Der Mittenfuhrer helps tap new donors using Mormon, business connections

WASHINGTON -- An array of donors who never had given money in a federal election opened their wallets to Mitt Romney this year, drawn to him through his networks in the business world and the Mormon church.

Utah, seldom a go-to state for politicians seeking money, was Romney's second most generous state, reflecting the ties he has built there through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and his time as president of the Salt Lake Olympics Organizing Committee.

That success helped vault Romney to the top of the money race among Republican presidential candidates with more than $20 million in the first quarter of this year.

An analysis of new campaign finance reports by The Associated Press shows that in some Utah ZIP codes, Romney, a Mormon and former governor of Massachusetts, raised nearly 10 times the amounts raised by President Bush in each of the past two presidential elections.

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Leister is hardly alone. The geographic region that contributed the most money to Romney was a ZIP code in Provo, Utah. He had 152 donors and collected $209,105 there in just three months. By comparison, Bush had 40 donors from that ZIP code who contributed $27,000 during the entire 1999-2000 cycle. Four years later, Bush attracted 31 donors from that ZIP code for a total of $25,505 in contributions.

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"The next home improvement project will have to wait a little bit."



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