Profile courtesy of
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), 1999-2002.
Office	State House, Rm. 360, Boston 02133, 617-725-4005; Fax: 617-727-9725; Web: www.mass.gov/gov
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Massachusetts

Gov. Mitt Romney (R)

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 before he embarked on a political career. A devout Mormon, Mitt Romney 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, where he overlapped with George W. Bush. Unlike Bush, who was eager to return to his home state, 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. He recounted his experiences in his book Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership and the Olympic Games, published in August 2004, in time for the Republican National Convention.

After the Olympics, Romney immediately began talking about running for governor of Massachusetts. This was a dicey business: In fall 2001, he had said he wouldn't run, and in October 2001, Republican Governor Jane Swift 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, and quickly aroused controversy. 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. 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.

The Democratic nominee was state Treasurer Shannon O'Brien, who won the mid-September primary with 33% of the vote. O'Brien, with just six weeks for the general election campaign, argued that Romney was out of place in Massachusetts and 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 same-sex 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.

In his first two years in office, facing an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, Romney closed a budget gap and avoided a tax increase. He succeeded in eliminating the Metropolitan District Commission but not in merging the Turnpike Authority and the Highway Department; the legislature made the head of the Transportation Department the head of the Turnpike Authority. He reorganized the human services bureaucracy and fired University of Massachusetts President William Bulger. He proposed $8 billion in bonds to clear the school building project waiting list; the legislature applied sales tax funds to this and authorized $1 billion in bonds. Housing prices are high in Massachusetts, and Romney approved substantial funding to build thousands of new housing units, especially in downtown areas. Legislators were miffed when he insisted that all communications with appointees go through the governor's office and when Romney declined to give legislators permanent authority to create new committees with pay increases for chairmen. With his business background, Romney was less inclined than his predecessors to make deals with the legislature and seemed to relish conflict. "I ran on the platform of cleaning up the mess on Beacon Hill, [and] reform means changing the way things are. Legislatures by and large, despite the political titles, are conservative. They don't want to change the way things work. So of course it is going to be a battle."

Romney opposed the Supreme Judicial Court's November 2003 and May 2004 decisions mandating same-sex marriage. He said that he supported some kind of civil union arrangement and supported the constitutional amendment backed by the joint legislative session in March 2004. On other cultural issues, he supported capital punishment, favored stem-cell research (his wife was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998 and after treatment was in remission) and, though anti-abortion, said he would leave the status quo alone. He has pressed for a no-frills basic health insurance plan to reduce the number of uninsured, plus tightened standards for medical malpractice cases.

In heavily Democratic Massachusetts Romney has not hesitated to be a strong Republican partisan; Democratic legislators in response passed over Romney's veto a bill depriving governors of the power to fill a vacancy in the Senate. He campaigned against John Kerry, contrasting him with his colleague Edward Kennedy ("Senator Kennedy is a workhorse," he told National Journal) and arguing that Kerry would be "a most unfortunate person to have as president of the United States." Kerry, he said, "has interest groups that he is close to that have strong views on issues, sometimes differing views on issues, and he tries to blend a course between those differing, his own views, views of interest groups, that he's a very conflicted person." Romney actively recruited Republican candidates for seats in the legislature and financed radio and TV ads on issues like tuition for children of illegal immigrants. But these efforts proved a flop: Democrats picked up two seats in the state House and one in the state Senate.

Romney comes up for reelection in 2006. Likely Democratic candidates include Secretary of State William Galvin, Attorney General Thomas Reilly and former Assistant Attorney General Deval Patrick, who served in the Clinton administration. Another possible candidate is Chris Gabrieli, who ran for lieutenant governor in 2002. Romney has often been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2008. He campaigned actively for George W. Bush in 2004 and is scheduled to become chairman of the National Governors Association in 2006. If he does run for president it will be exactly 40 years since his father did so.

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%