Romney backing?

It’s certainly no formal endorsement, but I found an e-mail I received last evening intriguing.

It wasn’t the boilerplate, overly single-spaced form appeal I received from the Larry Hogan for Governor campaign exhorting me to help them raise the $258,612.42 in matching funds to enable them to unlock a kitty of public financing that they’re careful to note:

These matching funds are not taxpayer dollars. Instead, the matching fund consists of voluntary donations and compounding interest designed to level the playing field and allow grassroots campaigns like ours to compete against the millions in special interest money.

We’ve been through this whole explanation before with Ron George, so theoretically they’re indeed not taxpayer dollars. (They may be dollars given willingly, but may not have necessarily gone to the candidate of the donor’s choice.) That part isn’t the interesting one.

No, my interest was piqued when I read the disclaimer at the bottom:

This email was sent to: (my e-mail address)

This email was sent by: Romney for President Inc., 138 Conant St., 1st Floor, Beverly, MA 01915.

This message reflects the opinions and representations of Larry Hogan for Governor, and is not an endorsement by Mitt Romney. You are receiving this email because you signed up as a member of Mitt Romney’s online community on 7/14/2012.

First of all, I didn’t realize that the Romney campaign committee was still extant – I wouldn’t think he’s going to run in 2016 after losing last time. Then again, Mitt is still making some money from third-party consultants renting the 2012 mailing list: according to FEC records, the Romney campaign made over $650,000 in rental fees in 2013 from three companies:  FLS Connect LLC, Granite Lists LLC, and Targeted Victory. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see who the Hogan campaign paid for the usage of Mitt’s e-mail list – my guess is Targeted Victory since they’re based in the Washington area.

And to pull on my Jeff Quinton hat, they should have invested in a little proofreading before sending out the single-spaced message. The poor spacing makes it hard to read. (Quinton really despises another recent effort from Hogan, though.)

So we know Larry Hogan is out trying to raise money from Romney supporters. Now if we can figure out when he’ll make a joint appearance with the rest of the candidates (he hadn’t yet confirmed for this event, for example) we may get someplace. After all, someone finally dragged his opposition to Common Core out of him yesterday – even though he tried to steer the conversation back to his bread-and-butter topics – so it’s a start.