WikipediaExtracts:Mitt Romney
Extracted from Wikipedia --
Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American businessman and retired politician who was a United States senator from Utah from 2019 to 2025 and as the 70th governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007. A member of the Republican Party, he was the party's nominee in the 2012 presidential election.
Romney is the youngest child of George W. Romney, a governor of Michigan and United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and a member of the prominent Romney family. Born in Detroit, Romney attended Stanford University for a year before spending over two years in France while serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Not long after he returned to the US in late 1968, he began attending Brigham Young University (BYU), and married Ann Davies in 1969. In 1971, Romney graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English, and in 1975 he completed a JD–MBA program at Harvard University. He became a management consultant, and in 1977 joined Bain & Company in Boston, Massachusetts. As Bain's chief executive officer (CEO), Romney helped lead the company out of a financial crisis, and in 1984 he co-founded and led the spin-off company Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm that is one of the largest of its kind.
After stepping down from his position at Bain Capital and LDS Church callings, Romney ran as the Republican nominee in the 1994 United States Senate election in Massachusetts, losing to the Democratic incumbent Ted Kennedy. Afterward, he resumed his position at Bain Capital. He later moved to Utah, where a successful stint as president and CEO of the then-struggling 2002 Winter Olympics led to the relaunch of Romney's political career. After moving back to Massachusetts, he won the 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial election. As governor, Romney helped develop and later signed a health care reform law (commonly referred to as "Romneycare") that provided near-universal health insurance access through state-level subsidies and individual mandates to purchase insurance. He also presided over the prevention of a projected $1.2–1.5 billion deficit through a combination of spending cuts and the cessation of corporate tax loopholes.
Romney did not seek reelection as governor in 2006, instead focusing on his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2008 election, which he lost to Senator John McCain. He won the nomination for the next presidential election, choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate. He lost the election to incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama. After reestablishing residency in Utah, Romney successfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 2018, becoming the first person in modern U.S. history to be elected governor and U.S. senator of different states.
Throughout his political career, Romney has generally been considered a moderate or neoconservative Republican. During his term in the Senate, he marched alongside Black Lives Matter protesters, voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, supported gun control measures, and did not vote for Republican nominee Donald Trump in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential elections. He was also the only Republican senator who voted to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, making him the first senator ever to have voted to remove a president of the same party from office; Romney also voted to convict in Trump's second trial in 2021. He has long been hawkish on relations with Iran, China, and Russia, and is a staunch supporter of Israel and Ukraine. In 2023, Romney announced he would not run for reelection in 2024, and retired from the Senate when his term expired in 2025.
