With Election Nearing, Wall Street Ponders a Romney Presidency

With the presidential election drawing near, and the Republican candidate Mitt Romney surging in some polls, Wall Street may be cheering on the sidelines.

At the annual meeting of Wall Street's chief lobbying group on Tuesday, some speakers were eager to fan those hopes.

“Romney is in very good shape to win the election,” Charles K. Black, an outside adviser to the Republican candidate's campaign told the conference of Wall Street executives, hosted by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Mr. Black pegged President Obama's odds of winning re-election at “a one-in-three chance.”

While most blue-state New Yorkers would scowl at the suggestion that Mr. Obama's tenure was in jeopardy, this is Wall Street. The audience was packed with bankers, a group that helped bankroll Mr. Obama's first presidential run before the romance crumbled as the White House struck a harsher tone.

Mr. Obama has derided some bankers as “fat cats. ” The president also ushered in a wave of new regulatory oversight for Wall Street in the aftermath of the financial crisis, irking many firms that prefer the light regulatory touch that often comes with Republican administrations.

Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a longtime private equity executive, has vowed to “repeal and replace” the regulatory crackdown known as the Dodd-Frank Act. That promise alone is likely to turn out the vote on Wall Street.

“The governor thinks Dodd-Frank is way too regulatory and overreaching,” Mr. Black said on a panel.

He conceded, however, that Mr. Romney “hasn't gotten real specific about what the replacement will be.”

For the lonely Obama supporters in the crowd, the Democratic strategist Karen Finney offered some cause for cautious optimism.

With the economy showing some small signs of life, and the unemployment rate slowly ticking downward, “people are feeling more positive, ” she said on the panel. She further noted that polls fail to account for Latino, black and young voters, groups that are likely to come out in droves to support Mr. Obama.

Some Senate races could also turn in favor of Democrats. One campaign in particular â€" the face-off in Massachusetts between Scott Brown, a Republican, and Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat - has riveted the financial sector. Ms. Warren made her name in Washington as a loud critic of Wall Street and the chief architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new regulatory agency that examines big banks.

When panelists noted that Ms. Warren has opened up a lead in that race, Mr. Black cautioned against committing a major faux pas by “mentioning that name in this crowd.”