Romney raises $4.6 million after Supreme Court’s health care ruling

The Ticket

President Barack Obama may have scored a major policy victory when the Supreme Court voted to uphold most of his health care reform law, but the decision has also been a boon for Mitt Romney among small donors.

According to his campaign, Romney has raised more than $4.3 million from roughly 43,000 online donors in the 24 hours since the ruling came down. (Update: That total has now increased to $4.6 million, according to the campaign.)

That's a big deal for a candidate who has struggled to win over small donors. While a $5 or $10 donation isn't a huge sum of money to a campaign that is largely funded through five-figure checks from big donors, how much a candidate is raising from small contributors has long been an indicator of the level of enthusiasm people feel for a campaign, and it's a good sign of whether they will turn out to vote in the fall.

Speaking at a fundraiser in New York City Friday morning, Romney told supporters he believes Thursday's court decision "calls for greater urgency … in the election."

"I think people recognize that if you want to replace Obamacare, you've got to replace President Obama. And the urgency of doing that is something which is galvanizing people across the country," Romney said, according to a pool report. "I think many people assumed that the Supreme Court would do the work that was necessary in repealing Obamacare. It did not get that job done. … We're going to get that job done."

It's a message that Romney has echoed in two separate emails to his supporters in the last 24 hours, asking them to contribute to his campaign. The letter also went out to the Republican National Committee's email list, urging supporters to "donate $10 or more to put a stop to the policies of Barack Obama and the liberal Democrats."

Speaking in New York this morning, Romney suggested that Obama's health care law would be bad for the country, adding to the federal deficit and actually causing some Americans "to lose the health insurance they want."

"The people of America, I think, recognize that this legislation is not right for America," Romney said.