After Mitt Romney told a group of donors on Friday that he is weighing another presidential bid in 2016, he placed a round of calls to New Hampshire, a key presidential primary state.
In a meeting with donors Friday, Romney announced that he is “seriously considering” a third bid for the presidency. By Friday evening, Romney’s remarks at the meeting had been reported publicly in the press.
On Saturday morning, Romney phoned Tom Rath, a former senior adviser in New Hampshire, to give him a personal update. According to Rath, Romney confirmed “he is taking a look at this, he’s giving it serious consideration, thinking about what it would mean, what it would take to get involved.”
“It was not overt recruitment, it was more of a courtesy call,” Rath said. “I think the point of it was more as a courtesy to people to say, ‘We’ve worked together for a long time, and I know there are these things out there in the press, and I want you to know what the current state of my thinking is.’ ”
Romney also placed similar to calls to other New Hampshire Republicans and operatives, Rath said.
He told one senior Republican he “almost certainly will” run for the White House, a source told the Washington Post.
Were Romney to launch another bid for president, it would not be difficult to reactivate his network of allies in the Granite State, where Romney won the Republican primary in 2012 and maintained a visible presence in 2014 as a surrogate and fundraiser for candidates during the midterm elections.
But don’t expect Romney to schedule any trips to New Hampshire until he has made a firm decision to run again — a decision Rath predicted Romney will make “sooner rather than later, in weeks rather than months.”
