The Also Rans: Mitt Romney
Too soon? I know we talked a lot about Mitt Romney in 2012, but I still felt that he deserved inclusion into this series. He was a strong candidate who ran in a very polarized election in which his wealth was made an issue and his private remarks were made public and used against him.
Willard Mitt Romney was born on March 12, 1947 at Harper University Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, the youngest child of automobile executive and Michigan Governor George W. Romney and homemaker (and US Senate candidate) Lenore Romney. Mitt Romney is a fifth-generation member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). His 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. Romney was called "Billy" until kindergarten, when he indicated a preference for "Mitt". His father became the chairman and CEO of American Motors in 1954 and helped the company avoid bankruptcy and return to profitability.
Mitt Romney participated in his father's successful 1962 Michigan gubernatorial campaign and later worked for him as an intern in the Governor's office. In March of his senior year, he began dating Ann Davies. The two became informally engaged around the time of his June 1965 graduation.
Romney attended Stanford University during the 1965–66 school year. As opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War grew, Romney joined a counter-protest against that group. In July 1966, he left the U.S. for a thirty-month stay in France as a Mormon missionary, a tradition in his family. In June 1968, an automobile he was driving in southern France was hit by another vehicle, seriously injuring him and killing one of his passengers, the wife of the mission president. Romney was not at fault in the accident. Following his recovery from his injuries, he threw himself into his mission and his group met its goal of 200 baptisms for the year, the most for them in a decade. Since his stay has remained fluent in French.
At their first meeting following his return, Romney and Ann Davies reconnected and decided to get married. He began attending Brigham Young University (BYU), where she had been studying. The couple married on March 21, 1969, in a civil ceremony in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The following day, they flew to Utah for a Mormon wedding ceremony at the Salt Lake Temple. Ann had converted to the Mormon faith while Mitt was in France was away.
During the U.S. military draft for the Vietnam War, Mitt Romney sought and received two 2-S student deferments, then a 4-D ministerial deferment while living in France as a Mormon missionary. He later sought and received two additional student deferments.
During his senior year at BYU, Romney took a leave to work as driver and advance man for his mother Lenore Romney's unsuccessful 1970 campaign for U.S. Senator from Michigan. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English with highest honors in 1971. The Romneys' first son, Taggart, was born in 1970 while they were undergraduates at BYU and living in a basement apartment. Four more sons followed: Matthew (1971), Joshua (1975), Benjamin (1978) and Craig (1981).
Mitt Romney enrolled in the combined law degree/Master of Business Administration four-year program coordinated between Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. He graduated in 1975 from law school in the top third of that class, and was named a Baker Scholar for graduating in the top five percent of his business school class.
Romney joined the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), as a management consultant. In 1977, he was hired by Bain & Company, a management consulting firm in Boston. Romney became a vice-president of the firm in 1978. In 1984, Romney left Bain & Company to cofound the spin-off private equity investment firm, Bain Capital. Bain and Romney raised the $37 million in funds needed to start the new operation, which had seven employees. Romney held the titles of president and managing general partner. Bain Capital focused on venture capital investments. The firm's first significant success was a 1986 investment to help start Staples Inc. Bain Capital eventually reaped a nearly sevenfold return on its investment, and Romney sat on the Staples board of directors for over a decade. Romney soon switched Bain Capital's focus from startups to the relatively new business of leveraged buyouts. Bain Capital lost money in many of its early leveraged buyouts, but then found deals that made large returns. Much of the firm's profit was earned from a relatively small number of deals. Bain Capital's leveraged buyouts sometimes led to layoffs, either soon after acquisition or later after the firm had concluded its role.
In 1990, facing financial collapse, Bain & Company asked Romney to return. Announced as its new CEO in January 1991. Within about a year, he had led Bain & Company through a turnaround and returned the firm to profitability. He turned Bain & Company over to new leadership and returned to Bain Capital in December 1992. Romney took a leave of absence from Bain Capital from November 1993 to November 1994 to run for the U.S. Senate. In the general election, he ran against Ted Kennedy in the first serious re-election challenge of Kennedy's career. Romney's campaign was effective in portraying Kennedy as soft on crime, and by mid-September 1994, polls showed the race to be approximately even. Kennedy responded with a series of ads that focused on Romney's seemingly shifting political views on issues such as abortion and on layoffs of workers at the Ampad plant owned by Bain Capital. The latter was effective in blunting Romney's momentum. Kennedy and Romney held a widely watched late-October debate that had no clear winner, but by then, Kennedy had pulled ahead in polls and stayed ahead. In the election, Kennedy won the election with 58 percent of the vote to Romney's 41 percent, the smallest margin in any of Kennedy's re-election campaigns for the Senate.
When George Romney died in 1995, Mitt donated his inheritance to BYU's George W. Romney Institute of Public Management. In 1998, Ann Romney learned that she had multiple sclerosis. Romney received a job offer to take over the troubled organization responsible for the 2002 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, to be held in Salt Lake City in Utah, and Ann Romney urged him to accept it. On February 11, 1999, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games of 2002 hired Romney as their president and CEO. Before Romney took the position, the event was running $379 million short of its revenue goals and officials had made plans to scale back the Games to compensate for the fiscal crisis. Additionally, the image of the Games had been damaged by allegations of bribery against top officials. Romney was selected based on his business and legal expertise as well as his connections to both the LDS Church and the state. Romney donated the $1.4 million in salary and severance payments he received for his three years as president and CEO to charity and also contributed $1 million to the Olympics. Romney worked to ensure the safety of the Games following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by coordinating a $300 million security budget. He secured a record level of federal funding for the staging of a U.S. Olympics. Despite the initial fiscal shortfall, the Games ended up with a surplus of $100 million.
In August 2001, Romney announced that he would not return to Bain Capital. He transferred his ownership to other partners and negotiated an agreement that allowed him to receive a passive profit share as a retired partner. Bain continued to thrive, earning him millions of dollars in annual income.
In 2002, the administration of Republican Acting Governor of Massachusetts Jane Swift was tainted by scandal and prominent party figures wanted Romney to run for governor. On March 19, 2002, Swift announced she would not seek her party's nomination, and hours later Romney declared his candidacy. The Massachusetts Democratic Party challenged Romney's eligibility to run for governor, noting that state law required seven years' consecutive residence and that Romney had filed his state tax returns as a Utah resident in 1999 and 2000, but the bipartisan Massachusetts State Ballot Law Commission unanimously ruled that he had maintained sufficient financial and personal ties to Massachusetts to be an eligible candidate. On November 5, 2002, he won the election forgovernor, earning 50 percent of the vote to 45 percent for his opponent. As governor he faced a Massachusetts state legislature with large Democratic majorities in both houses. Romney picked his cabinet and advisors based more on managerial abilities than partisan affiliation. He declined a governor's salary of $135,000 during his term. Upon entering office he faced a projected $3 billion deficit. Through a combination of spending cuts, increased fees, and removal of corporate tax loopholes, the state achieved surpluses of around $600–700 million during Romney's last two full fiscal years in office.
Romney sought to bring near-universal health insurance coverage to the state. Romney formed a team of consultants who devised a set of proposals for a health-care plan. Past rival Ted Kennedy gave Romney's plan a positive reception and encouraged Democratic legislators to cooperate. On April 12, 2006, Romney signed the resulting Massachusetts health reform law, commonly called "Romneycare", which requires nearly all Massachusetts residents to buy health insurance coverage or face escalating tax penalties. He vetoed eight sections of the health care legislation, including a controversial $295-per-employee assessment on businesses that do not offer health insurance. The legislature overrode all eight vetoes. The law was the first of its kind in the nation and became the signature achievement of Romney's term in office.
At the beginning of his governorship, Romney opposed same-sex marriage and civil unions, but advocated tolerance and supported some domestic partnership benefits. Romney backed a state constitutional amendment in February 2004 that would have banned those marriages but still allowed civil unions and in May 2004, in compliance with a court decision, he instructed town clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He later endorsed a ballot initiative led by the Coalition for Marriage and Family (an alliance of socially conservative organizations) that would have banned same-sex marriage and made no provisions for civil unions. In 2004 and 2006, he urged the U.S. Senate to vote in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment.
In 2005, Romney revealed a change of view regarding abortion, moving from the pro-choice positions expressed during his 1994 and 2002 campaigns to a pro-life one in opposition to Roe v. Wade. Romney subsequently vetoed a bill on pro-life grounds that expanded access to emergency contraception in hospitals and pharmacies (the legislature overrode the veto).
On December 14, 2005, announced that he would not seek re-election for a second term as Governor. As chair of the Republican Governors Association, Romney traveled around the country, meeting prominent Republicans and building a national political network. Romney formally announced his candidacy for the 2008 Republican nomination for president on February 13, 2007, in Dearborn, Michigan, casting himself as a political outsider. His campaign emphasized his successful career in the business world and his stewardship of the Olympics. Ann Romney's multiple sclerosis was in remission and would be an active participant in his campaign. Romney has avoided speaking publicly about his Mormon faith, but the rise of Southern Baptist minister and former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee led Romney to address the issue. Early primary losses did not deter Romney. He persisted through the nationwide Super Tuesday contests on February 5 when he won a few primaries or caucuses. Trailing McCain in delegates by a more than two-to-one margin, Romney announced the end of his campaign on February 7. Romney endorsed McCain for president a week later, and McCain had Romney on a short list for vice presidential running mate. But McCain opted instead for a high-risk "game changer", selecting Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. McCain lost the election to Democratic Senator Barack Obama.
Romney supported the Bush administration's Troubled Asset Relief Program in response to the late-2000s financial crisis, later saying that it prevented the U.S. financial system from collapsing. During the U.S. automotive industry crisis of 2008–10, he opposed a bailout of the industry in the form of direct government intervention, and argued that a managed bankruptcy of struggling automobile companies should instead be accompanied by federal guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing from the private sector. Following the 2008 election, Romney laid the groundwork for a likely 2012 presidential campaign by using his Free and Strong America political action committee (PAC) to raise money for other Republican candidates. In 2009, the Romneys sold their primary residence in Belmont. Massachusetts and their ski chalet in Utah, leaving them an estate in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and an oceanfront home in the La Jolla district of San Diego, California. The San Diego home proved beneficial in location and climate for Ann Romney's multiple sclerosis therapies. He released his book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, in March 2010, and undertook an 18-state book tour to promote the work. Romney donated his earnings from the book to charity. Immediately following the March 2010 passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Romney attacked the legislation.
On April 11, 2011, Romney announced, at the University of New Hampshire, that he had formed an exploratory committee for a run for the Republican presidential nomination. The early stages of the race found him as the apparent front-runner in what appeared to be a weak field. On June 2, 2011, Romney formally announced the start of his campaign, speaking from a farm in Stratham, New Hampshire. Romney raised $56 million during 2011, more than double the amount raised by any of his Republican opponents.
In the initial contest, the 2012 Iowa caucuses of January 3, election officials announced Romney as ahead with 25 percent of the vote, edging out a late-gaining Rick Santorum by eight votes. Sixteen days later, however, they certified Santorum as the winner by a 34-vote margin. Romney earned a decisive win in the New Hampshire primary. He lost to Newt Gingrich by 13 points in the January 21 primary. He won the Florida primary on January 31, and in the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses on March 6, Romney won six of ten contests, including a narrow victory in Ohio. Following a sweep of five more contests on April 24, the Republican National Committee put its resources to work for Romney as the party's presumptive nominee. Romney clinched a majority of the delegates with a win in the Texas primary on May 29.
Negative ads from both sides dominated the 2012 presidential election campaign, with Barack Obama's campaign ads proclaiming that Romney shipped jobs overseas while at Bain Capital and kept money in offshore tax havens and Swiss bank accounts. Romney faced demands from Democrats to release additional years of his tax returns. During May and June, the Obama campaign spent heavily and was able to paint a negative image of Romney in voters' minds. In July 2012, Romney visited the United Kingdom, Israel, and Poland, meeting leaders in an effort to raise his credibility as a world statesman. Comments Romney made about the readiness of the 2012 Summer Olympics were perceived as undiplomatic by the British press. Israeli Prime Minister (and former BCG colleague) Benjamin Netanyahu, embraced Romney, though some Palestinians criticized him for suggesting that Israel's culture led to their greater economic success.
On August 11, 2012, the Romney campaign announced the selection of Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his vice-presidential running mate. On August 28, 2012, the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, officially nominated Romney as their candidate for the presidency. Romney became the first Mormon to be a major-party presidential nominee.
In mid-September, a video surfaced of Romney addressing a group of supporters in which he stated that 47 percent of the nation pay no income tax, are dependent on the federal government, see themselves as victims, and will support President Obama unconditionally. Romney went on to say: "And so my job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." After facing criticism about the these comments, he at first characterized them as "inelegantly stated", then a couple of weeks later commented: "I said something that's just completely wrong."
The first of three 2012 presidential election debates took place on October 3, in Denver. Media figures and political analysts widely viewed Romney as the winner of the first debate. Obama's debate performance improved in the last two debates later in October. On election day on November 6, Romney garnered 206 electoral college votes to Obama's 332, losing all but one of nine battleground states. He received 47 percent of the nationwide popular vote to Obama's 51 percent. In his concession speech to his supporters, he said, "Like so many of you, Paul and I have left everything on the field. We have given our all to this campaign. I so wish that I had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead this country in a different direction, but the nation chose another leader."
Reflecting on his defeat during a conference call to hundreds of fundraisers and donors a week after the election, Romney attributed the outcome to Obama's having secured the votes of specific interest groups, including African Americans, Hispanic Americans, young people, and women, by offering them what Romney called "extraordinary financial gifts." The remark drew intense media criticism.
Following the election defeat, Romney has maintained a low profile. In December 2012, he joined the board of Marriott International for a third stint as a director. In March 2013, Romney gave a reflective interview on Fox News Sunday, stating, "It kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House doing what needs to be done".
Willard Mitt Romney was born on March 12, 1947 at Harper University Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, the youngest child of automobile executive and Michigan Governor George W. Romney and homemaker (and US Senate candidate) Lenore Romney. Mitt Romney is a fifth-generation member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). His 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. Romney was called "Billy" until kindergarten, when he indicated a preference for "Mitt". His father became the chairman and CEO of American Motors in 1954 and helped the company avoid bankruptcy and return to profitability.
Mitt Romney participated in his father's successful 1962 Michigan gubernatorial campaign and later worked for him as an intern in the Governor's office. In March of his senior year, he began dating Ann Davies. The two became informally engaged around the time of his June 1965 graduation.
Romney attended Stanford University during the 1965–66 school year. As opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War grew, Romney joined a counter-protest against that group. In July 1966, he left the U.S. for a thirty-month stay in France as a Mormon missionary, a tradition in his family. In June 1968, an automobile he was driving in southern France was hit by another vehicle, seriously injuring him and killing one of his passengers, the wife of the mission president. Romney was not at fault in the accident. Following his recovery from his injuries, he threw himself into his mission and his group met its goal of 200 baptisms for the year, the most for them in a decade. Since his stay has remained fluent in French.
At their first meeting following his return, Romney and Ann Davies reconnected and decided to get married. He began attending Brigham Young University (BYU), where she had been studying. The couple married on March 21, 1969, in a civil ceremony in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The following day, they flew to Utah for a Mormon wedding ceremony at the Salt Lake Temple. Ann had converted to the Mormon faith while Mitt was in France was away.
During the U.S. military draft for the Vietnam War, Mitt Romney sought and received two 2-S student deferments, then a 4-D ministerial deferment while living in France as a Mormon missionary. He later sought and received two additional student deferments.
During his senior year at BYU, Romney took a leave to work as driver and advance man for his mother Lenore Romney's unsuccessful 1970 campaign for U.S. Senator from Michigan. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English with highest honors in 1971. The Romneys' first son, Taggart, was born in 1970 while they were undergraduates at BYU and living in a basement apartment. Four more sons followed: Matthew (1971), Joshua (1975), Benjamin (1978) and Craig (1981).
Mitt Romney enrolled in the combined law degree/Master of Business Administration four-year program coordinated between Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. He graduated in 1975 from law school in the top third of that class, and was named a Baker Scholar for graduating in the top five percent of his business school class.
Romney joined the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), as a management consultant. In 1977, he was hired by Bain & Company, a management consulting firm in Boston. Romney became a vice-president of the firm in 1978. In 1984, Romney left Bain & Company to cofound the spin-off private equity investment firm, Bain Capital. Bain and Romney raised the $37 million in funds needed to start the new operation, which had seven employees. Romney held the titles of president and managing general partner. Bain Capital focused on venture capital investments. The firm's first significant success was a 1986 investment to help start Staples Inc. Bain Capital eventually reaped a nearly sevenfold return on its investment, and Romney sat on the Staples board of directors for over a decade. Romney soon switched Bain Capital's focus from startups to the relatively new business of leveraged buyouts. Bain Capital lost money in many of its early leveraged buyouts, but then found deals that made large returns. Much of the firm's profit was earned from a relatively small number of deals. Bain Capital's leveraged buyouts sometimes led to layoffs, either soon after acquisition or later after the firm had concluded its role.
In 1990, facing financial collapse, Bain & Company asked Romney to return. Announced as its new CEO in January 1991. Within about a year, he had led Bain & Company through a turnaround and returned the firm to profitability. He turned Bain & Company over to new leadership and returned to Bain Capital in December 1992. Romney took a leave of absence from Bain Capital from November 1993 to November 1994 to run for the U.S. Senate. In the general election, he ran against Ted Kennedy in the first serious re-election challenge of Kennedy's career. Romney's campaign was effective in portraying Kennedy as soft on crime, and by mid-September 1994, polls showed the race to be approximately even. Kennedy responded with a series of ads that focused on Romney's seemingly shifting political views on issues such as abortion and on layoffs of workers at the Ampad plant owned by Bain Capital. The latter was effective in blunting Romney's momentum. Kennedy and Romney held a widely watched late-October debate that had no clear winner, but by then, Kennedy had pulled ahead in polls and stayed ahead. In the election, Kennedy won the election with 58 percent of the vote to Romney's 41 percent, the smallest margin in any of Kennedy's re-election campaigns for the Senate.
When George Romney died in 1995, Mitt donated his inheritance to BYU's George W. Romney Institute of Public Management. In 1998, Ann Romney learned that she had multiple sclerosis. Romney received a job offer to take over the troubled organization responsible for the 2002 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, to be held in Salt Lake City in Utah, and Ann Romney urged him to accept it. On February 11, 1999, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games of 2002 hired Romney as their president and CEO. Before Romney took the position, the event was running $379 million short of its revenue goals and officials had made plans to scale back the Games to compensate for the fiscal crisis. Additionally, the image of the Games had been damaged by allegations of bribery against top officials. Romney was selected based on his business and legal expertise as well as his connections to both the LDS Church and the state. Romney donated the $1.4 million in salary and severance payments he received for his three years as president and CEO to charity and also contributed $1 million to the Olympics. Romney worked to ensure the safety of the Games following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by coordinating a $300 million security budget. He secured a record level of federal funding for the staging of a U.S. Olympics. Despite the initial fiscal shortfall, the Games ended up with a surplus of $100 million.
In August 2001, Romney announced that he would not return to Bain Capital. He transferred his ownership to other partners and negotiated an agreement that allowed him to receive a passive profit share as a retired partner. Bain continued to thrive, earning him millions of dollars in annual income.
In 2002, the administration of Republican Acting Governor of Massachusetts Jane Swift was tainted by scandal and prominent party figures wanted Romney to run for governor. On March 19, 2002, Swift announced she would not seek her party's nomination, and hours later Romney declared his candidacy. The Massachusetts Democratic Party challenged Romney's eligibility to run for governor, noting that state law required seven years' consecutive residence and that Romney had filed his state tax returns as a Utah resident in 1999 and 2000, but the bipartisan Massachusetts State Ballot Law Commission unanimously ruled that he had maintained sufficient financial and personal ties to Massachusetts to be an eligible candidate. On November 5, 2002, he won the election forgovernor, earning 50 percent of the vote to 45 percent for his opponent. As governor he faced a Massachusetts state legislature with large Democratic majorities in both houses. Romney picked his cabinet and advisors based more on managerial abilities than partisan affiliation. He declined a governor's salary of $135,000 during his term. Upon entering office he faced a projected $3 billion deficit. Through a combination of spending cuts, increased fees, and removal of corporate tax loopholes, the state achieved surpluses of around $600–700 million during Romney's last two full fiscal years in office.
Romney sought to bring near-universal health insurance coverage to the state. Romney formed a team of consultants who devised a set of proposals for a health-care plan. Past rival Ted Kennedy gave Romney's plan a positive reception and encouraged Democratic legislators to cooperate. On April 12, 2006, Romney signed the resulting Massachusetts health reform law, commonly called "Romneycare", which requires nearly all Massachusetts residents to buy health insurance coverage or face escalating tax penalties. He vetoed eight sections of the health care legislation, including a controversial $295-per-employee assessment on businesses that do not offer health insurance. The legislature overrode all eight vetoes. The law was the first of its kind in the nation and became the signature achievement of Romney's term in office.
At the beginning of his governorship, Romney opposed same-sex marriage and civil unions, but advocated tolerance and supported some domestic partnership benefits. Romney backed a state constitutional amendment in February 2004 that would have banned those marriages but still allowed civil unions and in May 2004, in compliance with a court decision, he instructed town clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He later endorsed a ballot initiative led by the Coalition for Marriage and Family (an alliance of socially conservative organizations) that would have banned same-sex marriage and made no provisions for civil unions. In 2004 and 2006, he urged the U.S. Senate to vote in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment.
In 2005, Romney revealed a change of view regarding abortion, moving from the pro-choice positions expressed during his 1994 and 2002 campaigns to a pro-life one in opposition to Roe v. Wade. Romney subsequently vetoed a bill on pro-life grounds that expanded access to emergency contraception in hospitals and pharmacies (the legislature overrode the veto).
On December 14, 2005, announced that he would not seek re-election for a second term as Governor. As chair of the Republican Governors Association, Romney traveled around the country, meeting prominent Republicans and building a national political network. Romney formally announced his candidacy for the 2008 Republican nomination for president on February 13, 2007, in Dearborn, Michigan, casting himself as a political outsider. His campaign emphasized his successful career in the business world and his stewardship of the Olympics. Ann Romney's multiple sclerosis was in remission and would be an active participant in his campaign. Romney has avoided speaking publicly about his Mormon faith, but the rise of Southern Baptist minister and former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee led Romney to address the issue. Early primary losses did not deter Romney. He persisted through the nationwide Super Tuesday contests on February 5 when he won a few primaries or caucuses. Trailing McCain in delegates by a more than two-to-one margin, Romney announced the end of his campaign on February 7. Romney endorsed McCain for president a week later, and McCain had Romney on a short list for vice presidential running mate. But McCain opted instead for a high-risk "game changer", selecting Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. McCain lost the election to Democratic Senator Barack Obama.
Romney supported the Bush administration's Troubled Asset Relief Program in response to the late-2000s financial crisis, later saying that it prevented the U.S. financial system from collapsing. During the U.S. automotive industry crisis of 2008–10, he opposed a bailout of the industry in the form of direct government intervention, and argued that a managed bankruptcy of struggling automobile companies should instead be accompanied by federal guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing from the private sector. Following the 2008 election, Romney laid the groundwork for a likely 2012 presidential campaign by using his Free and Strong America political action committee (PAC) to raise money for other Republican candidates. In 2009, the Romneys sold their primary residence in Belmont. Massachusetts and their ski chalet in Utah, leaving them an estate in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and an oceanfront home in the La Jolla district of San Diego, California. The San Diego home proved beneficial in location and climate for Ann Romney's multiple sclerosis therapies. He released his book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, in March 2010, and undertook an 18-state book tour to promote the work. Romney donated his earnings from the book to charity. Immediately following the March 2010 passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Romney attacked the legislation.
On April 11, 2011, Romney announced, at the University of New Hampshire, that he had formed an exploratory committee for a run for the Republican presidential nomination. The early stages of the race found him as the apparent front-runner in what appeared to be a weak field. On June 2, 2011, Romney formally announced the start of his campaign, speaking from a farm in Stratham, New Hampshire. Romney raised $56 million during 2011, more than double the amount raised by any of his Republican opponents.
In the initial contest, the 2012 Iowa caucuses of January 3, election officials announced Romney as ahead with 25 percent of the vote, edging out a late-gaining Rick Santorum by eight votes. Sixteen days later, however, they certified Santorum as the winner by a 34-vote margin. Romney earned a decisive win in the New Hampshire primary. He lost to Newt Gingrich by 13 points in the January 21 primary. He won the Florida primary on January 31, and in the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses on March 6, Romney won six of ten contests, including a narrow victory in Ohio. Following a sweep of five more contests on April 24, the Republican National Committee put its resources to work for Romney as the party's presumptive nominee. Romney clinched a majority of the delegates with a win in the Texas primary on May 29.
Negative ads from both sides dominated the 2012 presidential election campaign, with Barack Obama's campaign ads proclaiming that Romney shipped jobs overseas while at Bain Capital and kept money in offshore tax havens and Swiss bank accounts. Romney faced demands from Democrats to release additional years of his tax returns. During May and June, the Obama campaign spent heavily and was able to paint a negative image of Romney in voters' minds. In July 2012, Romney visited the United Kingdom, Israel, and Poland, meeting leaders in an effort to raise his credibility as a world statesman. Comments Romney made about the readiness of the 2012 Summer Olympics were perceived as undiplomatic by the British press. Israeli Prime Minister (and former BCG colleague) Benjamin Netanyahu, embraced Romney, though some Palestinians criticized him for suggesting that Israel's culture led to their greater economic success.
On August 11, 2012, the Romney campaign announced the selection of Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his vice-presidential running mate. On August 28, 2012, the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, officially nominated Romney as their candidate for the presidency. Romney became the first Mormon to be a major-party presidential nominee.
In mid-September, a video surfaced of Romney addressing a group of supporters in which he stated that 47 percent of the nation pay no income tax, are dependent on the federal government, see themselves as victims, and will support President Obama unconditionally. Romney went on to say: "And so my job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." After facing criticism about the these comments, he at first characterized them as "inelegantly stated", then a couple of weeks later commented: "I said something that's just completely wrong."
The first of three 2012 presidential election debates took place on October 3, in Denver. Media figures and political analysts widely viewed Romney as the winner of the first debate. Obama's debate performance improved in the last two debates later in October. On election day on November 6, Romney garnered 206 electoral college votes to Obama's 332, losing all but one of nine battleground states. He received 47 percent of the nationwide popular vote to Obama's 51 percent. In his concession speech to his supporters, he said, "Like so many of you, Paul and I have left everything on the field. We have given our all to this campaign. I so wish that I had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead this country in a different direction, but the nation chose another leader."
Reflecting on his defeat during a conference call to hundreds of fundraisers and donors a week after the election, Romney attributed the outcome to Obama's having secured the votes of specific interest groups, including African Americans, Hispanic Americans, young people, and women, by offering them what Romney called "extraordinary financial gifts." The remark drew intense media criticism.
Following the election defeat, Romney has maintained a low profile. In December 2012, he joined the board of Marriott International for a third stint as a director. In March 2013, Romney gave a reflective interview on Fox News Sunday, stating, "It kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House doing what needs to be done".