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Romney in S. Utah to raise
funds
February 21, 2007
By Patrice St. Germain
The Spectrum
ST. GEORGE - About 250 people have
paid $1,000 a plate for breakfast with presidential candidate
hopeful Mitt Romney.
The fund-raising breakfast will be
this morning at the Dixie Center in St. George for Romney, who
recently finished serving as governor of Massachusetts after turning
around what had been a troubled 2002 Winter Olympics effort in Salt
Lake City.
Romney is one of the candidates
seeking the Republican nomination for the 2008 presidential race.
According to Washington County
Clerk Cal Robison, there are approximately 63,000 registered voters
in Washington County, with about half registered as Republicans.
Robison said of the remaining 50 percent, 7 percent are Democrats, 3
percent are registered with other parties, and 40 percent are
unaffiliated.
While it was unclear how many
people had been invited to the breakfast, Robert McClellan, co-owner
of Fairway Catering, which services the Dixie Center, said 250
people were expected for the buffet breakfast, which would include
the standard breakfast fare of eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes,
muffins and Danish.
Dean Cox, chairman of the
Washington County Republican Party, said he did not know many
details of the breakfast other than Romney would be in town for the
event.
Cox said he provided several lists
of a broad group of perspective contributors to the organizers of
the event but said he would not attend.
"At a thousand a head, that puts it
out of my budget," Cox said.
Cox said a county party can't take
any kind of position on the presidential race at this point.
"It has to be done independent of
the county organization," Cox said. "We don't endorse until after
the primary. Until then, it's an open field, and we try and treat
everyone equally.
Attempts by The Spectrum to reach
Robert Lichfield and Randy Wilkinson, organizers of the event, were
unsuccessful Tuesday.
The cost of the breakfast, like
other campaign contributions, is not tax deductible.
Morris Peacock, with Kemp, Burdick,
Hinton and Hall, said campaign or political contributions are not
deductible as a business or as a charitable contribution.
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