Mitt Romney's money men lick their wounds in wake of election

At the private air terminal at Logan Airport in Boston early on Wednesday, men in unwrinkled suits sank into plush leather chairs as they waited to board Gulfstream jets, trading consolations over Mitt Romney's loss.

"All I can say is the American people have spoken," said Kenneth Langone, the founder of the Home Depot and one of Romney's top fundraisers, briskly plucking off his hat and settling into a couch.

The biggest single donor in political history, casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, mingled with other Romney backers at a post-elections breakfast, fresh off a large gamble gone bad: Of the eight candidates he supported with tens of millions of dollars in contributions to super PACs, none won on Tuesday.

As calls came in on Wednesday from some of the donors who had poured more than US$300 million into the pair of big-spending outside groups founded in part by Karl Rove - perhaps the leading political entrepreneur of the super PAC era - he offered them a grim upside: Without us, the race would not have been as close as it was. Super PACs are political action committees. The most expensive elections in history ended this week costing more than US$6 billion, propelled by legal and regulatory decisions that allowed wealthy donors to pour record amounts of cash into races around the country.