, and is now being courted for a return trip to an area considered to be one of the most important GOP strongholds in the country.

It turns out that Romney is a generous gift-giver, too. He has dipped into his state campaign account to shower supporters in and outside Massachusetts with nearly $16,000 in presents: $1,900 to treat them to a Rolling Stones concert last month at Fenway Park, $750 in Lands' End bags, and even $166.97 for two bottles of top-shelf wine from Austin Liquors in Worcester.

More than a third of the money Romney spent on gifts has gone to buy hundreds of copies of his book, ''Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games." Published last year by Regnery Publishing Inc., a conservative press in Washington, D.C., the book chronicles Romney's stewardship of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Romney has distributed copies to friends and supporters in and out of state, including the mayor of Salt Lake City, Rocky Anderson, and Mike Leavitt, the former governor of Utah who is now secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services. (Romney donates his share of book proceeds to charity.)

''It meant a lot to me that he would give me a book," said Robert Platt, a consultant who lives in Newton and Falmouth and is a Romney supporter. ''I always admired what he did for the Olympics."

Making these kinds of expenditures, say campaign-finance specialists, is a wise and often-used tactic for building momentum for a presidential run.

''It's very common and routine that state officeholders run for president and can start the early phase of getting their name out there nationally without tripping over the federal law," said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that tracks money in politics.

Spencer Zwick, the governor's former deputy chief of staff and now a political adviser, said it was premature to draw any conclusions from the spending by Romney, who is expected to announce this fall whether he will seek reelection.

''His political spending doesn't indicate that he's running for another office besides governor," Zwick said.

But Romney has bought a lot of things that would be useful to a presidential run, not least of which is $160,000 in political consulting and speechwriting help. Though candidates cannot transfer concrete assets from a state campaign to a national one, nothing prevents them from taking the advice.

And that trove of knowledge can be tremendously useful, said Kent Cooper, a former longtime Federal Election Commission official who cofounded PoliticalMoneyLine, a Washington firm that tracks campaign finances. By the time you declare an official candidacy, he said, you need to know which backdrops you look good against, how to kiss babies for maximum effect during a photo op, and the art of the handshake.

''This is the kind of thing you can't do instantly," he said. ''You need a long stretch of time."

Romney's expenditures this year also include $2,200 for the services of Doug Gamble, a California-based humorist who wrote jokes for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and for comedians such as Bob Hope. Romney used the bits in his St. Patrick's Day performance.

Though aides never disclosed which jokes Gamble wrote, Romney was a hit at the breakfast, poking fun at his frequent out-of-state trips with lines like: ''Well, it's great to be here in Iowa this morning -- whoops, wrong speech! Sorry about that."

Romney paid $2,000 to buy the rights to mittromney.com from an unidentified group of admirers in Utah. Aaron Willis -- a web designer based in Orem, Utah, who is doing work for the group -- said Romney aides contacted him a month or two ago asking whether they could purchase the site, which has since been registered by Romney's political committee.

''If you're a politician, you want to own your own name," said Tim O'Brien, executive director of the Massachusetts Republican Party.

If Romney wanted to use the site for a run for president, his federal campaign would have to buy it from the state committee, campaign finance specialists say.

And Romney has spent about $200,000 on building direct-mail lists of donors from Cape Cod to Western Massachusetts.

As with the website, Romney would have buy the lists to use them in a federal campaign, but candidates in his position typically purchase them for a fraction of what it cost to create them, specialists say.

Steve Grossman, a Massachusetts businessman and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, questioned whether all the donors to Romney's state committee would agree with the way he has spent the money.

''There is no question that, to the extent that he is using and spending down his state account on a variety of services -- consultants, travel, or otherwise -- under the guise of being governor and having a plausible deniability that he is still a candidate for governor in 2006, he obviously is getting the benefit of those dollars for a potential national run," Grossman said. ''While it may be perfectly legal, I think many people would question whether or not he's conforming to the spirit of the law."

No one within the Republican Party has questioned that, O'Brien said, and the only ones who would are Democrats.

''We're not hearing that from anyone," he said. ''I think it's a nonissue."

The bottom line, said William Mayer, an associate professor of political science at Northeastern University, is that Romney is probably getting a small presidential boost from his state spending, but it's not anything that other potential 2008 candidates aren't getting in their own ways.

''He's still going to have to raise a boatload of money if he runs for president," Mayer said. ''But would I still be doing it if I were him? Yeah."

Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.