Right-hand man rakes in bucks for Mitt

Two days after the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City ended, Mitt Romney's 22-year-old personal assistant was preparing to begin his professional career at an investment banking firm in New York City.

But Romney, who was about to make his own transition from Olympic leader to political candidate, had other plans for his right-hand man, Spencer Zwick, then a newlywed and a recent Brigham Young University graduate.

"He turned to me and said, 'I'm going to run for governor of Massachusetts. Would you come back and help work on my campaign?' I said, 'I've never worked in politics before. I don't know a thing about it.'

"I said, 'Sure,"' Zwick said during a Deseret Morning News interview.

Since then, Zwick has apparently learned plenty about politics.

Today, about to turn 28 years old, he is earning $25,000 a month as the national finance director for Romney's presidential campaign, responsible for Romney's achievement of raising more money than any other Republican candidate so far.

It's a long way from the volunteer translating he was doing at the Olympic organizing committee before he was unexpectedly tapped as Romney's chief aide, using languages he'd picked up as a child living overseas and, later, as an LDS missionary.

His father, Craig Zwick, now a member of the LDS Church's First Quorum of the Seventy, moved the family to Chile and then Brazil, where he served missions. Zwick, who graduated from East High School, was just 9 years old when the family first left their east bench home.

Zwick thought he'd only be in Boston through Romney's campaign for governor. But that led to a position on Romney's transition team, and then, to being named the governor's deputy chief of staff.

When Romney started looking seriously at a run for the White House, he turned to Zwick again, first to help run his political action committees, and now to raise money for a highly competitive presidential campaign that could end up costing close to $100 million.

Becoming a fund-raiser

Sitting in the back yard of his in-laws' Federal Heights home after returning from a rare day off spent at Lake Powell with his own parents, Zwick acknowledges he is young to be overseeing the network of high-powered corporate executives soliciting contributions for Romney.

Looking his age in shorts and a T-shirt worn with a weathered Boston Red Sox cap, Zwick said he was so anxious before Romney's first major fund-raising event back in January that he couldn't sleep.