Newsweek's Holly Bailey tries to figure out where Mitt Romney's money went. After all, what matters almost as much as "how much did the candidates raise?" is, how much have they spent and how much they have on hand. It's called the "burn rate."
Interesting item in the story: Romney's campaign doesn't call it "spending." They call it "investment." While it would be easy to make a joke about how that's what liberals in government call government spending, I actually think the use of the word "investment" tells you something about Romney's campaign and how it is different from the rest.
Romney's a venture capitalist - he understands you have to spend money to make money in business, and he has transferred that to his presidential campaign. I think that's why Mitt loaned his campaign $2.3 million at the start - seed capital to start big and fast rather than try to bootstrap the thing until the money came in. It's probably why Romney was able to raise $23 million in the first quarter - almost as much as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side ($25m, and $26m respectively), even though Romney is not nearly as well known as Obama and Clinton.
Romney's personal wealth made it easier for him to attract top campaign and fundraising talent from day one, and that made it easier for him tap into the wealth of his business and church networks.
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