Romney in New York!

I volunteered for two Romney campaign fundraisers today downtown at the Intercontinental Hotel in Downtown on 48th and Lexington (close to Grand Central). The first event was primarily big doners featuring a photo with Gov. Romney for donors of the maximum $2300 legally allowed to the Romney Campaign. I stood at one of the main entrances directing people to wait in line for a photo with Gov. Romney. Mitt does exude strong charisma and ere of optimism particularly evident as experienced businessmen wore grins of joy as they exited their photo with Mitt. In his 5-10 opening speech (sprinkled with some thoughtful humor) he sounded very confident.

I handled the microphone for the brief Q&A with the big donors. The questions were well informed and incited interesting and fairly in depth response about topics such as China in the 21st century, Culture Preservation and of course immigration. Romney advocated increased spending for by the federal government beyond $1 Billion, and in a few comments he was supportive of improving marketing our country and its people to the rest of the world. He also gave strong emphasis to getting the best people to work on projects who would most likely disagree and argue to arrive at the best possible outcome.

I was fascinated in his remark that people expect constant campaigning to be wearisome and exhausting for incessant meetings and speeches (his 8th meeting that day), he said he is energized from all the people he meets and when he gets to the hotel late he reads for a couple hours to wind down- (I've had similar thoughts in my limited campaigning experiences in college). That nightly routine is believable listening to his citing of various books and articles in his speech often with a sensitive disclaimer "not sure if you happened to have read this...". He made some good case points (success stories such as the 2002 Olympics and Healthcare in Massachussets) for his campaign and demonstrated a wide breadth of knowledge.

On a side note the food was superb. I ate so much fresh tasting jumbo shrimp and mini open faced salami sandwhiches with cheese it took care of dinner and most of breakfast!