For Wealthy Romney Donors, Up Close and Personal Access

Charles Dharapak/Associated Press

Karl Rove was among the high-powered Republicans at a retreat for Mitt Romney fund-raisers in Utah this weekend.

They rubbed elbows with Beth Myers, who is running Mr. Romney’s vice-presidential search, in the packed lobby bar of the Chateaux at Silver Lake, over $15 glasses of Scotch.

And they mingled with Mr. Romney’s wife, Ann, during an intimate “Women for Romney victory tea,” held on an umbrella-shaded patio in this resort town.

The Romney campaign, whose fund-raising prowess has defied assumptions about President Obama’s financial advantages, offered wealthy donors and bundlers an extraordinary level of access to the candidate, his staff members, advisers and family this weekend at a three-day retreat that even seasoned political contributors said dwarfed previous presidential powwows.

Mr. Romney’s political operation seemed to all but shut down and relocate to the mountains of Utah. At least 15 senior campaign figures flew in for what blue-blazered guests from Texas, North Carolina and New York dubbed Republicanpalooza, delivering briefings on the effectiveness of Mr. Romney’s and Mr. Obama’s commercials and spinning them through the latest polling data, which they said showed the race as a dead heat.

“Everybody was completely accessible,” said Anthony Scaramucci, a New York financier and Romney fund-raiser who said the candidate took the time to warmly greet and thank him by his nickname, Mooch, at a dinner on the first night of the retreat.

Yet for all the political and financial firepower assembled here, the Romney confab was not the only, or necessarily the most exclusive, gathering of ultrarich Republicans this weekend. In a simultaneous demonstration of the party’s fund-raising might, the industrialist billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch held a conference for conservative megadonors at a resort outside San Diego. Over the past few years, their high-dollar strategy sessions have been the marquee events of the Republican campaign finance set.

The Koch conference touched off an unexpected — and for the Romney campaign, somewhat unwelcome — competition for top-flight moneyed supporters. While Mr. Romney’s campaign officials have made it clear that they appreciate the efforts of wealthy backers like the Kochs, there was consternation among some on his finance team that the brothers decided to move forward with their conference after Mr. Romney scheduled his for the same weekend. As one fund-raiser noted, Mr. Romney is, after all, the candidate.

The Romney campaign offered donors who gave $50,000 or raised $100,000 intimate seminars and discussions featuring leading Republican lights, past and present: Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice, James Baker III, John McCain and Jeb Bush, whose presence represented a symbolic embrace of a candidate who struggled to win over the disparate elements of his party in the bruising primary.

“Everyone is coming here to rally around the Romney flagpole,” said Cheryl Halpern, a filmmaker who attended with her husband, Fred, a real estate developer from New Jersey. The pair went to a special Sabbath dinner at the retreat featuring kosher fare.

At times, the scene here at a compound of high-altitude ski lodges seemed like an imitation Republican National Convention. In the span of a few moments, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, greeted Michael Chertoff, George. W. Bush’s secretary of homeland security, at an outdoor cafe as Mary Matalin, the conservative commentator, whizzed by in an extended-cab golf cart and Mr. Romney’s brother, Scott, approached in a pair of shiny black pants from Prada. (Guests noted that Scott Romney’s current and ex-wives were in attendance.)

Brenda LaGrange Johnson, a former United States ambassador to Jamaica who previously attended donor retreats held by President George W. Bush in Texas, said there was no comparison with Mr. Romney’s event here. “This is much more thorough,” she said. “This is much more extensive.”