Obama, Romney collide in Philly as donation deadline nears

The two leading money raisers in the 2012 presidential race thus far both land in Philadelphia on Thursday for competing fundraisers and messages on the economy.

President Obama and Mitt Romney, like the other presidential candidates, are working to gather as much money as possible before the first significant quarter of the 2012 fundraising season closes at midnight Thursday.

Romney expects to raise as much as $20 million, campaign officials said, likely double what any of his GOP competitors will take in. In addition, he is hoping for additional millions in a new independent “super PAC� set up by supporters in Washington.

Obama is hoping to report $60 million donated to his Victory Fund, a joint project of his reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Romney started early Thursday with a breakfast fundraiser at Cira Centre, a new skyscraper in downtown Philadelphia, and then made his way to the Union League, an elegant haunt for establishment Philadelphia that was originally founded as a patriotic society to support the Union and the policies of President Lincoln. It laid the philosophical foundation of other Union Leagues across a nation torn by Civil War.

The former Massachusetts governor then is scheduled to drive to Allentown, Pa., for a news conference on the economy, held in front of an abandoned Allentown Iron Works factory, which closed in early 2010, not long after Obama visited on a trip promoting his stimulus proposal.

The Romney campaign is making a frontal assault on Obama’s record on jobs, including the release of a Web video that jabs at the president’s Obama’s record on the issue.

The Romney attacks prompted the DNC to respond with its own critical assessment of his record of job creation during his years as a governor.

Obama is scheduled to land in Philadelphia and head downtown for a DNC-sponsored fundraiser at the upscale Hyatt Bellevue Hotel. He is then to go to a private home for another DNC fundraiser.