187 Facts About Mitt Romney

Willard Mitt Romney was born on March 12,1947 and is an American politician, businessman, and lawyer who has served as the junior United States senator from Utah since 2019.

Mitt Romney served as the 70th governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and was the Republican Party's nominee for president of the United States in the 2012 election, losing to incumbent Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney married Ann Davies in 1969; they have five sons.

Active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout his adult life, Mitt Romney served as bishop of his ward and later as a stake president for an area covering Boston and many of its suburbs.

Mitt Romney did not seek reelection in 2006, focusing instead on his campaign for the Republican nomination in the 2008 US presidential election.

Mitt Romney ran and won the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, becoming the first Mormon to be a major party's nominee.

Mitt Romney voted to convict in Trump's second trial in 2021.

Mitt Romney marched alongside Black Lives Matter protestors, voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, supported gun control measures, and did not vote for Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

Willard Mitt Romney was born on March 12,1947, at Harper University Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, one of four children born to automobile executive George W Romney and former actress and homemaker Lenore Romney.

Mitt Romney's mother was a native of Logan, Utah, and his father was born to American parents in a Mormon colony in Chihuahua, Mexico.

Mitt Romney's parents named him after a family friend, businessman J Willard Marriott, and his father's cousin, Milton "Mitt" Romney, a former quarterback for the Chicago Bears.

Mitt Romney attended public elementary schools until seventh grade, when he enrolled as one of only a few Mormon students at Cranbrook School, a private upscale boys' preparatory school a few miles from his home.

Mitt Romney participated in his father's successful 1962 Michigan gubernatorial campaign, and later worked as an intern in the governor's office.

Mitt Romney took up residence at Cranbrook when his newly elected father began spending most of his time at the state capitol.

At Cranbrook, Mitt Romney helped manage the ice hockey team, and joined the pep squad.

Mitt Romney belonged to 11 school organizations and school clubs, including the Blue Key Club, a booster group he had started.

Mitt Romney was not part of the counterculture of the 1960s then taking form in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Mitt Romney arrived in Le Havre, where he shared cramped quarters under meager conditions.

Mitt Romney soon gained recognition within the mission for the many homes he called on and the repeat visits he was granted.

Mitt Romney became a zone leader in Bordeaux in early 1968, and soon thereafter became an assistant to the mission president in Paris.

In June 1968, while in southern France and driving an automobile that was hit by another vehicle, Mitt Romney was seriously injured.

Mitt Romney then became co-president of a mission that had become demoralized and disorganized after the May 1968 general strike and student uprisings and the car accident.

Mitt Romney had missed much of the tumultuous anti-Vietnam War movement in America while in France.

Mitt Romney later sought and received two additional student deferments.

At culturally conservative BYU, Mitt Romney remained separated from much of the upheaval of that era.

Mitt Romney became president of the Cougar Club booster organization and showed a newfound discipline in his studies.

Mitt Romney graduated from BYU in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and a 3.97 GPA.

Mitt Romney gave commencement addresses to both the College of Humanities and the whole of BYU.

Benjamin and Craig were born after Mitt Romney had begun his career.

Mitt Romney wanted to pursue a business career, but his father advised him that a law degree would be valuable to his career even if he never practiced law.

Mitt Romney readily adapted to the business school's pragmatic, data-driven case study method of teaching.

Mitt Romney was nonideological and did not involve himself in the political issues of the day.

Mitt Romney was recruited by several large companies but joined the Boston Consulting Group, reasoning that working as a management consultant for a variety of companies would better prepare him for a future position as a chief executive.

Mitt Romney applied BCG principles such as the growth-share matrix, and executives viewed him as having a bright future there.

Mitt Romney became a vice president of the firm in 1978, working with such clients as the Monsanto Company, Outboard Marine Corporation, Burlington Industries, and Corning Incorporated.

Mitt Romney initially refrained from accepting Bill Bain's offer to head the new venture until Bain rearranged the terms in a complicated partnership structure so that there was no financial or professional risk to Romney.

Bain and Mitt Romney raised the $37 million needed to start the new operation, which had seven employees.

Mitt Romney held the titles of president and managing general partner.

Mitt Romney set up a system in which any partner could veto one of these potential opportunities, and he personally saw so many weaknesses that few venture capital investments were approved in the initial two years.

Mitt Romney soon switched Bain Capital's focus from startups to the relatively new business of leveraged buyouts: buying existing companies with money mostly borrowed from banking institutions using the newly bought companies' assets as collateral, taking steps to improve the companies' value, and then selling those companies when their value peaked, usually within a few years.

Mitt Romney discovered few investment opportunities himself.

Mitt Romney wanted to drop a Bain Capital hedge fund that initially lost money, but other partners disagreed with him and it eventually made billions.

Mitt Romney opted out of the Artisan Entertainment deal, not wanting to profit from a studio that produced R-rated films.

Mitt Romney served on the board of directors of Damon Corporation, a medical testing company later found guilty of defrauding the government; Bain Capital tripled its investment before selling off the company, and the fraud was discovered by the new owners.

In some cases, Mitt Romney had little involvement with a company once Bain Capital acquired it.

Mitt Romney got Bain and other initial owners who had removed excessive amounts of money from the firm to return substantial amounts, and persuaded creditors, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, to accept less than full payment.

Mitt Romney then turned it over to new leadership and returned to Bain Capital in December 1992.

Mitt Romney took a leave of absence from Bain Capital from November 1993 to November 1994 to run for US Senate.

Mitt Romney did not involve himself in the firm's day-to-day operations or the investment decisions of its new private equity funds.

Mitt Romney retained his position on several boards of directors during this time and regularly returned to Massachusetts to attend meetings.

Mitt Romney then served for a time as a seminary teacher and then as a member of the stake high council of the Boston Stake while Richard L Bushman was stake president.

Mitt Romney served as bishop of the ward at Belmont, Massachusetts, from 1981 to 1986.

From 1986 to 1994, Mitt Romney was president of the Boston Stake, which included more than a dozen wards in eastern Massachusetts and almost 4,000 church members.

Mitt Romney organized a team to handle financial and management issues, sought to counter anti-Mormon sentiment, and tried to solve social problems among poor Southeast Asian converts.

Mitt Romney earned a reputation for avoiding any overnight travel that might interfere with his church responsibilities.

Mitt Romney took a hands-on role in the Boston Stake's matters, helping in domestic maintenance efforts, visiting the sick, and counseling burdened church members.

Mitt Romney tried to balance the conservative directives from church leadership in Utah with the desire of some Massachusetts members to have a more flexible application of religious doctrine.

Mitt Romney agreed with some requests from a liberal women's group that published Exponent II calling for changes in the way the church dealt with women, but he clashed with women he felt were departing too much from doctrine.

Mitt Romney later said that the years spent as an LDS minister gave him direct exposure to people struggling financially and empathy for those with family problems.

For much of his business career, Mitt Romney did not take public political stances.

Mitt Romney had kept abreast of national politics since college, and the circumstances of his father's presidential campaign loss had irked him for decades.

Mitt Romney registered as an Independent and voted in the 1992 presidential primaries for the Democratic former senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas.

Mitt Romney decided to challenge incumbent Democratic US Senator Ted Kennedy, who was seeking reelection to a sixth term.

Mitt Romney changed his affiliation to Republican in October 1993 and formally announced his candidacy in February 1994.

Radio personality Janet Jeghelian took an early lead in polls among candidates for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat, but Mitt Romney proved the most effective fundraiser.

The younger, telegenic, and well-funded Mitt Romney ran as a businessman who said he had created 10,000 jobs and as a Washington outsider with a solid family image and moderate stances on social issues.

Mitt Romney's campaign was effective in portraying Kennedy as soft on crime but had trouble establishing its own consistent positions.

Mitt Romney spent $3 million of his own money on the race and more than $7 million overall.

When his father died in 1995, Mitt donated his inheritance to BYU's George W Romney Institute of Public Management.

Mitt Romney became vice-chair of the board of the Points of Light Foundation, which had embraced his father's National Volunteer Center.

Mitt Romney felt restless as the decade neared a close; making more money held little attraction for him.

Mitt Romney thus kept to a limited, behind-the-scenes role in attempts to ease tensions between the church and local residents.

In 1998, Ann Romney learned that she had multiple sclerosis; Mitt described watching her fail a series of neurological tests as the worst day of his life.

Mitt Romney donated to charity the $1.4 million in salary and severance payments he received for his three years as president and CEO, and donated $1 million to the Olympics.

Mitt Romney reduced budgets and boosted fundraising, alleviating corporate sponsors' concerns while recruiting new ones.

Mitt Romney worked to ensure the Games's safety after the September 11,2001 terrorist attacks by coordinating a $300 million security budget.

Mitt Romney oversaw a $1.32 billion budget, 700 employees, and 26,000 volunteers.

The federal government provided approximately $400 million to $600 million of that budget, much of it a result of Mitt Romney's having aggressively lobbied Congress and federal agencies.

Garff believed the initial budget situation was not as bad as Mitt Romney portrayed, given there were still three years to reorganize.

Mitt Romney was very good at characterizing and castigating people and putting himself on a pedestal.

On March 19,2002, Swift announced she would not seek her party's nomination, and hours later Mitt Romney declared his candidacy, for which he would face no opposition in the primary.

Mitt Romney said he would observe a moratorium on changes to the state's laws on abortion, but reiterated that he would "preserve and protect a woman's right to choose" and that his position was "unequivocal".

Mitt Romney touted his private sector experience as qualifying him for addressing the state's fiscal problems and stressed his ability to obtain federal funds for the state, offering his Olympics record as evidence.

Mitt Romney proposed to reorganize the state government while eliminating waste, fraud, and mismanagement.

Mitt Romney responded with ads that accused O'Brien of being a failed watchdog for state pension fund losses in the stock market and that associated her husband, a former lobbyist, with the Enron scandal.

Mitt Romney was sworn in as the 70th governor of Massachusetts on January 2,2003.

Mitt Romney faced a Massachusetts state legislature with large Democratic majorities in both houses, and had picked his cabinet and advisors based more on managerial abilities than partisan affiliation.

Mitt Romney declined a governor's salary of $135,000 during his term.

Mitt Romney supported raising various fees, including those for drivers' licenses and gun licenses, to raise more than $300 million.

Mitt Romney increased a special gasoline retailer fee by $0.02 per US gallon, generating about $60 million per year in additional revenue.

Mitt Romney closed tax loopholes that brought in another $181 million from businesses over the next two years and over $300 million for his term.

Mitt Romney did so in the face of conservative and corporate critics who viewed these actions as tax increases.

Mitt Romney sought additional cuts in his last year as governor by vetoing nearly 250 items in the state budget; the legislature overrode all the vetoes.

Mitt Romney did propose a reduction in the state income tax rate, but the legislature rejected it.

Mitt Romney sought to bring near-universal health insurance coverage to the state.

In particular, Mitt Romney pushed for incorporating an individual mandate at the state level.

Past rival Ted Kennedy, who had made universal health coverage his life's work and who, over time, had developed a warm relationship with Mitt Romney, gave the plan a positive reception, which encouraged Democratic legislators to cooperate.

The effort eventually gained the support of all major stakeholders within the state, and Mitt Romney helped break a logjam between rival Democratic leaders in the legislature.

Mitt Romney vetoed eight sections of the health care legislation, including a controversial $295-per-employee assessment on businesses that do not offer health insurance and provisions guaranteeing dental benefits to Medicaid recipients.

At the beginning of his governorship, Mitt Romney opposed same-sex marriage and civil unions but advocated tolerance and supported some domestic partnership benefits.

Mitt Romney reluctantly backed a state constitutional amendment in February 2004 that would have banned those marriages but still allowed civil unions, viewing it as the only feasible way to comply with the court's ruling.

In June 2005, Mitt Romney abandoned his support for the compromise amendment, stating that it confused voters who opposed both same-sex marriage and civil unions.

In 2005, Romney revealed a change of view regarding abortion, moving from the abortion rights positions expressed during his 1994 and 2002 campaigns to an anti-abortion one in opposition to Roe v Wade.

Mitt Romney attributed his conversion to an interaction with Harvard University biologist Douglas Melton, an expert on embryonic stem cell biology, although Melton vehemently disputed Romney's recollection of their conversation.

Mitt Romney subsequently vetoed a bill on pro-life grounds that expanded access to emergency contraception in hospitals and pharmacies; the legislature overrode the veto.

Mitt Romney amended his position on embryonic stem cell research.

Mitt Romney used a bully pulpit approach towards promoting his agenda, staging well-organized media events to appeal directly to the public rather than pushing his proposals in behind-doors sessions with the state legislature.

Mitt Romney dealt with a public crisis of confidence in Boston's Big Dig project after a fatal ceiling collapse in 2006 by wresting control of the project from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.

In 2004, Mitt Romney spent considerable effort trying to bolster the state Republican Party, but it failed to gain any seats in the legislative elections that year.

Midway through his term, Mitt Romney decided that he wanted to stage a full-time run for president, and on December 14,2005, he announced that he would not seek reelection as governor.

Mitt Romney formally announced his candidacy for the 2008 Republican nomination for president on February 13,2007, in Dearborn, Michigan.

Mitt Romney had political experience as a governor, together with a political pedigree courtesy of his father.

Ann Mitt Romney, who had become an advocate for those with multiple sclerosis, was in remission and was an active participant in his campaign, helping to soften his political personality.

Mitt Romney's liabilities included having run for senator and serving as governor in one of the nation's most liberal states and having taken positions in opposition to the party's conservative base during that time.

Mitt Romney proved the most effective fundraiser of any of the Republican candidates and partly financed his campaign with his own personal fortune.

Mitt Romney's staff suffered from internal strife; Mitt Romney himself was at times indecisive, often asking for more data before making a decision.

Mitt Romney's staff concluded that competing as a candidate of social conservatism and ideological purity rather than of pragmatic competence had been a mistake.

Mitt Romney campaigned intensively on economic issues and the burgeoning subprime mortgage crisis, while McCain attacked Mitt Romney on Iraq policy and benefited from endorsements from Florida officeholders.

Altogether, Mitt Romney had won 11 primaries and caucuses, receiving about 4.7 million votes and garnering about 280 delegates.

Mitt Romney spent $110 million during the campaign, including $45 million of his own money.

Mitt Romney endorsed McCain for president a week later, and McCain had Mitt Romney on a short list for running mate, where his business experience would have balanced one of McCain's weaknesses.

Mitt Romney supported the Bush administration's Troubled Asset Relief Program in response to the late-2000s financial crisis, later saying that it prevented the US financial system from collapsing.

Mitt Romney continued to give speeches and raise funds for Republicans, but fearing overexposure, turned down many potential media appearances.

Mitt Romney had previously served on it from 1993 to 2002.

Mitt Romney maintained his voting registration in Massachusetts and bought a smaller condominium in Belmont during 2010.

In February 2010, Mitt Romney had a minor altercation with LMFAO member Skyler Gordy, known as Sky Blu, on an airplane flight.

Mitt Romney released his book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, in March 2010, and undertook an 18-state book tour to promote it.

Immediately after the March 2010 passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Mitt Romney attacked the landmark legislation as "an unconscionable abuse of power" and said it should be repealed.

Mitt Romney defended the state-level health insurance mandate that underpinned it, calling the bill the right answer to Massachusetts's problems at the time.

In nationwide opinion polling for the 2012 Republican presidential primaries, Mitt Romney led or placed in the top three with Palin and Huckabee.

Mitt Romney campaigned heavily for Republican candidates in the 2010 midterm elections, raising more money than the other prospective 2012 Republican presidential candidates.

Mitt Romney stood to benefit from the Republican electorate's tendency to nominate candidates who had previously run for president, and thus appeared to be next in line to be chosen.

On June 2,2011, Mitt Romney formally announced the start of his campaign.

Mitt Romney raised $56 million in 2011, more than double the amount raised by any of his Republican opponents, and refrained from spending his own money on the campaign.

Perry and Mitt Romney exchanged sharp criticisms of each other during a series of debates among the Republican candidates.

Mitt Romney continued to seek support from a wary Republican electorate; at this point in the race, his poll numbers were relatively flat and at a historically low level for a Republican front-runner.

Many conservatives rallied in defense of Mitt Romney, rejecting what they took to be criticism of free-market capitalism.

The race turned to the Florida primary, where in debates, appearances, and advertisements, Mitt Romney launched a sustained barrage against Gingrich's record, associations and electability.

Days later, Mitt Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference that he had been a "severely conservative governor".

Negative ads from both sides dominated the campaign, with Obama's proclaiming that Mitt Romney shipped jobs overseas while at Bain Capital and kept money in offshore tax havens and Swiss bank accounts.

In July 2012, Mitt Romney visited the United Kingdom, Israel, and Poland, meeting leaders in an effort to raise his credibility as a world statesman.

Mitt Romney became the first LDS Church member to be a major-party presidential nominee.

Media figures and political analysts widely viewed Mitt Romney as having delivered a stronger and more focused presentation than Obama.

The 2014 documentary film Mitt showed a behind-the-scenes, family-based perspective on both of Romney's presidential campaigns and received positive reviews for humanizing Romney and illustrating the toll campaigning takes.

Mitt Romney thought he might be branded a "loser for life" and fade into an obscurity like Michael Dukakis but, to the surprise of many political observers, that did not happen.

Mitt Romney reemerged onto the political scene in the run-up to the 2014 US midterm elections, endorsing, campaigning, and fundraising for a number of Republican candidates, especially those running for the US Senate.

On January 30,2015, Mitt Romney announced that he would not run for president in 2016, saying that while he thought he could win the nomination, "one of our next generation of Republican leaders" would be better positioned to win the general election.

Mitt Romney publicly criticized Trump for not releasing his taxes, saying there might be a "bombshell" in them.

Mitt Romney encouraged Republicans to engage in tactical voting, by supporting whichever of the remaining rivals had the best chance to beat Trump in any given state.

In May 2018, Mitt Romney revealed that he had cast a write-in vote for his wife Ann.

In February 2017, Mitt Romney said that Trump was "off to a very strong start" in fulfilling his campaign promises, although he had "no regrets" about his anti-Trump speech.

Mitt Romney justified his vote by saying, "There is no question in my mind that were their names not Biden, the president would never have done what he did".

Mitt Romney is the first senator to vote to remove a president of his own party from office.

Mitt Romney has said he will "absolutely not" support Trump for president in the future.

September and October 2017 press reports said that should US Senator Orrin Hatch retire, Mitt Romney would run for that seat in 2018.

On January 2,2018, after Hatch announced that he would retire, Mitt Romney changed his Twitter location from Massachusetts to Holladay, Utah, contributing to speculation that he was considering a run for Senate.

On February 16,2018, Mitt Romney formally launched his campaign with a video message posted on Facebook and Twitter.

At the state Republican nominating convention held on April 21,2018, Mitt Romney received 1,585 delegate votes, finishing narrowly second to State Representative Mike Kennedy, with 1,642 delegate votes.

Shortly before assuming office, Mitt Romney wrote a Washington Post editorial strongly criticizing Trump's character.

Mitt Romney was one of two Republicans who joined all Democrats voting to allow impeachment witnesses.

Fallout from the vote included Mitt Romney's being formally censured by various Republican organizations outside of Utah; in comparison, anger against Mitt Romney among Republicans within Utah was more muted, and his impeachment vote, according to opinion polling, was supported by Utah Democrats.

On June 7,2020, in response to the murder of George Floyd and the worldwide protests against police brutality, Mitt Romney became the first Republican senator to participate in a protest alongside Black Lives Matter.

Mitt Romney did not endorse Trump's 2020 reelection campaign and told reporters that he did not vote for him.

Mitt Romney was attacked by Trump supporters for not backing Trump's unverified conspiracy theories regarding inconsistencies in the election.

Mitt Romney stated on the Senate floor later that night, when Congress had reconvened:.

On February 10,2021, new video was released during the Trump's second impeachment trial, which showed capitol police officer Eugene Goodman saving Mitt Romney from running into the Capitol rioters.

Mitt Romney did this despite the obvious and well known threats of violence that day.

On May 27,2021, along with five other Republicans and all present Democrats, Mitt Romney voted to establish a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 attack.

Mitt Romney supported substantial increases in military spending and promised to invest more heavily in military weapons programs while increasing the number of active-duty military personnel.

Mitt Romney was very supportive of the directions taken by the budget proposals of Paul Ryan, though he later proposed his own budget plan.

Mitt Romney pledged to lead an effort to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and replace it with a system that gives states more control over Medicaid and makes health insurance premiums tax-advantaged for individuals in the same way they are for businesses.

Mitt Romney promised to seek income tax law changes that he said would help to lower federal deficits and would stimulate economic growth.

Mitt Romney promised that the loss of government revenue from these tax cuts would be offset by closing loopholes and placing limits on tax deductions and credits available to taxpayers with the highest incomes, but said that that aspect of the plan could not yet be evaluated because details would have to be worked out with Congress.

Mitt Romney opposed the use of mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions to deal with global warming.

Mitt Romney stated that he believed climate change is occurring, but that he did not know how much of it could be linked to human activity.

Mitt Romney was a proponent of increased domestic oil drilling, hydraulic fracturing, building more nuclear power plants, and reducing the regulatory authority of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Mitt Romney believed North American energy independence could be achieved by 2020.

Mitt Romney called Russia America's "number one geopolitical foe", a position many ridiculed him for, including former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who later publicly apologized to him.

Mitt Romney planned to formally label China a currency manipulator and take associated counteractions unless China changed its trade practices.

Mitt Romney supported the Patriot Act, the continued operation of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and use of enhanced interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists.

Mitt Romney described same-sex marriage as a "state issue" while running for Senate in 1994 and opposed a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in 2002.

Mitt Romney opposed same-sex marriage and civil unions, but favored domestic partnership legislation that gives certain legal rights to same-sex couples, such as hospital visitation.

In 2022, Mitt Romney reversed his previous position on federal marriage, and was one of 12 Republicans voting to advance legislation to codify same-sex marriage into federal law.

Mitt Romney said he would appoint federal judges in the mold of US Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Samuel Alito.

Mitt Romney advocated judicial restraint and strict constructionism as judicial philosophies.

Mitt Romney declared his support for the Black Lives Matter international human rights movement by attending the rally, and then joining the Faith Works march, on June 7,2020, from southeast Washington, past the Trump International Hotel, and Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, over the murder of George Floyd.

In 2021, Mitt Romney received the Profile in Courage Award for being the only member of his party to vote to convict Donald Trump during his first impeachment trial.