Romney Backer: He Does “Beautifully” Around Rich People

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Now he’s a quote from a supporter that may not help Mitt Romney that much:

It’s kind of hard for Romney to come across being a regular Joe. But put him in a room full of 400 business guys that are all successful, that relate to him, he comes off beautifully.

So said Daniel Staton, chair of the FriendFinder Networks, who attended a ritzy Romney fundraiser in Boca Raton. From Bloomberg:

One evening in late September, Mitt Romney supporters gathered at the $3 million Boca Raton, Florida, home of Marc Leder, the Sun Capital Partners Inc. co- founder behind the takeovers of retailers Friendly Ice Cream Corp., Limited stores and ShopKo Stores Inc.

Waiters served brie-stuffed French toast and short-rib tartlets as guests including Daniel Staton, chairman of social- networking company FriendFinder Networks Inc. (FFN), lingered about the 10,657 square-foot (990 square-meter), 6-bedroom waterfront home. Then they gathered inside for a half-hour speech by Romney, whose years of buying and selling companies for Bain Capital LLC left him with a worth of as much as $250 million and a natural rapport with the crowd.

It was after being impressed by that 30-minute-long speech that Staton made his comment about Romney. He may as well have said, “Romney really feels our pain.”

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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