By GARANCE BURKE
Associated Press Writer
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said Monday his weekend victory in Iowa's Republican Party Straw Poll will help position him as the GOP's top presidential candidate.
Romney's expensive campaign in the heartland -- coupled with the subsequent decision by former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson to drop out of the race -- shows he can outperform his rivals in early voting states, Romney said at a campaign stop in California.
"I want to springboard, if you will, from support in the early states to those across the country," Romney told about 100 voters gathered at a French bakery in a tony shopping mall.
He leads in state polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, but trails in national surveys.
Romney, the wealthiest of all presidential candidates in either party, holds as much as $250 million in investments, according to a personal financial disclosure report filed Monday with the federal government.
Asked whether his enormous financial wealth kept him from appealing to average voters, the former venture capitalist said his track record in establishing a scholarship program for top-achieving high school students and broadening access to health insurance in Massachusetts showed he "understood the hearts of people."
"Washington is broken," he said. "You want a leader who can get the job done."
Romney's support for the Iraq war and fiscal conservatism appeared to play well in the San Joaquin Valley, where GOP contenders Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani also have sought early endorsements and cash infusions this year.
"The fact that he was the CEO of a major company impresses me," said Charity Purvis, a 20-year-old college student and registered Republican. "His proposal to lower taxes will appeal to middle class business owners in the Valley."
Romney headed the Boston consulting firm Bain and Co. in the 1990s and also founded Bain Capital, an investment company that helped finance Staples, Domino's Pizza and Brookstone.
Other observers said he would have do more to raise his profile before February's presidential primary in California.
"He won the straw poll because he dumped millions into it," said Bob McCue, a registered Democrat from New York vacationing in Fresno. "But I don't think he had a choice because his name recognition as a Republican from one of the bluest states in the country meant he had to invest a lot to move into the top three."
After Fresno, Romney went to San Diego to inspect the construction of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border and visit Border Patrol checkpoints with the head of the agents' union.
Romney, speaking to reporters in dust-covered, brown leather walking shoes, reiterated his plan to hire more Border Patrol agents, sanction employers who hire illegal immigrants and cut federal funding to cities that declare themselves immigrant sanctuaries.
"People get across the fence pretty darn quickly," Romney said. "The fence alone, without Border Patrol agents to see who's coming across and interdict them, wouldn't be of much use, and just as important you've got to shut down the magnets that say to these people, 'Come on in and get jobs across the border.'"
Romney said he believed illegal workers would voluntarily return home if employers stopped hiring them and could then be gradually replaced by legal migrants under streamlined work visa programs.
He was expected to attend a fundraiser at a golf course in Irvine later in the day.
Associated Press Writer Allison Hoffman contributed to this report from San Diego.
