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Show speciameatures Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011 Page 13 $2 million donation helps Romney get some skin in primaries BY T.W. FARNAM (c) 2011, The Washington Post WASHINGTON - Running for president is an expensive process. And being president is an aging experience. Which makes the bond between Republican candidate Mitt Romney and Utah businessman Steve Lund look like a near-perfect union. Two companies linked to Lund - a founder of Nu Skin, which specializes in anti-aging creams - have donated $2 million to Romney's primary campaign. Sums like that would until recently have been the prize of the general election. But they are playing a new role in primaries this year, thanks to the evolution of committees known as super PACs. The bonds between Romney and Lund look more than skin deep. Both are successful businessmen who have turned small companies into billion-dollar enterprises Romney by buying cheap companies and Lund by selling expensive skin creams. Both served in leadership positions of the Mormon church. And both are family men who have used their success to do good - Romney by building a career in public service and Lund by running a charity for African children. But Lund, 57, is no Romney when it comes to public life. Friends say he doesn't relish attention, and he did not return repeated requests for an interview. STEVE LUND The seven-figure donation to help Romney's campaign may be the loudest statement he's ever made. Friends say Lund eschews most of the trappings of wealth, although he collects religious paintings and owns a valuable original copy of the Book of Mormon. He is a fiscal and social conservative who has known Romney for at least a decade and lives in Provo, Utah, with his wife, Kalleen. His largest previous political contribution was a $20,000 check to the Republican National Committee in 2008, according to federal and state records. "I'm sure he's wishing this donation was not known to the world," said Corey Lindley, a former Nu Skin executive and friend of Lund's. But Lund's name now joins an elite list of big presidential donors, who in the past have been rewarded by ambassado- rial posts and plum administration jobs. Public records do not show who owns the companies donating the funds. Lund is the registered agent for one; his son-in-law for the other. The Restore Our Future PAC backing Romney, which accepted the money, declined to comment. The PAC disclosed the two $1 million donations, made on March 31, linked to Lund from two companies, Eli Publishing and F8. In an interview last month, Lund told a Fox television affiliate in Utah that there was an accounting advantage to giving the money through Eli Publishing, a company he founded in 1997. Utah state records show that F8 was started by Lund's son-in-law, Jeremy Blickenstaff, a lawyer who has never given a campaign donation and who owns Blickenstaff's Toy Store in Provo, which sells candy by the pound and rare varieties of soda. He did not return a phone call. Advocates for transparency in elections have criticized the contributions for their obscurity, saying it would be a violation of election law if either man used the corporations simply as a pass-through to donate his own money. "It certainly sounds like it was a contribution from Steven Lund," said Paul Ryan, a lawyer with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, which seeks tighter regulation of money in politics. "Voters have a right to know the true source of contributions to federal political committees. The courts have recognized for decades that voters can draw valuable clues from donors." The booming skin care business has made Lund a very rich man. As Nu Skin's CEO for five years, he owned $31.9 million in company stock and was paid $1.2 million in compensation last year, according • (c) 2011, The Washington Post Republican Party leaders, who only a few weeks ago viewed the GOP presidential nomination race as wide open, now consider it a two-man contest between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney and are choosing sides in what many think could be a long and potentially divisive campaign. In interviews this week, more than a dozen governors, lawmakers, major donors and strategists said they are studying recent debates and polls to determine whether Perry, the governor Df Texas, or Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, would present the strongest challenge to President Barack Obama. They signaled that endorsements and other measures Df support could flow in coming weeks, as Perry and Romney press their cases privately to potential backers. "They wouldn't say it publicly, and I won't name names, but as a general consensus, most Df us in the cloakroom and around our caucus meetings believe it's down to a two-man race," said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who has endorsed Perry. "More and more Republicans are looking at electability." The nominee will define the Republican Party for the 2012 campaign cycle, making the choice consequential for the GOP's hopes of taking back the Senate and maintaining control of the House. That has top Republicans nationwide especially tuned in to potentially damaging rhetoric, such as Perry's comments about Social Security, which he labeled a failure and a "Ponzi scheme." On Capitol Hill, the chiefs of staff to Florida's GOP members echoed those concerns in a private meeting Monday, according to a Republican source with knowledge of the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 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