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The New Yorker: Tagg Romney and his Father's Money
May 1, 2012
Tagg Romney and His Father’s Money
Posted by Amy Davidson
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2012/05/tagg-romney-and-mitt-romneys-money.html
“No one we went to as an investor said, ‘Oh, your dad is Mitt Romney, I’m going to give you $10 million dollars,’ ” Tagg Romney told the Times. And yet a good number of people did give him that kind of money: as the Times reports, sixty-four investors put two hundred and forty-four million dollars into Solamere, a private equity fund that Tagg started after the 2008 campaign, operating, at first, out of the same offices as the campaign headquarters, soliciting people who had been campaign contributors, with ten million dollars from his mother’s blind trust; and later with his father speaking at an investor’s conference and a number of employees who had worked either for the campaign or for another company that turned out to be “a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.” (That one was an actual financial Ponzi scheme, not a political one like, say, the Gingrich campaign.) The Times story doesn’t suggest that there was anything untoward or fraudulent in Solamere’s own practices. But it does offer some answers to the question of whether, and why, Mitt Romney’s money will be a problem for him in the Presidential campaign.
The Solamere story comes across as a clumsily loose thread in the tangle of the Romney family’s business and political interests and associations. Journalists are going to spend the next six months looking for and unravelling others. Some may be bad; others may just look and sound that way, or come across as financially alien to voters. The Obama campaign released an ad Tuesday called “Swiss Bank Account.” It points to headlines about Romney outsourcing jobs (including to an Indian call center) and ends with the line, “It’s just what you’d expect from a guy who had a Swiss bank account.” A Swiss bank account may have made complete sense for a man with his money. There is nothing inherently wrong with it, any more than there is with naming a private equity fund, as the Times notes, “after a wealthy enclave in Utah’s Deer Valley where the Romneys have a winter home”—a phrase that, with variations, is likely to add a tinge to all stories about Solamere—it’s just not very appealing, at a time when Romney is trying to make an appeal.
This weekend, John Boehner, on CNN’s “State of the Union,” said that he didn’t think that Romney’s money would really be a problem for him: “The American people don’t want to vote for a loser…. They don’t want to vote for someone who hasn’t been successful.” Putting aside the question of Boehner’s definition of “loser”—at what income level does one qualify?—this raises another question. Why hasn’t there been much of an entrepreneurial glow around Romney? Part of it is that he hasn’t really made things, not even shiny boxes for looking at stocks, like our mayor. A second is that one area in which Romney is most certainly a loser is his ability to talk about his own money. He is just bad at this—worse, even, than he is on the subject of faith. (Tagg isn’t much better, defending himself to the Times by saying that there were only five investors whom he knew solely through the campaign, and that it was through other networks that he’d met the rest, including two N.F.L. quarterbacks, the former head of Walmart, and the father of one of his ex-girlfriends.)
Most of all, though, it may be that voters just don’t see a political dividend in Romney’s wealth. There is a model of wealthy politician whom voters trust, because they believe his money secures ideological independence for him, and an incorruptible officeholder for them. Romney comes across as nothing if not dependent; his money makes his changeable record seem more crawling, more an effect of character, because he actually has the resources to say no—to not nod at every suggestion. He hasn’t used it that way; the considerable cash he has put into campaigns has been spent learning how to best to accommodate, rather than as a safeguard against ever having to do so. Voters might well ask what Romney’s money has bought for them, politically, beyond his own nomination.
Tagg Romney and His Father’s Money
Posted by Amy Davidson
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2012/05/tagg-romney-and-mitt-romneys-money.html
“No one we went to as an investor said, ‘Oh, your dad is Mitt Romney, I’m going to give you $10 million dollars,’ ” Tagg Romney told the Times. And yet a good number of people did give him that kind of money: as the Times reports, sixty-four investors put two hundred and forty-four million dollars into Solamere, a private equity fund that Tagg started after the 2008 campaign, operating, at first, out of the same offices as the campaign headquarters, soliciting people who had been campaign contributors, with ten million dollars from his mother’s blind trust; and later with his father speaking at an investor’s conference and a number of employees who had worked either for the campaign or for another company that turned out to be “a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.” (That one was an actual financial Ponzi scheme, not a political one like, say, the Gingrich campaign.) The Times story doesn’t suggest that there was anything untoward or fraudulent in Solamere’s own practices. But it does offer some answers to the question of whether, and why, Mitt Romney’s money will be a problem for him in the Presidential campaign.
The Solamere story comes across as a clumsily loose thread in the tangle of the Romney family’s business and political interests and associations. Journalists are going to spend the next six months looking for and unravelling others. Some may be bad; others may just look and sound that way, or come across as financially alien to voters. The Obama campaign released an ad Tuesday called “Swiss Bank Account.” It points to headlines about Romney outsourcing jobs (including to an Indian call center) and ends with the line, “It’s just what you’d expect from a guy who had a Swiss bank account.” A Swiss bank account may have made complete sense for a man with his money. There is nothing inherently wrong with it, any more than there is with naming a private equity fund, as the Times notes, “after a wealthy enclave in Utah’s Deer Valley where the Romneys have a winter home”—a phrase that, with variations, is likely to add a tinge to all stories about Solamere—it’s just not very appealing, at a time when Romney is trying to make an appeal.
This weekend, John Boehner, on CNN’s “State of the Union,” said that he didn’t think that Romney’s money would really be a problem for him: “The American people don’t want to vote for a loser…. They don’t want to vote for someone who hasn’t been successful.” Putting aside the question of Boehner’s definition of “loser”—at what income level does one qualify?—this raises another question. Why hasn’t there been much of an entrepreneurial glow around Romney? Part of it is that he hasn’t really made things, not even shiny boxes for looking at stocks, like our mayor. A second is that one area in which Romney is most certainly a loser is his ability to talk about his own money. He is just bad at this—worse, even, than he is on the subject of faith. (Tagg isn’t much better, defending himself to the Times by saying that there were only five investors whom he knew solely through the campaign, and that it was through other networks that he’d met the rest, including two N.F.L. quarterbacks, the former head of Walmart, and the father of one of his ex-girlfriends.)
Most of all, though, it may be that voters just don’t see a political dividend in Romney’s wealth. There is a model of wealthy politician whom voters trust, because they believe his money secures ideological independence for him, and an incorruptible officeholder for them. Romney comes across as nothing if not dependent; his money makes his changeable record seem more crawling, more an effect of character, because he actually has the resources to say no—to not nod at every suggestion. He hasn’t used it that way; the considerable cash he has put into campaigns has been spent learning how to best to accommodate, rather than as a safeguard against ever having to do so. Voters might well ask what Romney’s money has bought for them, politically, beyond his own nomination.
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