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How long would Romney serve? (continued)

BY SETH GITELL

YOU WON’T GET confirmation that this is Romney’s career path from either the candidate or anyone in his camp. You will, however, hear lots of talk about his father. Those in the Romney camp are quick to point to a famous comment by George Romney to dispel talk that his son would be interested in a cabinet post: the senior Romney, secretary of housing and urban development under Richard Nixon, stated repeatedly that the best job he ever had was governor. They add that Mitt Romney will have so many challenges as an incoming governor that he won’t have time to think about higher posts.

Another reality check: believe the business about Romney’s father and ignore the jazz about all the challenges on Beacon Hill. Like many sons of important fathers — such as the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — Romney’s political career seems to be a response at least in part to the memory of his father, for whom he worked to have the school of political science at Brigham Young University named.

That Romney would adopt his father’s views of various political offices is almost a given. The gubernatorial candidate is far less credible when he speaks of his sincere desire to serve the people of Massachusetts. Watching him coast along the campaign trail — making political ads that showcase his winning smile and appearing at photo ops where he changes oil at a South Boston gas station (wearing gloves, no less) — makes it hard to believe that this is a man who wants to spend his days locked up in the State House battling Tom Finneran. Give Romney one or two budget sessions at best before he’s itching to get out of the State House. You can almost see his handlers booking tickets to Palm Springs for the next meeting of the Republican Governors Association already.

Even Romney’s purported reasons for seeking the governor’s office in Massachusetts lack credibility. "I’m running for office because I believe I can make a difference to the people of Massachusetts," he told the Phoenix last week. With all due respect to the candidate, this assurance seems laughable. Romney’s decision to run for office here in Massachusetts is more like a desperate student’s response to a difficult question on the MCAS exam (an acronym for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, which Romney could not identify when he first got into the race back in March; now he jokes it stands for "Mitt Cares About Schools"). Before returning to Massachusetts after the Winter Olympics, he seemed fully on track for a future run for higher office in Utah. What else, after all, could have motivated him in June 2001 to pen a letter to the Salt Lake City Tribune asking not to be labeled "pro-choice"?

When Romney finally forsook Utah for Massachusetts, almost everybody in Utah suspected the motivating factor was politics — and not of the state or local sort. When he finished his stint as president of the Winter Olympics, his popularity rating was among the highest in the state. Dan Jones, the president of an eponymous polling company, surveyed Utah residents on both the Olympics and the event’s president for the local press. Utahans overwhelmingly gave Romney at least partial credit for turning the scandal-plagued games around. The last time Jones tested Romney’s favorability rating, it was almost 70 percent — even higher than Romney’s popularity in Massachusetts at its peak, when he entered the race here. "He took over the Olympics when it was in disarray," recalls Jones. "People felt with his management, diplomacy, and charm ... the Olympics came off better than anticipated."

So why not run for office in Utah? Two reasons, says Jones. First, while the overwhelming majority of state residents viewed Romney very positively, the same was not true of Utah’s staunchly conservative Republican Party. For example, Romney’s position on abortion — somewhat conservative in Massachusetts terms — was a liability in Utah because it was too moderate. Utah conservatives immediately saw Romney as a threat. And Utah, like Massachusetts, has a rule that guarantees the power of the party faithful at state-convention time. In Utah, if a Republican Party favorite gains the support of 60 percent of convention delegates, then there is no primary. The recipient of the 60 percent becomes the immediate nominee. And in that state’s party politics, social conservatives rule the day. As Jones puts it, "the one thing that might have hurt him is his stand on abortion." (If the GOP’s 1990 Massachusetts contest had taken place in Utah, Steven Pierce, a strong pro-life candidate, would have received 60 percent of the convention vote to become the nominee, and the pro-choice outsider William Weld would be a historical footnote — well, Weld already is a footnote, but he’d be an even more obscure one.) Even so, most political observers believe that Romney could have finessed the abortion issue in Utah — just as he is trying to finesse it here from the opposite angle.

But that’s not the most important reason people in Utah believe Romney’s running in Massachusetts instead of the Beehive State. (Guess what? It’s not Mitt’s desire to serve the residents of the Bay State.) Rather, everybody out there expects Romney to be a presidential candidate some day. "That’s the conventional wisdom," says Jones. "I haven’t heard him say that, but that’s what people perceive. Massachusetts would make him more electoral votes. It’s a much more high-profile state than the state of Utah. If he wins, he becomes a prime contender of the Republican Party." (Massachusetts boasts 12 electoral votes — and New England as a block has 35 — as compared with Utah’s five.)

The national thinking regarding Romney is that if he manages to win in November, he vaults himself into the upper echelon of the GOP. "He’ll become something of a star," says William Schneider, a senior political analyst at CNN. "He’s good-looking. He ran the Olympics. He would have won the governorship in a state normally hostile to Republicans after 12 years of Republican rule. It would be incredible." Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne concurs. "Romney does have national legs just because of the national positive attention he got because of the Olympics," says Dionne. But "if he plays on a national stage, it would happen in 2008 — not 2004."

STILL, SOME local commentators, such as Boston Herald columnist and WRKO talk-show host Howie Carr, envision a scenario in which Romney neither joins the Bush administration nor stays on Beacon Hill: Carr sees Romney appointing himself the new Republican senator from Massachusetts if there is a vacancy. Leaving aside the fact that such an event is unlikely (it would require, for instance, the not-impossible circumstance of John Kerry’s succeeding in a 2004 presidential run), Romney probably would not do it. Why? Governors, not senators, are the farm team for the presidency. No US senator since John F. Kennedy has won the White House directly from Capitol Hill. The presidency has been dominated by governors since 1932. Says Republican consultant Jim Nuzzo, "If Mitt wins and does well as governor, the lesson is that is the best way to run for president. You don’t do it from appointive office. You’re not going to run for the Senate." If Romney wants to be president in 2008, his path is clear, says Nuzzo: "You’d lay the base, have a good term, then leave and spend the next two years running for president."

Officially, Romney denies all this talk and blames it on the Democrats. "It’s really a nice effort that the Democrats are trying to perpetrate, which is that I’m somehow going to be leaving," says the candidate, when asked about the possibility of a presidential run — even in 2008. "I haven’t been elected to anything yet. So it’s a little silly to talk about me going somewhere else."

Whether Romney would be truly a serious candidate in 2008 depends on a whole host of factors, few of which have yet taken shape — as he suggests. His fortunes could hinge, in part, on how (if elected) he does as governor, and what happens with Kerry. Also important is the potential 2008 field — and believe it or not, political insiders are already devising scenarios for 2008. (Blogger and Bush cousin John Ellis wrote of encountering a "veteran Republican operative" back in March: "We were talking about the Republican Party after George W. Bush (which is to say: 2008) and speculating as to who would run and who would not. The conversation shifted a bit to the question of who could run.... [W]hen we were done, we had a list of about 10 names, of whom I would say six were serious players: Jeb Bush, Bill Frist, Bill Simon (assuming victory in California), Mitt Romney (assuming victory in Massachusetts), Chuck Hagel and George Voinovich.") New York’s Giuliani is already high on the list of potential candidates for that year.

Besides, all the factors that prompted Romney to run for office in Massachusetts — and not Utah — are also in play as far as national politics goes. Even though he is conservative by Massachusetts standards, much like his father he is still to the left of the Republican Party nationwide (a point also made by Ellis). His position in support of domestic partnerships and increasing the minimum wage would make him a pariah among Republican stalwarts — though Arizona senator John McCain may have infused GOP presidential politics with more ideological flexibility. But again, Romney’s thinking may be dominated by the memory of his father, who died in 1995. As Brooke and Romney recalled at their Beacon Hill press conference last week, George Romney walked out of the Republican Convention in 1964 when the GOP nominated ultraconservative Barry Goldwater to the presidency. The elder Romney lived to see his brand of moderate Republicanism assume a bloc of power, only to be usurped as its head by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller; today, liberal Republicans are still referred to as "Rockefeller Republicans," not "Romney Republicans." Yes, the memory of that may indeed be motivating Romney’s plans.

What does all this mean for the upcoming election here in Massachusetts? The 2002 governor’s race, in a certain sense, is a referendum on Romney’s future in national politics. At issue for the GOP nominee is whether he gets to be like his father — the former head of the American Motors Corporation turned politician — or whether he returns to the relative obscurity, and prosperity, of private life.

When Massachusetts voters cast ballots on November 5, they will be deciding whether the Republican Party gains another national star — one who, no matter what he says, will have one eye trained on Washington throughout his governorship. The question voters need to ask themselves is, do they want to promote another GOP talent? Or do they want to stop him right now?

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com

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Issue Date: September 26 - October 3, 2002
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