newjerseynewsroom.com

Event set as opponents criticize candidate for $10,000 bet comment

BY TOM HESTER SR.

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney will be in Parsippany Monday night for a fund-raising dinner hosted by Gov. Chris Christie.

The governor said almost every significant member of the New Jersey Republican Party will be present as the Hilton Hotel in an attempt to provide a significant show of support for Romney. The event will cost from $500 for rank-and-file Republicans to $25,000 for VIP’s.

The fund-raiser, the "New Jersey Kickoff Reception," is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Earlier Monday, Romney is campaigning in New Hampshire.

Romney said Monday that he concedes that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is the current frontrunner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Polls show the former Massachusetts governor trailing Gingrich by double figures in three of the four early primary states.

“If I were concerned about Newt Gingrich, I’d have had to be concerned about Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, and Rick Perry, all of whom held similar leads to the leads speaker Gingrich holds now over Governor Romney in various states,” Christie told The Star-Ledger. “In the end no one has voted yet, and when people start to vote I think they’ll decide Governor Romney is the person who is best going to serve our party and is the absolute best person to defeat President Obama next November.”

To coincide with Romney’s New Jersey visit, the Democratic National Committee Monday released a new video entitled, “Mitt Romney: Simply out of touch - Ten Thousand Times Over” with the goal of painting the candidate as out of touch with voters.

“Anybody that offers a $10,000 bet on stage during a debate, only has $100 bills in his wallet, is a multi-millionaire who jokes that he's unemployed and truly believes corporations are people - cannot possibly understand the lives of middle class Americans,” Michael Czin, a DNC press aide, said. “It's no wonder that Mitt Romney hasn't gained traction with an economic plan that only provides a $54 tax cut to the average American family. Mitt Romney just doesn't get it.”

Czin was referring to a $10,000 bet Romney offered to make with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, another GOP presidential hopeful, to settle a dispute over Romney healthcare record during a debate in Des Moines, Iowa on Friday.

The bet instantly provided Romney's opponents with new ammunition for their charge that he's out of touch with middle-class America.

Czin said, “$10,000 is a lot of money to middle class Americans - money that can go a long way to help with medical care, child care, transportation, housing and food. But to Mitt Romney, $10,000 is chump change and that's why he's out of touch 10,000 times over.”