Gov. Mitt Romney (R) Elected 2002, 1st term up Jan. 2007
Born:	March 12, 1947, Detroit, MI
Home:	Belmont
Education:	Brigham Young U., B.A. 1971, Harvard U. M.B.A., J.D. 1975
Religion:	Mormon
Marital Status:	married (Ann)
Professional Career:	V.P., Bain & Co., 1978-84, 1990-92; Founder, Bain Capital, 1984-90, 1992-99; CEO, Salt Lake Organizing Cmte. (2002 Winter Olympics), 1999-02.
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Mitt Romney, elected governor of Massachusetts in 2002, is the son of George Romney, who was governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969. The younger Romney grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, when his father was CEO of American Motors and then embarked on a political career. A devout Mormon, he graduated from Brigham Young University at a time when it was not beset by turmoil as so many other campuses were, and from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School in 1975, the same year as George W. Bush. Unlike Bush, who was eager to return to Texas, Romney stayed in the Boston area and became vice president of Bain & Company, a management consultant firm. In 1984, he founded Bain Capital, an investment company that provided crucial capital to Staples, Domino's Pizza and Brookstone; he had a considerable ownership stake in some of these companies. In 1990, he returned to Bain & Company as interim CEO and got it out of financial difficulties. In the process, he accumulated a considerable fortune and was active in civic and charitable affairs; for four years he was president of his stake in the Mormon Church--the rough equivalent of bishop. In 1994, he was the Republican nominee against Senator Edward Kennedy, and succeeded in giving him a good scare before losing 58%-41%--Kennedy's closest race since he was first elected in 1962. In February 1999, he was asked to head the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, which was in deficit and suffering from charges of misconduct. Romney erased a $379 million deficit, rallied 23,000 volunteers and ran an effective security operation at the February 2002 Winter Games; 87% of Utahns rated his performance positively. There was much speculation over whether Romney would run for public office in Utah.

After the Olympics, Romney immediately began talking about running for governor--of Massachusetts, that is. This was a dicey business: In fall 2001, he had said he wouldn't run, and in October 2001, Republican Governor Jane Swift had announced she would. Swift had been elected lieutenant governor in 1998 and became governor in April 2001, when Paul Cellucci resigned to become Ambassador to Canada. She took office at 36, pregnant with twins. She quickly aroused controversy. She had been criticized before for using a state limousine to commute to her home in Williamstown, 130 miles from the State House. She was criticized after September 11 for the poor security at Boston's Logan Airport, from which the two planes that hit the World Trade Center towers took off. After budget struggles with the legislature, she had exceedingly low job ratings. On March 19, she abruptly left the governor's race; three hours later, Romney announced his candidacy. Financing was no problem: He ultimately spent $6.1 million of his own money and had fundraising help from the Bush White House. He ran as an outsider, a professional manager who wasn't part of the Beacon Hill crowd; in some public appearances he made PowerPoint presentations rather than standard speeches. Romney was embarrassed in March when he couldn't identify the MCAS student exam system (he later said it stood for Mitt Cares About Schools) and in June when it was revealed that he had listed his Utah house as his "primary residence" from 1999 to 2001 and thus got a $54,000 property tax break (he offered to pay the money and said he had intended to return to Massachusetts all along). He said he was against tax increases, but declined to rule them out. He supported aid to faith-based institutions. He worked at various jobs over the summer, riding a garbage truck and cleaning fish.

Meanwhile, Democrats jousted in a primary fight. The leader in most polls was Treasurer Shannon O'Brien, a longtime Beacon Hill insider, even though she was criticized for some money-losing investments. Running close behind was state Senate President Thomas Birmingham, a Rhodes Scholar with a solidly liberal record in the legislature. Attracting much attention was former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, a provocative writer whose political memoir evidently angered Bill Clinton, who conspicuously did not support him, but instead backed former Democratic National Chairman Steve Grossman, who bowed out before the primary. The one candidate who participated in Clean Elections funding--ultimately some $3.6 million--was former state Senator Warren Tolman. There were upward blips in the polls for Reich and Tolman, but O'Brien won the September 17 primary with 33% of the vote to 25% for Reich, 24% for Birmingham and 18% for Tolman.

Massachusetts has one of the nation's latest primaries, and O'Brien had only six weeks to focus on her differences with Romney. She and other Democrats evidently decided to defeat him by proving he was out of place in Massachusetts. She said he was trying to "mask a very conservative set of belief systems." Although she said she wouldn't criticize his religion, she criticized him for making major contributions to Brigham Young, which bars expressions of homosexuality. Democrats circulated a news story that Romney, at a church meeting, had called homosexuality "perverse"; he denied using the word but said he opposed all extramarital sex. O'Brien herself came out in favor of gay marriage, though she added that she thought the legislature would never vote for it. O'Brien attacked Romney aggressively in debates, and when he referred to her style as "unbecoming," he was accused of being insensitive to women.

Such attitudes may be obligatory at gatherings of Democratic activists, but they evidently did not go over so well with voters in the broad swathes of suburban Massachusetts and in heavily Democratic central cities as well. Romney won 50%-45%, carrying the belt between Route 128 and Interstate 495 by wide margins and holding O'Brien to very small margins in working class towns like Quincy, Worcester, Lynn, Brockton and Lowell. O'Brien's core areas--Boston and the cities immediately adjacent, the New Bedford-Fall River area and the Pioneer Valley and the Berkshires in western Massachusetts--were not enough to produce a statewide majority. For the fourth time in a row, Massachusetts voters declined to put the whole of state government in the control of the Democratic party. Romney has been mentioned as a potential presidential candidate in 2008; if so, he will have run for that office, as he ran for a governorship, exactly 40 years after his father did so. But in the meantime he must tend to the state's problems. Approaching office, he promised to present a balanced budget without a tax increase, to combine the Turnpike Authority and Highway Department, to institute full-day kindergarten in underperforming school districts, to fund the Clean Elections law without public funds and to give merit pay to teachers.

Another task he might want to attend to is building a Republican party. Democrats hold 85% of the seats in the legislature; Republicans fielded no candidates in 62% of the seats. Romney is not likely to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate until his party does better in legislative and downballot races.

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Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent
2002 general	Mitt Romney (R)	1,091,988	50%
	Shannon O'Brien (D)	985,981	45%
	Jill Stein (Green)	76,530	4%
	Other	38,379	2%
2002 primary	Mitt Romney (R)	unopposed
1998 general	Paul Cellucci (R)	967,160	51%
	Scott Harshbarger (D)	901,843	47%
	Other	34,333	2%