Santorum Donor Hopes Obama’s ‘Teleprompters Are Bulletproof’

Andrew Goodman/Getty Images for Celebrity Fight Night(WASHINGTON) -- Foster Friess, the multi-millionaire who bankrolled a large portion of Rick Santorum’s failed presidential bid, walked back another ill-advised statement this week after he said he hopes President Obama’s “teleprompters are bulletproof.”

“There’s a lot of things that haven’t been hammered at because Rick and Mitt [Romney] have been kind of going at each other,” Friess told Fox Business News’ Lou Dobbs on Wednesday.  “Now that they’ve kind of trained their barrels on President Obama I’m afraid his, I hope his teleprompters are bulletproof.”

“I mean that figuratively,” Friess added after a short moment of total silence.

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Friess seemed to realize his mistake.

“I’m sorry.  I probably shouldn’t have said that,” the wealthy Santorum donor said, chuckling with what appeared to be embarrassment.

“No, you should not have said it,” Dobbs immediately responded before clarifying his guest’s comments.  “We understand it’s a metaphor.”

Friess, who poured close to $1.7 million into the pro-Santorum Super PAC, found himself in the hot seat of the contraception debate in February when he suggested women put aspirin between their knees instead of using expensive contraception.

“Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives,” Friess said to a visibly surprised Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC.  “The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly.”

With Santorum now out of the GOP race, Friess said he will shift his support to Romney and back him financially when needed.  While Friess was front-and-center in the Santorum campaign, often standing behind the candidate in his telltale cowboy hat at campaign events, he may be less visible as a Romney supporter.

Friess, a retired mutual fund manager with a net worth estimated at about $500 million, told ABC News on Wednesday that with Santorum out of the race, he is now hoping to “fade back into obscurity.”

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Santorum Says Campaign Funds Dried Up

AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Rick Santorum admitted Thursday that his war chest had dried up by the time he reached Pennsylvania and that the campaign had entered into debt for the first time, making him believe they would be unable to compete against Mitt Romney in the Keystone state.

“We didn’t have a lot of money to begin with, but we were at a point where we simply had in the last couple races, really worked hard and spent money and particularly in Wisconsin, we felt we had to win Wisconsin in order to do well in Pennsylvania, and it was a situation where we simply didn’t have the resources to compete going forward,” Santorum said on the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins radio show Thursday. “We for the first time in the campaign had a debt.  The debt was from my perspective more substantial than I was comfortable with.”

Santorum, who suspended his campaign Tuesday, said he defied the odds and was able to run a campaign “on a shoe string.” He also disclosed for the first time that in the week after his loss in the Wisconsin primary, his campaign “basically raised almost no money.”

“It was a very, very small trickle of funds that were coming in.  We realized it’s one thing to go out and compete in Pennsylvania.  Romney had already laid down $4 million of advertising, and we were looking at probably not being able to spend a penny on advertising.  You just reach a point where you want to compete, but you have to be able to compete, and we felt we couldn’t.”

Despite possible openings during the interview, Santorum didn’t praise Romney or even mention potential future support. It’s widely believed he will endorse Romney.

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Mitt Romney Gains Support of Rick Santorum's Biggest Supporter

JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Wasting no time, the Romney campaign reached out to Rick Santorum’s biggest donor, Foster Friess, on Wednesday. Just one day after Santorum dropped out of the race, Friess told ABC News the campaign touched base with the former mutual fund manager and he feels as though he must financially help Romney.

“There’s a lot at stake. Rick has said he is going to support the ticket and I will do the same,” Friess said. “I’ve had some conversations with his people, but not with him directly about how I can help.”

Politico was first to report Friess would financially back Romney now that Santorum is out of the race.

Friess was the largest donor to Santorum’s super PAC, The Red, White, and Blue Fund, and is a longtime friend who during parts of the campaign was often seen by the former Pennsylvania senator’s side, usually in his white cowboy hat.

He said that while he respects and understands Santorum’s decision he “honestly would still like him to be in the fray” and “still be competitive.”

“It’s his decision and when you have a child in danger and Karen was home alone with Bella, it was all part of how he was thinking,” Friess said, adding Santorum really “hoped to win Wisconsin.”

“His strength as a campaigner is face-to-face meeting people and answering questions,” Friess said. “You can do that in Iowa, but Pennsylvania is so huge it’s difficult to run that campaign.” He added that Santorum was also facing the reality he would be up against a television ad assault by the Romney campaign in his home state.

He said he never encouraged Santorum to leave the race so the party could start focusing on defeating President Obama, but knows “he’s been getting that from other people he respects.”

Despite pouring in almost $1.7 million into the super PAC, Friess says he has no regrets that his wallet is a little lighter.

“I’m extremely happy. Look what we accomplished. Look what Rick Santorum did for the party, the enthusiasm for his message, and his message isn’t going anywhere, the message is still resonating. Those of us who believe it’s now our turn to continue to promote that message, having dinner parties and getting involved in the process.”

He added that his family isn’t sorry there is less to go around (reports estimate Friess’ worth at over $500 million).

“My son says, ‘Dad, I don’t have any problem with you giving away my inheritance because what’s an inheritance if we don’t have a country.’”

As for the always-colorful Friess, who got some notoriety in his own right for funding Santorum’s campaign and for making some eyebrow-raising comments during the campaign, he says he’s hoping to “fade back into obscurity.”

In February, he tried to make light of the contraception argument to Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC and it didn’t go over well.

“This contraceptive thing, my gosh, it’s so…inexpensive. Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives,” Friess told a clearly surprised Mitchell. “The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly.”

And Wednesday evening on Fox Business Channel, Friess said he told Lou Dobbs that he hopes Obama’s “teleprompters are bulletproof.”

Friess said he regretted the words as soon as he said them.

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Romney Won’t Rule Out Romney-Santorum Ticket

Win McNamee/Getty Images(WARWICK, R.I.) -- For the second time in as many days, Mitt Romney was quizzed about his potential vice presidential pick during a town hall and declined to rule out a possible Romney-Santorum ticket.

“Everybody is on my list,” Romney said, answering a voter who asked whether he would consider former presidential candidate Rick Santorum as his running mate. “Everybody is on my list. I’m not taking anybody off the list, alright?”

But Romney quickly stopped himself -- backtracking to say that there actually isn’t a list of potential vice presidential candidates. At least not yet.

“I actually don’t, I don’t have a list, yet,” said Romney. “So I can’t say someone is on or off my list.”

“But I can tell you that the people who I had the privilege of running against would surely be among those I would consider,” said Romney. “The criteria, I think, has to be, first and foremost, is this a person who could be president of the United States, if that were needed? And do people recognize that and see that as a person who has that kind of qualification and so he -- I’ve said this before. If any of the people I ran against happened to become the nominee, I would have endorsed them and supported them for president.”

“So of course they’d be on that list -- and he, among others,” Romney said of Santorum.

“If any of you have any other ideas, just pass them along here,” Romney added, laughing, before searching the room for another questioner.

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Why Rick Santorum Decided to Call It Quits

Jessica McGowan/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Rick Santorum’s decision to cut short his quest for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday came after an intense weekend of thought, prayer and conference calls.

According to top sources in the campaign, the former Pennsylvania senator did not reach his decision until late Monday night after a series of conversations with his family and closest aides.  His choice to end his bid exactly two weeks to the day before the April 24 Pennsylvania primary came down two major considerations:

First, the Santorum campaign came to terms with the fact that Texas was never going to become a winner-take-all primary, likely denying them a huge treasure chest of more than 150 delegates they hoped would help narrow the gap with Mitt Romney on the delegate scoreboard.

Second, Newt Gingrich showed no signs of exiting the race completely any time soon, the Santorum team concluded.  They felt that they needed Gingrich’s endorsement and a large portion of his delegates to catch up to Romney.

“Rick is smart, he’s level headed,” Santorum’s national communications director Hogan Gidley said in an interview with ABC News.  He said that his candidate ultimately reached the conclusion: “If there’s no path, if there aren’t the delegates, then there’s no reason to keep going.”

Gidley said that this realization combined with a prayerful Easter weekend and the hospitalization of Santorum’s 3-year-old daughter, Bella, all led Santorum to step in front of a television camera in Gettysburg, Pa., Tuesday afternoon and announce that “this presidential race for us is over.”

Santorum’s decision, however, was not meant to be an escape route to avoid a potentially humiliating loss in Pennsylvania six years after he failed to win re-election to a U.S. Senate seat there, multiple aides said.

“One thing we did feel, we felt pretty darn confident about winning Pennsylvania,” said the campaign’s chief strategist John Brabender.  “We didn’t have the money to play in multiple battles…we just couldn’t compete in Delaware, Connecticut and New York at the same time as Pennsylvania.”

Brabender said the campaign had television commercials ready to go and county coordinators ready to be deployed.  But the Romney campaign was ready too.  They were poised to launch an all-out air war against Santorum, having reserved more than $2.2 million of airtime on television stations across the state starting this week.

“If there was a scenario where winning Pennsylvania would have lofted us to winning the nomination, we would have done it,” Brabender said.  “But it wasn’t realistic.  Even winning Pennsylvania wouldn’t make a difference.  We didn’t want to do it out of ego; we wanted to do it to beat Barack Obama.”

Gidley emphasized that dropping out before the primary was not a choice borne out of fear: “Rick lost Pennsylvania before.  It didn’t crush him then, it wouldn’t crush him now.”

But, in the end, the decision did not come easily, and family matters loomed large.

“I told Rick whatever decision he makes he is a father first,” another top aide, who requested anonymity in order to discuss Santorum’s deliberations candidly, said.  “As tough as it was, he reflected on the fact he is a father first and this was the right decision for his family.”

The aide added, “At the moment it’s never easy to do, you pray about it, agonize about it, but at the end of the day it was the right thing for himself and his family.”

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With Santorum Out, How Long Until Romney Clinches the Nomination?

Darren McCollester/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- When Rick Santorum suspended his campaign on Tuesday, he effectively ended the 2012 primary cycle.

At 285 delegates, Santorum lagged far behind Mitt Romney’s 661 delegates amassed.  There was no mathematical scenario wherein Santorum could claim the 1,144 delegates required to win the Republican nomination for president.

However, there had been a narrow chance that Santorum might be able to deny Romney that magic number, forcing a brokered convention in Tampa, Fla., in August.

Santorum’s decision on Tuesday closed that window, although Newt Gingrich has vowed to stay in the race until the convention.

Romney still has to win an additional 483 delegates before he can technically claim the title of the 2012 Republican presidential candidate.  So, how long until Romney reaches that point?

There’s still a little more than a month to go until the Romney campaign gets to that critical number.  Mathematically, it can’t happen until the end of May.

The next slate of primaries are scheduled for April 24, when a total of 231 delegates will be up for grabs across five states.  After that, the primary schedule picks up again, with Indiana, North Carolina and West Virginia holding their primaries on May 8, followed by Oregon and Nebraska on the 15th, and Arkansas and Kentucky on the 22nd.

A total of 507 delegates will be at stake in those 12 contests.

With Gingrich and Ron Paul still in the race, it’s possible -- even likely -- that Romney will not win 100 percent of those 507 delegates.  Gingrich has a solid chance of picking up a couple delegates in states like North Carolina, West Virginia and Arkansas.

Still, assuming that Gingrich and Paul don’t experience a huge surge of momentum in the wake of Santorum’s departure, Romney looks well poised to clinch the nomination by the end of May.

If he doesn’t get there by May 22, Romney will almost certainly reach 1,144 by the 29th, when Texas holds their primary with 155 delegates at stake.

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Bobby Jindal, Pat Toomey, Rick Scott Line Up Behind Romney

gov [dot] louisiana [dot] gov(WILMINGTON, Del.) -- With Rick Santorum out of the race, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and several other high ranking Republicans endorsed Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee on Tuesday, saying that he looks forward to supporting the candidate “in retiring President Obama.”

Jindal, who previously backed former presidential candidate and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, endorsed Romney just hours after former Sen. Santorum suspended his presidential campaign.

“I’d also like to congratulate Sen. Santorum for running a strong race and for making the difficult decision to step aside at this time,” said Jindal.  “It’s time for all Republicans to focus their energies on the fall campaign which will give Americans a fundamental choice between Obama’s lurch toward European style big government and the Republican alternative of a thriving private sector with a smaller government.”

Jindal, whose name is already being floated as a potential vice presidential candidate, joined several other Republican leaders in endorsing Romney on the same day that Santorum dropped out.

Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, endorsed Romney, urging others to do the same.

“I am proud to endorse Gov. Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee for president,” he said.  “I am confident Gov. Romney will be a great president and will return our country to the conservative principles that make our nation great.”

“I also congratulate Sen. Santorum on a hard fought primary race.  He put up a valiant fight and deserves to be commended for his spirited effort,” said Toomey.  “Now is the time for conservatives to rally around Gov. Romney and help deliver a victory in Pennsylvania and America this November.”

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who had also not made an endorsement before Tuesday, backed Romney not even an hour after Santorum dropped his bid, saying in a statement, “Mitt Romney will be our party’s nominee and it is critical that all Republicans coalesce behind Gov. Romney and focus on electing him as president so he can put the policies in place to create jobs, turn our economy around and get federal spending under control.”

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Rick Santorum Reflects on Campaign, Hardship for Family Members

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(LANCASTER, Pa) -- As he wrapped up the day that he ended his presidential campaign, Rick Santorum reflected on the impact his decision to run for president had on his family, saying the experience was always more trying on his family members than himself.

“Karen and four of the kids were there,” Santorum said of his withdrawal from the race Tuesday during an event at Lancaster Bible College Tuesday evening. "I can’t say it was an emotional moment for me. I know it’s a little tougher for the family, always is tougher for the family.”

Santorum said throughout the campaign he asked people to pray for his family because “they’re the ones that bear the brunt. You’re out there in the arena and your adrenaline’s flowing -- you’re getting hit and hitting back and you’re sort of going back and forth. It’s different than being on the sidelines and seeing the people, the person that you love, getting hit. It hurts more. And so it was a little tougher for Karen and the kids. They did an amazing job as they always have in standing behind me in every sense of the word.”

Despite suspending his presidential campaign earlier in the day, Santorum maintained his schedule Tuesday evening, appearing at the pre-arranged “American Heartland Conversation on Faith, Family, and American Values” with James Dobson, founder of the conservative group Focus on the Family, who probed Santorum about his decision to end his 10-month campaign.

When he announced his withdrawal from the race in Gettysburg, Pa., Tuesday afternoon, Santorum indicated the recent hospitalization of his 3-year-old daughter Bella, who suffers from the rare genetic disorder Trisomy 18, influenced his reconsideration about his path forward in the presidential race, and Santorum expounded upon the trials of raising a developmentally disabled child Tuesday evening.

“There’s a lot of pressure on moms and dads because of the burden of a disabled child. Look, it is a hardship. A lot of these children require a tremendous amount of care and I can understand the pain and hardship, but I can tell you as someone who has gone through it, Bella is a great -- we have seven children and they are all a tremendous great gift. But Bella is, all of the kids would tell you, is a special one,” Santorum said. “She talks in her own way. She doesn’t talk in a way that you would understand but she talks in a way that we understand. She’s a happy, healthy girl. Like everybody else, like every other kid, she gets sick. The problem is when she gets sick it's life-threatening.”

Karen Santorum initially was scheduled to appear with her husband at the Tuesday-evening event but, according to Dobson, “She just didn’t feel she had the emotional strength....She was planning to be here until today."

“She is a very special lady,” Dobson added. “Karen would have made a great first lady. And who knows? Maybe she will, yet.”

Santorum, who characterized himself during the campaign as the social conservative capable of beating Mitt Romney, expressed dismay that so many labeled him as an “extremist” when others in the presidential race held many of the same positions as he did.

“If you go down the list of, sort of, the life, marriage, social conservative issues, we were all pretty much in line,” Santorum said. “Yet, I was considered the extremist, which I found very interesting.”

Santorum said it was a “great blessing to be involved in this campaign,” and he took pride in “all of the things we were able to accomplish in standing up and speaking up for those who don’t have a voice.”

Asked if he has any upcoming plans, Santorum, who ran one of the most rigorously scheduled campaigns of 2012, admitted he was looking forward to catching up on some rest, saying, “I’d like to get some sleep!”

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

What Will Happen to Rick Santorum's Delegates?

Steve Pope/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Now that Rick Santorum is out of the race, what happens to his delegates?

Santorum has 285 delegates, according to the latest ABC News delegate estimate, second to Mitt Romney’s 661. He captured the majority of them by winning 10 states -- 11 if you count Missouri’s non-binding primary, which the candidate counted in his bowing-out speech Tuesday.

But some of those delegates were never really “his.”  ABC estimates that 78 Santorum delegates, from his wins in states that don’t “award” their delegates -- Iowa, Colorado, Minnesota and North Dakota -- would have been free to support any candidate at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.

Another two of Santorum’s delegates were Republican National Committee superdelegates, who will attend the convention by virtue of their positions in the party, and are also free to support whomever they choose in Tampa.

Santorum won seven more delegates from unbound caucus states Washington and Wyoming.

He won another 10 delegates from Illinois, where they would not be required by state or national-party rule to vote for Santorum in Tampa, either, although Santorum’s campaign presented their names and qualifying signatures to the state board of elections.

That leaves 188 Santorum delegates heading to Tampa. They’ll be required to vote for him, unless he chooses to release them, according to state-party rules.

Even if Santorum endorses Romney, that doesn’t mean he can gift all of his delegates to his former rival.  Should Santorum elect to release his delegates, they’ll become free agents, able to support whichever candidate they choose.

If he does release them, will he receive any votes on the floor of the Tampa Bay Times Forum?

Maybe a few. Mike Huckabee received no votes in St. Paul, Minn., after releasing his delegates. Mitt Romney received two votes, having dropped out two days after Super Tuesday in 2008. Ron Paul, the last man standing against John McCain, who held his own shadow convention as McCain was being crowned, received 20 votes at the Xcel Center, despite failing to qualify for the convention ballot. Romney, who also did not qualify for the ballot, received two votes.

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After Santorum Suspends Campaign, Romney Admits He’s Had a ‘Good Day’

JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images(WILMINGTON, Del.) -- Mitt Romney addressed his one-time chief GOP rival Sen. Rick Santorum’s decision to drop out of the presidential race, enthusiastically declaring, “This has been a good day for me!”

“Sen. Santorum has decided not to proceed with his campaign,” said Romney, who spoke on the floor of RC Fabricators, a construction manufacturer. “I had a chance to speak with him this morning. We exchanged our thoughts about going forward and we both had a great deal of interest in seeing the country taken in a very different path. He has made an important contribution to the political process, has brought forward issues he cares very deeply about and has been able to gather a great deal of public support and interest in those issues and in himself.”

“He will continue to have a major role in the Republican Party and I look forward to his work in helping assure victories for Republicans across the country in November,” said Romney.

Romney’s remarks came just hours after Santorum announced he was suspending his campaign, telling reporters in Pennsylvania, “We made the decision to get into this race at our kitchen table, against all the odds, and we made a decision over the weekend, that, while this presidential race is over for me, and we will suspend our campaign effective today...we are not done fighting.”

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