Dale Stephanos

Last February, back when Rick Santorum shocked Republicans with a string of primary victories and the once-inevitable campaign of Mitt Romney was teetering on collapse, Woody Johnson held a private meeting in his office in Rockefeller Center.

Mr. Johnson is the heir to the Johnson & Johnson family fortune, the owner of the New York Jets and, over the past year or so, the head of Mr. Romney’s fundraising efforts in the political goldmine that is New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

The meeting was one of several he had held over the course of the campaign with those whose names had shown up on campaign finance filings for some of the other GOP hopefuls, donors who had cast their lot early on with Tim Pawlenty, or Herman Cain, or Rick Perry.

The message was always the same: Mitt Romney will be the nominee. He is only one who can keep Barack Obama from sinking the economy further. There was no political deal-making, no hard sell that said, “Come on, board now, before it is too late.”

“Woody takes the long-term approach,” said Spencer Zwick, Mr. Romney’s national fundraising director, “which is, ‘We need all of these people. Maybe they are working for another candidate today but I am very optimistic Mitt is going to be the nominee, so I can let them know that when their candidate sinks we are going to welcome them on.’”

Five months later, Mitt Romney is indeed the nominee, and his fundraising is going gang green busters: close to $300 million already, leaving President Barack Obama lamenting to supporters that he is at risk of being the first sitting president in modern American history to be outspent. And nowhere has Mr. Romney scored better than in New York City and points nearby. There was the $3 million haul in the Hamptons last weekend. A $10 million tristate swing in May. Three million dollars from a series of fundraisers in March, back when the governor was still struggling to dispatch his Republican rivals.

And at the center of this record fundraising has been Mr. Johnson, who was by Mr. Romney’s side nearly every time he swept into the area, often introducing him at the various soirees, and who has quietly emerged as perhaps the single most important Republican between here and Boston.

“He is exuberant about this role,” said Rick Lazio, a former congressman and key fundraiser and organizer for Mr. Romney in both 2008 and now. “You can see why he owns a football team. He loves the competition. He loves the rah-rah camaraderie. He is all in on this campaign. I think he is the indispensable player in New York City.”

It is nearly impossible to keep the football metaphors from pouring out when talking about Woody Johnson’s role. He bought the Jets for a seemingly absurdly high $635 million in 2000. In the 12 years since, their value has doubled, and the team has had what it is perhaps their most successful run on the field in its history.

“It’s almost this football mentality with Woody,” is how Mr. Zwick described it. “He knows that everybody in the field has a very important role and not everybody is going to score a touchdown. But there are different roles and one of the roles of the campaign is to provide the resources so that the campaign team can get the message across. He is not a lineman who wants to be a quarterback.”

“As Woody sees it, we have a world championship, Super Bowl country with very, very poor management,” said Anthony Scaramucci, a hedge-funder friend of Mr. Johnson and a top Romney donor.

In Mr. Johnson’s sleek, modernistic Rockefeller Center office suite—think Mad Men’s Roger Sterling’s digs updated slightly for the 21st Century—the walls are decorated with photos of him with Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, autographed Jets helmets, game balls, a framed note of appreciation from former running back Curtis Martin.

And after causally mentioning that he had considered purchasing this reporter’s newspaper a few years ago, the football metaphors tumbled out of Mr. Johnson’s mouth, as well.

The reason Mr. Romney struggled at times in the primary is because “the caucus-goer, the primary-goer, is like, in football, the fan that is avid. The avidity level is higher. So the points of view are more polarized then you get in a general election,” he said.

The economy will improve under Mr. Romney because “it’s like changing coaches. [Jets head coach Rex] Ryan came in and we were 25th in the league in defense. We changed the coach and we were number two in the league in the defense. Same with presidents.”

And further:

“One of the reasons Coach Ryan was successful is that he believed in his defense. He said, ‘You are a great defense.’ And he said that day one, we’ve got the best defense in the league. We were 25th in the league and he said, ‘I’ve got the best guys here’ and you know what? It turned out that way. And I think when Mitt Romney is president it will be the same thing, because he knows how to do this.”

And when Mr. Romney went looking for a local finance chairman, Mr. Johnson was, according to Mr. Lazio, “the number one draft pick—a franchise player.”

The two began courting one another soon after the 2008 campaign ended. Mr. Johnson had been the tristate chairman of John McCain’s campaign, his most high-profile role after having a more limited fundraising function in GOP campaigns dating back to George H.W. Bush.

By temperament, friends say, Mr. Johnson has never been one of the hot-blooded, pitchfork-rebellion Republican types, couching his fondness for Republicans instead as a need to keep Democrats and their taxing and regulatory ways out of the Oval Office. When he gets involved in primaries, it is always by lining up behind the early front-runner.

Messrs. Johnson and Romney started meeting regularly in New York or Boston or at Mr. Romney’s summer home in New Hampshire, where Mr. Johnson would shock the former Massachusetts governor by clamoring up the rocks overlooking the lake and plunging into the water off of a reserved-for-teenagers-only rope swing. The two also traveled to Israel and met with Prime Minister Netanyahu.

“I think they both wanted to make sure that they had a deep personal relationship,” said one Johnson associate.

A lot of the big New York donors were slow to commit to Mr. Romney, hoping that someone else would emerge. People like Home Depot founder Ken Langone, hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and industrialist David Koch, were actively wooing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. But despite the Jets and the Johnson family’s ties to the state, Mr. Johnson stayed committed to Mr. Romney.

“He is a New Jersey guy, but he never wavered,” said one member of the Romney campaign. “There was never any fear with the Romney camp that Woody was going to somehow split his allegiances. He has been all-in on this campaign.”

Mr. Johnson is not typical of someone a campaign would want in such a prominent role. Although he made money in cable and cell phone licensing early in his career, he is less an example of the great American spirit of entrepreneurialism than he is a living reminder of the advantages of inherited privilege. His daughter, Casey, was a hard-partying and drug-addicted tabloid favorite whose tangled love life included publicly accusing Mr. Johnson’s sister of stealing her boyfriend and later a lesbian engagement to the Penthouse cover girl Tila Tequila. She died in 2010 due to complications of diabetes. (A photo of Ms. Johnson was on a shelf in Mr. Johnson’s suite, and friends say Mr. Johnson was devastated by her death, but rarely talks about her. “It’s that old-world, WASPY, don’t-reveal-our-feelings thing,” one said, noting that Mr. Johnson also had a brother die when he was young and that his other daughter suffers from lupus. “Families like that are used to so much tragedy.”)

But in other respects, Mr. Johnson was perfect for the role. Someone from finance would have had to deal with a host of entanglements and the public’s distaste with Wall Street. Ditto someone from a traditional GOP sector, like energy. Someone who worked at a publicly traded company would have to answer to annoyed board members and shareholders. Plus, with only the Jets in his portfolio, Mr. Johnson has the most valuable resource any campaign could ask for: time

“I don’t think we have ever seen this combination of a guy who has his kind of stature in the region but also by a quirk of his life is able to devote 80 percent of his day to this and still maintain his day job,” said one Romney backer.

When asked to estimate how many people he has contacted on behalf of the Romney campaign, Mr. Johnson said, “Oh, brother. Every Republican in New York,” then added, “several thousand.” He spends, he says, 25 hours a week just making phone calls, plus whatever time he spends heading to lunches on behalf of the candidate. He organizes major call-athons, too, getting a hundred or so Republicans prominent in business to make phone calls on behalf of the candidate.

“A lot of people get a title and a name, and they want a big name they can put on top of the letterhead,” said Mr. Zwick. “Woody is a big name, but he really works. He doesn’t just oversee who makes the calls. By the time the event rolls around, he has really worked every single host committee member.”

It is hard to ignore, however, Mr. Johnson’s proximity to the Jets as draw for donors. His position with the team gives him what one donor called, “some regional celebrity,” and another said that dreams of being invited to the owner’s box dance in the heads Mr. Romney’s big donors.

“He has the power of his name, and gravitas, and talent,” said Georgette Mosbacher, who along with her husband helped introduce Mr. Johnson to the world of Republican fundraising back in the 1980s. “And he owns a football team. Men are still the primary money people in politics and he is almost like a celebrity with them.”

As for Mr. Romney, according to Mr. Zwick, “Mitt loves being with Woody. He is extremely grateful for all Woody has done, and Woody has never asked for anything. I mean, what does Woody Johnson actually need?”

Plus, he said, Mr. Romney delights in a fact that several of Mr. Johnson’s friends listed as his most recognizable trait: his mode of transportation. “Mitt loves the fact that Woody Johnson gets around town on a Razor scooter. He finds that hysterical. This is a guy that takes a helicopter from Teterboro to 34th Street and gets on his Razor scooter. I mean, the irony!”

Friends of both say too that is a way in which Mr. Johnson fits into Romneyworld in a way most brash New York donors do not. Mr. Johnson is not the kind of money man who thinks his proximity to the campaign allows him to advise them on what kind of ads they should be running in swing states, or who believes he has special insight into what independent voters want to hear.

“Romney has that Midwestern honesty thing about him,” said one person close to the campaign. “They don’t like people that are hard-charging, intense, screaming types that go on all the Sunday shows. Woody is low-maintenance.”

And self-deprecating, too. Mr. Johnson has been known to say on fundraising calls that, “Mitt has the smartest people in America around him—and me.”

For Mr. Johnson, he explains his devotion to Mr. Romney by cycling through his accomplishments—his turnaround of the Olympics, his working with a Democratic legislature in Massachusetts to balance budgets—but what really animates him is talking about what a disaster Mr. Obama has been.

“If you agree with the premise that free markets and free enterprise and the success of small business and medium-size business are important in delivering jobs to the people,” he explained, “then the CEO that is against small business, doesn’t like business, doesn’t like small business, doesn’t like medium business, doesn’t like business business, doesn’t trust business, wants to regulate business, wants more business to be done by the government.”

If Mr. Obama is reelected, Mr. Johnson said, it will mean more taxes, new regulations, a shrunken military. The election, he said, will be a referendum on the president, so “the president is trying to take the public’s mind off his record and off his promises of change and onto things like Bain Capital and Mrs. Romney being a housewife.”

He likes Mr. Romney, he said, because “he is open to suggestions. He is not a possessive guy. I think if he finds a better way he will switch. That is a positive. That comes from a humble, nonegotistical background. I don’t think you find that in a lot of candidates.”

The Romney campaign declined to speculate on how much Mr. Johnson has actually raised, but it is estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars.

One secret of Mr. Johnson’s, a friend said, is that he has been known to ask donors to give more than they are capable of, flattering them that he thinks they have bigger wallets then they actually do. His relationship with Mr. Romney helps too, with several donors suggesting that they believed that if they have Mr. Johnson’s ear, they probably have the candidate’s, too.

“There is a certain acquired skill I guess in making these calls,” he said. “They have to know that it is not about me, but that all of this goes to the candidate. They have to know that perhaps through me the candidate will know a little something about them. I am there in some ways as an ombudsman for them.”

If Mr. Romney wins, there is no telling what it could mean for Mr. Johnson. Typically, people in his position go on to high-level cabinet posts at the Department of Commerce or somewhere similar, or take prestigious ambassadorships. Friends say that if a President Romney asks him to take one of these jobs on, it would be hard for him to turn down.

Mr. Johnson is unequivocal.

“I am not doing anything,” he said. “I’ve got young boys. I’ve got a team that I love running.”

But, he added, “I do like being a part of the process.”

dfreedlander@observer.com

(Photo: Getty)

A group of New York Orthodox Jews have formed a group, "Jews Pick Rick," supporting presidential candidate Rick Santorum in his quest for the White House, they announced in a statement this morning.

“What started as three men in a small room has grown into a larger operation as many Jews have emailed or communicated to us their interest in helping Santorum,” David Shor, the spokesman for the organization, said in the release.

"The sole goal of Jews Pick Rick is to turn the Orthodox community into Santorum territory, spreading Rick’s conservative message to Boro Park, Flatbush, Monsey, Lakewood and Five Towns," he continued, touting Mr. Santorum's foreign policy views.

The group also took the bat to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, "whose Jewish advisers are primarily secular Jews," according to the release.

"These statistics are reflected in the list of delegates from New York which both campaigns have -- there are several distinctly Orthodox names in Santorum's list with much fewer in Romney's. Santorum has a longstanding relationship with Agudath Israel, and the Orthodox community in his home state of Pennsylvania speaks highly of him."

As to what Jews Pick Rick will do for Mr. Santorum's campaign, they said their current plan “is to issue press releases to highlight Santorum’s positions that are relevant to the community.”

Mr. Santorum should probably keep those Hanukkah cards in the drawer, however.

Update: A reader points out that Mr. Romney does, in fact, have an Orthodox Jewish policy adviser on his campaign team, Tevi Troy.

Update II: Mr. Troy tweets that he's not alone, either.

Newt Gingrich wearing a yarmulke (Photo: Getty)

Florida's diverse demographics have brought new elements to the Republican primary, from bringing the focus to Latino issues, to the state's elderly population. Now, Florida's Jewish bloc is impacting the dialogue as Newt Gingrich and his surrogates raise questions about Mitt Romney's cuts to kosher food programs during his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts.

Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a power broker in New York's Orthodox Jewish community, blasted Mr. Romney's decision to eliminate the $5-a-day funding for kosher meals in Jewish nursing homes.

“Well, `let them eat pork or let them eat something else’ — if you’re kosher, you’re not eating anything else," he told the Post. "It’s just that simple. Why Romney didn’t get it at that particular time is disappointing and quite shocking to me."

At the time, Romney explained his decision by saying the kosher costs "'unnecessarily' would lead to an 'increased rate for nursing facilities,' the Post wrote over the weekend. "[E]ven as kosher nursing homes were complaining that state-funding-formula changes could force them to close their kitchens."

An anonymous Romney aide defended the former governor's kosher record to BuzzFeed, arguing it was only a temporary cut made during a fiscal crisis.

Newt Gingrich (Photo: Getty)

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich surged to the front of the pack and pulled out a victory in South Carolina's Republican primary tonight. Mr. Gingrich, whose performance in the polls over the last year has been a roller coaster of ups and downs, was immediately declared the winner by Fox News, ABC News and MSNBC when polls closed at 7pm.

The defeat is the second set back for Mr. Romney in two days. In addition to losing the Palmetto State, his win in Iowa was reversed yesterday to former Senator Rick Santorum, who finished tonight towards the bottom of the four candidates still competing for the Republican presidential nomination, along with Congressman Ron Paul.

On Thursday, Texas Governor Rick Perry dropped out and endorsed Mr. Gingrich, giving the former House Speaker another boost to his unconventional campaign.

Despite emerging as the clear alternative to Mr. Romney, Mr. Gingrich still has an uphill climb to win his party's nomination. South Carolina, with its large numbers of evangelical, conservative voters was a weak spot for Mr. Romney, who still maintains a lead in the next two states--Florida and Nevada.

Florida, the next primary contest on January 31st, will present a new set of challenges to the candidates. The state's large population could strain campaign war chests as they spread their messages on the airwaves. And the primary demographics there contain larger segments of elderly and Latino voters than the campaigns have faced so far. Both Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Romney have already begun to air Spanish-language ads, and Mr. Romney has taken a more spirited defense of Social Security in the state.

A map of the election results: Romney is yellow, Paul is green. (Photo: Google)

Mitt Romney's strong win last night, scoring 39% overall and 16% more than the second place finisher, Ron Paul, naturally involved winning many different groups. According to CBS News' exit poll, Mr. Romney either won outright or placed a very close second to Mr. Paul across most demographic and ideological categories. The data also reveals that he performed strongest among those describing their views as "somewhat conservative" and the very rich.

Indeed, Mr. Romney, who's very wealthy himself, won more than half of those with families making more than $200,000 a year, one of his highest percentages in the entire exit poll. Among those making $50,000 or less, Mr. Romney only tied Mr. Paul, each earning less than a third of that financially modest vote.

Ideologically, Mr. Romney performed strongest among those describing themselves as "somewhat conservative," seeing his still-substantial support dip with voters who viewed themselves as either "moderate" or "very conservative." Jon Huntsman, who finished third and heavily campaigned in the state, did well with moderate voters while Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who finished in fourth and fifth place respectively, overperformed with the more conservative ones.

The exit poll also suggests that Mr. Romney's win seems to be almost completely founded on one campaign message: electability. When asked to name which one issue was most important in deciding how they voted, more respondents selected "Can defeat Barack Obama" than anything else. More than 62% of this group supported Mr. Romney.

The next Republican presidential contest will be South Carolina on January 21, where at least one candidate, Rick Perry, appears to be making his last stand. Mr. Perry received less than 1% of the vote in New Hampshire last night.

Gov. Rick Perry (Photo: Wikimedia)

Texas Governor Rick Perry finished in sixth place in New Hampshire tonight, scoring last among the main candidates for the GOP nomination. As the rest of the field is making their concession speeches on television, the Perry campaign phoned it in, so to speak, by conceding electronically.

"Tonight's results in New Hampshire show the race for 'conservative alternative' to Mitt Romney remains wide open," the statement read. "I skipped New Hampshire and aimed my campaign right at conservative South Carolina, where we've been campaigning hard and receiving an enthusiastic welcome."

Governor Perry's focus on South Carolina is more than rhetoric, they appear to be staking their entire campaign on the Palmetto State after finishing last in the Iowa caucus, when he announced he was "reassessing" his campaign.

He's currently winning less than 1% of the vote in New  Hampshire.

Mr. Perry is hardly the only candidate whose fortunes seem to be wed to the South Carolina primary. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, who are still competing for fourth place in the Granite State, are also hoping the more conservative state delivers them a big win. South Carolina votes on January 21st.

Mitt Romney (Photo: Wikimedia)

Mitt Romney has scored another win tonight, defeating his rivals in New Hampshire. The networks declared the results at the earliest possible opportunity, as soon as the polls closed at 8 p.m.  Mr. Romney's New Hampshire victory comes as  no surprise, as his dominance in Granite State polling had never been shaken.

Mr. Romney had previously eked out a win in Iowa last week by a mere 8 votes.  The win provides a nice boost as his more ideologically rigid rivals compete with one another to coalesce enough voters to provide a substantive challenge to the Romney campaign.

Ron Paul is projected to finish in second place, while Jon Huntsman will finish third. Mr. Huntsman focused much of his energy on tonight's race, campaigning almost exclusively in New Hampshire at the expense of other states.

As Rick Perry is projected to finish in sixth place, the only undecided element is whether Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum finish fourth. The Perry is spending tonight in South Carolina, likely to avoid highlighting the New Hampshire results. South Carolina votes next on January 21st.

The competition between the candidates is as much of a battle against media expectations as for votes.  The vast majority of the delegates will be assigned later in the year.

Last Update: 9:54pm

The endorsement is a product of Mr. Paul's platform of emphatically endorsing the rights of states, without which, Nevada (outside of Clark County) wouldn't have legalized prostitution. Mr. Paul's experience as a gynecologist was also a strong factor, citing this as an explicit understanding and inherent endorsement of womens' rights.

Furthermore, the women will be campaigning for Mr. Paul on the homefront:

“If a client comes into the Bunny Ranch and says, ‘I’m pimpin for Paul,’ they’re going to have a real good time,” owner Dennis Hof proclaimed. “Aren’t they, girls?”

“Yeah!” the women sitting next to Hof on a red velvet couch shouted.

Finally, in an unlikely victory, Mr. Paul has also received the endorsement of Gucci Parker, who was previously assumed to be registering an abstention. Gucci Parker's change-of-heart was the product of a concern for being cannibalized by the policies of President Barack Obama. Literally:

Ranch employees say they can’t back President Barack Obama because he signed a law that lifted a 5-year-old ban on horse meat inspections. “We’re animal lovers, and [my dog] Gucci is also supporting Ron Paul because he feels like if Obama will let us eat the horses, he could be next,” worker Cami Parker explained.

Whether or not the Romney campaign can emerge unscathed from this endorsement has yet to be seen. President Barack Obama has currently not commented on the matter of dog cannibalization. Finally, pharmaceutical painkiller addicts, polygamists, and child molesters of the world have yet to weigh in with their endorsements. Surely in time they will, resulting in another great headline like this one, and the funniest iteration of 'oppo' media placement basically ever. As the ever-quotable Omar Little once put it: 'It's all in the game.'

It certainly is. The Nevada primary takes place on February 4th.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Michele Bachmann (Photo: Facebook)

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann dropped her presidential campaign today after a disappointing sixth-place finish in last night's Iowa caucuses.

Her per performance last night, scoring a mere 5% of the Iowa caucus vote, is quite a different result than the Ames Straw Poll she won earlier last year. Although Ames had previously been seen as a tangible test of a candidate's strength and organization in the Hawkeye State, the final results differed substantially from the straw poll's findings. Governor Mitt Romney, who won Iowa's caucus vote last night, did not even actively participate in the straw poll.

Meanwhile, the last night's fifth place finisher, Texas Governor Rick Perry, vaguely tweeted his intentions to carry on for at least the next two primary state campaigns, despite sounding like he was considering dropping out himself last night.

Congresswoman Bachmann's exit, as well as possibly Governor Perry's if he does indeed abandon his presidential bid, is seen to benefit former Senator Rick Santorum, as they all occupy a more ideologically pure brand of conservatism and may have been taking votes away from one another much more so than Mr. Romney.