Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wrote a 1,118-word victory speech on Tuesday as he concluded his yearslong quest for the presidency claiming he had no regrets.
“I feel like we put it all on the field. We left nothing in the locker room. We fought to the very end, and I think that’s why we’ll be successful,” Romney told reporters aboard his plane as he flew from Pittsburgh to Boston, where preparations were underway for a big election night event at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel.
Romney was watching election returns in a room at the hotel where his wife Ann, their five sons and other family members were to join him. Romney’s running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, headed for the Westin after arriving in Boston with his wife Janna and their children.
The GOP nominee had spent Election Day doing a last-minute round of campaigning in one state he’s showered with attention, Ohio, and another he’s largely ignored, Pennsylvania. After voting near his Boston-area home, Romney was betting that an eleventh-hour appeal to working-class voters in both states would help him defeat President Barack Obama.
The Washington Post’s Rachel Weiner writes that many of Romney’s supporters are joining him in Boston this evening:
The Boston Globe reports that “an unusually large number of Gulfstream corporate jets” flew into Boston’s Logan International Airport Tuesday afternoon, hours before Mitt Romney’s post-election party at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.
Romney’s biggest financial backers have been invited to a pre-party reception. The party itself is expected to attract 5,000 supporters and journalists; hotels across the city are at over 90 percent occupancy.
Obama will spend the later part of Tuesday night at the McCormick Place convention center in Chicago. As the Post’s David Nakamura reports:
President Obama’s daughters Malia and Sasha, along with their grandmother, Marian, flew into Chicago after the girls finished school, officials said. An earlier press pool report said Obama’s extended family would join him for dinner, but the president’s sister, Maya, and her family; first lady Michelle Obama’s brother Craig Robinson, who played in the president’s pick-up basketball game Tuesday; and nieces and nephews will join the first family to watch election results.
