Why, And How, Romney Quit In '06
My colleagues Josh Kraushaar and Alex Roarty have taken note of ex-Sen. Rick Santorum's big-time loss in his 2006 bid for re-election -- and rightly so, given just how badly Sen. Bob Casey beat Santorum across virtually all demographic groups and geographic areas.
But Mitt Romney's re-election bid -- or lack thereof -- deserves its own scrutiny. Romney said Sunday morning he didn't seek another term as governor of Massachusetts in 2006 because it wouldn't have been consistent with the reason he ran in the first place.
"I went to Massachusetts to make it different. I didn't go there to begin a political career, running time and time again. I made a difference. I put in place the things I wanted to do. I listed out the accomplishments we wanted to pursue in our administration. There were 100 things we wanted to do. Those things I pursued aggressively. Some we won. Some we didn't," Romney said. "Run again? That would be about me. I was trying to help get the state in best shape as I possibly could. Left the world of politics, went back into business."
But there are plenty of signs Romney was contemplating another term before he announced he'd skip the race in December 2005.
Romney's advisors were putting together plans for a potential re-election bid, the Boston Globe reported in November 2005. His campaign ran several radio ads touting his legislative success in late May, he ran a newspaper insert in the Globe in July, and his campaign polled the race in March, a poll that showed him trailing Reilly by a statistically insignificant margin. He even traded barbs with Attorney General Tom Reilly (D) over cost recovery for the Big Dig and welcomed former Deputy U.S. Attorney Deval Patrick -- who would eventually beat Reilly and win the governorship -- into the race.
At the same time, his advisors were denying his interest in a 2008 White House bid, apparently to keep his options open at home. Romney's former chief of staff, Spencer Zwick -- now the campaign's finance director -- told the Globe in October that his spending "doesn't indicate he's running for another office besides governor."
Romney hinted a few times that he hadn't ruled out another bid. "We'll both be on the same ballot," he said of then-Sen. Ted Kennedy, who was up for re-election himself in 2006. Most press accounts in early 2005 characterize Romney as intending to run for a second term, though they note his national ambitions.
Romney delayed a decision on whether he'd seek re-election until two things happened: First, he won election as head of the Republican Governors Association, a platform from which he could travel the country, introduce himself to big donors and collect favors he could later cash in. And second, he signed health care legislation into law -- legislation his rivals this year once believed would derail his entire bid.
(A side note: Romney spent most of Fall 2005 urging the legislature to pass a comprehensive reform measure. Romney ended up signing the bill in April 2006, after vetoing several provisions and after he'd said he wouldn't run for another term)
Then again, it would have been hard for Romney to mount a White House bid having just lost re-election, and Romney's decision could have become much clearer given the public polls he was seeing. A State House News poll, conducted by KRC/Communications Research just a month before Romney announced publicly he wouldn't seek a second term, showed him losing to Reilly (D) by 16 points. Just 42 percent of Bay Staters said Romney was doing an excellent or good job, while 53 percent said his performance was poor or below average (Hotline subscribers can see the full poll here, from our archives). Another poll, conducted by UMass in September 2005, showed Romney trailing Reilly by 15 points.
Those polls aren't proof that Romney was willing to give up on the governorship. But Romney's intentions to skip a re-election fight were pretty clear from the beginning. A review of Hotline archives shows the Massachusetts press corps taking then-Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey seriously as a candidate, and political insiders expressed surprise when businessman Charles Baker took himself out of the running in late August -- three and a half months before Romney ruled out another bid.
Romney, with the help of former consultant Mike Murphy, began seriously exploring a presidential bid early in 2005 (In an ironic twist, Healey brought on Stuart Stevens -- Romney's lead strategist this year -- to help her eventually unsuccessful bid to succeed her boss). He went so far as to promise Healey to endorse her if he decided not to seek another term, as early as June 2005.
Despite his insistence that he'd accomplished what he set out to do, Romney's team, and the governor himself, left the door wide open to a re-election bid in 2006. It was only after he set himself up to build a national foundation -- and after polls suggested he would end up as Santorum eventually did -- that Romney made public his decision to take a pass.
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