Romney will lead GOP in first-quarter fundraising

This week, June will end — and with it, the second fundraising quarter of 2011.

For the men and woman running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, the close of the quarter amounts to one of the first real proof points of the contest.

Money alone won’t win an election — see former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s underfunded 2008 Iowa caucus victory as evidence — but it is widely regarded as an early test of who has momentum and who doesn’t.