For Gingrich, it's all math

In a meeting room at the Palazzo hotel in Las Vegas over the past week, Newt Gingrich mapped out a detailed strategy that would keep him in the presidential race all the way to the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla., in August.

The crux of the former House speaker's new plan is math: a complex analysis of each state's delegates, how they're awarded and how many, reasonably, Gingrich can expect to win...

The winning candidate needs 1,144 delegates to claim the nomination..... Gingrich's team has studied the convoluted rules. Using targeted phone lists and targeted mail and focusing on more conservative areas, even in states such as Massachusetts and Vermont that Romney is expected to win, he hopes to pick up enough delegates, one by one, to make it to the convention.

According to two operatives close to Gingrich who requested anonymity to speak freely about internal discussions, the campaign will focus heavily on Georgia and Tennessee, which vote on Super Tuesday, March 6, as well as Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri and Louisiana, which vote later in the month....

Gingrich also has three surrogates who will begin campaigning heavily this month: former senator and presidential contender Fred Thompson of Tennessee, former congressman J.C. Watts of Oklahoma and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. All three have significant followings among conservative voters, particularly evangelicals, whose votes could be crucial in the South....

Gingrich is also focused on early voting - making a stop this week in Ohio, where early voting is set to begin in advance of Super Tuesday.

His strategists are also lobbying Fox News and ABC to add debates to the schedule between now and March...

As in every presidential election, it is always about the math - number of delegates.

Some candidates spent the last 4-6 years running and/or getting ready to run for President, preparing fundraising and organization, or camping out in Iowa for a year. Only one found that there were no candidates suited for the extraordinary time that requires extraordinary measures (instead of just "managing the decay" by slightly shifting and moving around government priorities and money) so it's hard to blame him for not having quite the organization and money in place to run a fully national campaign that's competitive in every state... Then, it's all about managing the limited resources and getting the most delegates with the least amount of money and effort, i.e., it's all about a cost-benefit analysis (which would be a good thing applied to government, laws and regulations).

That means leaving certain areas and/or states to volunteers and without much/any financial and logistic support - when the cost-benefit of getting another percent of the vote that may translate into 1 or no extra delegates shows it's better to allocate the same resources somewhere else. For example, not being on the ballot and wasting any time in Missouri primary, because it doesn't allocate any delegates anyway, later caucuses in MO do.

Like it or not, but the headlines, the tone of the coverage and words not spoken but attributed to candidate affect the perception of the campaign and. correspondingly, the votes. It is generally better to let the PR surrogates make the case, but not being able to rely on [or, like Romney, buy] many surrogates, Gingrich has to do some heavy lifting himself. Newt was brutally honest and transparent, perfectly dissecting and answering the "process" questions during the Las Vegas press-conference. It was a great venue to lay out the facts and put to rest some planted rumors from campaign of lies. And once again, as in NH debate, he repeated a warning, to paraphrase, "If you stop telling lies about me, I won't [have to] tell the truth about you." (Romney Must Get Personal Over Bain Capital Attacks - FR post #3 / IBD, 2012 January 12)

As expected, it resulted in the usual meme of Newt's "whining," "excuses" and "being negative" from the usual quarters by the usual suspects.

Now, about the money and donors.

Sheldon Adelson and his family control 55% of Sands (LVS) or little more than 400M shares, so if the stock moves up or down $1, they get richer or poorer by $400M. To put this in perspective, $40M would account for just 10% of that, and to date the family donated to Gingrich campaign and the PAC about $11M. Besides their lifetime help to conservative causes and Israel, they obviously think that Newt's governance (as practically the only viable candidate who advocates a government which is drastically smaller in size and scope) will benefit the economy, which will lift all boats, rich and poor. It is, obviously, not driven by the expectation of government favors (crony socialism or "crapitalism") because it would be significantly cheaper, more effective and lower-profile to ~~buy~~ donate to Congress-critters for that purpose.

Most of Romney's money go to raise unfavorable numbers of his opponents, but do nothing to raise his own favorability numbers with conservatives and within general electorate.

In this respect, it's very interesting to see and contrast the list of large Romney and Obama donors:

Ref: Private-Equity Rallies Around Mitt Romney's Dodd-Frank Cure - BL, by William Selway and Martin Z. Braun, 2012 February 03

Mitt Romney relying heavily on small group of super-rich donors - WP, by Dan Eggen and T.W. Farnam, 2012 February 01

In Romney's Super PAC, the Hedge Fund Mavens Come Out to Play | FEC Filings Detail Contributions From Rich Supporters - ABC, by Matt Negrin, 2012 February 02

Big Political Donors and What They Want - CNBC / AP, by Stephen Braun, Jack Gillum and Richard Lardner, 2012 February 03

(WP)

One of Mitt Romney's strongest assets as the GOP presidential front-runner is also a potentially serious liability in the race: his heavy reliance on a small group of millionaires and billionaires for financial support. A quarter of the money amassed by Romney's campaign and an allied super PAC has come from just 41 people, each of whom has given more than $100,000, according to a Washington Post analysis of disclosure data. Nearly a dozen of the donors have contributed $1 million or more. ..... < snip >

Ten people gave Romney's PAC Restore Our Future $1M and one gave $2M, which accounted for 40% of group's $30M haul. Big donors for Romney campaign / PAC include Bill Koch (Oxbow Carbon, $1M), hedge fund investors Paul Singer (Elliott Management $1M), Robert Mercer (Renaissance Technologies, $1M), Julian Robertson (Tiger Management, $1M) and John Paulson (Paulson and Co., $1M).

Robertson's Tiger Management is the largest international hedge fund in the world. John Paulson's donation is particularly interesting, since he is a Democrat, who made his name by using then relatively unknown CDS (credit default swaps) to bet short against the insurance and financial institutions, making over $5B in 2008-2009 during financial crisis.

Romney's PAC also received a larger share of donations than his competitors, between 25% and 30% of its total.

(ABC)

< snip > ..... [Paul] Singer was instrumental in the New York effort to allow gays to marry. His gay son married his partner in Massachusetts, where Romney was governor. "This is not someone who believes in these issues in spite of being conservative," said Ken Mehlman, a former Republican National Committee chairman and re-election campaign manager for George W. Bush, who came out as gay in 2010, worked with Singer on the marriage effort and saw Singer as recently as a couple of weeks ago. "He believes in it because he's a conservative." ..... < snip >

Another interesting donor to pro-Romney PAC is Consol Energy (CNX) ($150K) of Pennsylvania, because Rick Santorum had a consulting contract with them ($142K, August 2010 - August 2011) Santorum Becomes Millionaire in Six Years After U.S. Senate Loss - BL, 2012 January 05 / Romney Goes 'Establishment' as Gingrich Looks to Take Down Frontrunner - FR post #48, 2012 January 05. They probably think that at this point it's wiser to "invest" in Romney than Santorum.

Obama got almost half his campaign cash from "small" donations of $200 or less, but this is more than entire Romney's campaign cash. Romney did particularly badly with lower income voters, among suppressed turnout in primaries. Obama has 445 "bundlers," mostly from Hollywood, Silicon Valley and New York.

Obama's WS donor list has shortened significantly since 2008, but he increasingly relied on Silicon Valley and Palo Alto investment community ("Wall Street of Technology / Silicon Valley") to replenish his coffers.

It seems that Newt Gingrich, with his vision of importance of technology (e.g., privatization of space exploration) could give him a distinct advantage within generally libertarian wealthy science and technology community, compared to "undertaker" Romney.

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