Romney raised $6.3M in 2010

The Daily Beast reports that Mitt Romney's seven political action committees — one federal and six state, all bearing the name Free and Strong America — raised $6.3 million in 2010.

With the recent release of Federal Election Commission filings for the fourth quarter of 2010, we now know how much money prospective Republican presidential candidates raised last year vis-a-vis their political action committees. And despite Romney's impressive haul, his total is still less than half of what another Republican presidential hopeful raised.

Newt Gingrich netted a whopping $14.5 million last year, making Gingrich the only Republican presidential aspirant to raise more money than Mitt in 2010. But as Politico reports, that enormous figure comes with a considerable caveat for Gingrich: unlike all other would-be candidates, his political group American Solutions for Winning the Future is organized as a 527 entity and not a PAC. In normal English, Bloomberg explains how a 527 can receive donations of unlimited size but cannot make important relationship-building donations to political candidates like a PAC can.

Two interesting footnotes to Romney's PAC fundraising: New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and his mother each gave $15,000 to Romney during 2010, and (per Politico) "Romney's field-leading PACs contributed $1.2 million to candidates and committees last year."

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