Romney modest about straw poll showing his backers helped create
BOSTON --Going into last weekend's meeting of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, Gov. Mitt Romney and his staff said they were expending no energy on and had only fleeting interest in a straw poll that would assess the potential 2008 presidential contenders.
Even after he finished a surprise second in Memphis, behind a Tennessee native son, Sen. Bill Frist, Romney was modest, declaring: "I really don't read into a straw poll very much, certainly not at this point. This is, what, three years away from the '08 race?"
It turns out not all his supporters had a similarly distanced view.
Roughly 200 Romney backers camped out at the Marriott hotel in Memphis, and some had all of their expenses paid for them. One of the financiers was John Kingston, general counsel of AMG Inc., a the Beverly-based investment management firm. AMG is run by Sean Healey, the husband of Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, Romney's most prominent ally.
"If only we could have had more time," said David French, a Tennessee lawyer and Kingston classmate at Harvard Law School who spearheaded the effort. "I don't know that we could have beaten Frist, but we could have done even better."
Romney supporters were not alone in organizing for the meeting. Frist, the Senate majority leader, bused in dozens of supporters to ensure a strong showing. He succeeded, garnering 37 percent of the vote. The next closest was Romney, albeit distantly at 14 percent.
The pro-Romney organizing surfaced after blanket assurances there would be none by numerous members of the Romney political camp, both in and out of the Statehouse.
Nancy French, who runs the pro-Romney Web site http://www.TNforMitt.com, initially told an Associated Press reporter all the Romney supporters paid their own way. Later, after a student attending the conference told the same reporter French and her husband had paid travel expenses for him and four friends, French confirmed her involvement.
She said she, her husband and Kingston had paid for supporters who could not otherwise afford the registration fee and hotel expenses. Kurt Keilhacker, a California venture capitalist and Kingston associate, said he also provided money and helped French raise it from others.
Keilhacker and David French said they and other evangelicals wanted to ensure a strong pro-Romney presence at the Leadership Conference. David French said he has met Romney several times, but his effort was conducted independent of the Commonwealth PAC, the political action committee Romney has been using to fund his travel and build political support as he assesses a potential 2008 campaign.
"After many years of polarization and communication problems in Washington, Gov. Romney is somebody who's uniquely articulate and possibly able to break out of this red-blue impasse we have," David French said.
Romney himself told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Monday: "This idea of `Tennesseans For Mitt,' I'd never heard of it. But I got one of their T-shirts. It said `Yankee Gov., Southern Values.' I had to get a chuckle out of that, and express appreciation to them for their support. They're very, very kind people."
Kingston did not return a pair of phone messages left at his office. State campaign finance records show him to be a reliable Republican donor, supporting Kerry Healey with regular $500 donations and the state Republican Party with a $5,000 contribution on Dec. 27.
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AP Political Writer Ron Fournier contributed to this report from Washington.
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EDITOR'S NOTE -- Glen Johnson has covered local, state and national politics since 1985. He can be reached at glenjohnson(at)ap.org.
