BY PATRICE ST. GERMAIN
The Spectrum
February 21, 2007
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.
