American businessman and politician, Republican Party candidate who won the November 2002 gubernatorial election in Massachusetts and who threw his hat in the 2008 race for the White House. With his thin good looks, youthful and energetic appearance, strict moral emphasis, business triumphs, a lovely wife and five successful sons by his side, Romney presents himself as the answer to a conservative’s prayers.
Romney is the youngest of four sons of George Romney, a former Governor of Michigan who was also an accomplished business executive, Cabinet Secretary and church elder. Young Mitt grew up in a religious Mormon household and idolized his dad. In the summer of 1966 he left college and went to France as a missionary for his faith. There he suffered two painful experiences that deeply affected him. In 1967, his father, then Governor of Michigan, was a popular candidate to be the Republican Party’s nominee in the 1968 presidential election. But in August 1967, he reversed his pro-Vietnam war position, making a statement that he had been “brainwashed” into believing that the war was justified. The elder Romney lost his party’s approval, and Richard Nixon won the nomination and election. Young Mitt was devastated at his father’s reversal of political fortune. Several months later, in June 1968, Mitt was driving some of his fellow missionaries on a mountain road in France. An oncoming car struck Romney’s, killing one of Mitt’s colleagues and severely injuring the other passengers. Mitt himself was so badly hurt that the initial police reports declared him dead. He spent several months recovering physically from the accident and turned to his faith for emotional healing. It was in his hospital bed that he vowed to make something of his life.
On his return to the states, Romney went on to graduate from Brigham Young University in 1971 and earn his law and business degrees from Harvard. In 1978, Romney joined consulting firm Bain & Co. In 1984, he started an offshoot, Bain Capital, a venture-capital firm. There he made his financial fortune. He returned to Bain & Co. in 1991 in a move to keep the now financially-troubled company afloat. Again he found great success.
In 1994, Mitt ran against the entrenched incumbent Democratic Senator from Massachusetts where, at the time, only 13% of the voters were Republican. He took 40% of the state’s votes but lost the election after his opponent, the liberal Ted Kennedy, showed ads that Bain and Co. had backed an Indiana company that had initiated employee layoffs. In 1999, Romney bounced into national attention when he took the helm of the Olympics planning committee that was then bogged down in financial mismanagement and charges of corruption and bribery. As President and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, Mitt is credited with saving the day. Under his leadership, the dire financial situation was reversed, and the 2002 Olympics were successfully staged.
Returning to politics, Romney waged a winning campaign to be Governor of Massachusetts. He was installed in office in January 2003 and has become fond of pointing out that he won as a Republican in a largely liberal state. Mitt pledged to take no salary as Governor, earning him kudos from some, but his one-term record was given mixed reviews. During his term, a health care bill was passed and gay marriage was legalized; both measures were praise-worthy. But the kudos were countered by frequent opposition from a Democratic state congress and criticism from the press, especially for excessive absences from office as he traveled to other states and countries in an apparent attempt to set the stage for larger political ambitions. In 2006 he was elected to Chair of the Republican Governors Association. Not long afterward, on the morning of February 13, 2007, he announced his candidacy for the Republican Party’s nomination in the President’s race. He made his announcement at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, the state in which he had grown up.
Mitt met his wife, Ann, when he was 16 and said that he never seriously dated anyone else. They have five children, all boys. In 1998, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis but credits her faith, her family and an active lifestyle with helping her ward off potential ravages of the disease.
Romney suspended his campaign for the White House on 7 February 2008 and subsequently endorsed his rival for the Republican Party nomination, John McCain.
He made an official announcement of his second candidacy for the Republican Party nomination to the US Presidency on 2 June 2011 in Stratham, NH; as of May 2012, he won enough caucuses and primaries to become the party’s presumptive nominee.
Romney was defeated by Obama in the presidential election of 6 November 2012.
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