Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney is in a long and happy marriage with Ann Romney. They got married in 1969 and have five sons named Tagg, Matt, Ben, Craig, and Josh.

Willard Mitt Romney was born on 12 March 1947 in Detroit, Michigan. His father was an automobile executive named George W. Romney and his mother was a homemaker, Lenore Romney. He is the youngest of four siblings. He has English, Scottish, and German ancestry. They were members of the Mormon Church.

He studied at the renowned Cranbrook School and later at the Brigham Young University, from where he received his undergraduate degree. He then attended the Harvard Law School and the Harvard Business School, earning a law degree as well as an MBA.

He spent several months in France as a Mormon missionary. However, just like the other individual Mormon missionaries, he didn’t gain many converts.

Mitt Romney’s business career began shortly after he received a joint Juris Doctor and an MBA from the Harvard University. He was recruited by several firms and he chose to remain in Massachusetts and work for Boston Consulting Group in 1975.

He was eventually hired by ‘Bain & Company’ in 1977. The following year, he was promoted to the role of vice president. He worked with many clients, such as Monsanto Company, Outboard Marine Corporation, Burlington Industries and Corning Incorporated. He was considered one of their best consultants within a few years.

He partnered with Coleman Andrews III and Eric Kriss and founded a spinoff company ‘Bain Capital’ in 1984. Romney himself was the president and managing general partner. Early investors included members of elite Salvadoran families as well as wealthy Latin Americans. The firm was not an affiliate or a division of Bain & Company, but a completely different organization.

Romney was asked to return to Bain & Company in 1990, as it was facing financial problems. He was named the new CEO of the company in 1991 and received a symbolic salary of one dollar. Romney felt that though there was no personal gain for him in returning to the company, he did it out of a sense of obligation to the organization which had employed him and thousands of other people. Over the course of his business career, Romney amassed massive wealth which amounted to around a quarter billion dollars as of 2011.

Mitt Romney had not taken any public or political stance for most of his business career. In 1993, he thought about entering politics mostly due to his wife’s urging. He decided to challenge Democratic US Senator Ted Kennedy—who was seeking re-election for the sixth time—at the United States Senate election in Massachusetts. He formally announced his candidacy as a Republican in 1994. However, in the general election, he was beaten by Kennedy, who received 58 percent of the vote against his 41 per cent.

Later in 2002, he ran for the post of the governor of Massachusetts. He emerged victorious after defeating Shannon O'Brien who received only 45% of the vote. He was sworn in as the 70th Governor of Massachusetts on 2nd January 2003. He declined his governor’s salary of $135,000.

He supported raising fees for drivers’ licenses and gun licenses, and also increased a special gasoline retailer fee by two cents per gallon. He sought to bring near-universal health insurance coverage to the state as well. He signed the resulting Massachusetts health reform law, also known as ‘Romneycare’. It required nearly all the residents of the state to buy health insurance coverage or face tax penalties.

He opposed same-sex marriages and civil unions. But he advocated tolerance and supported some forms of domestic partnerships. Since the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court required the state to recognize same-sex marriages, he started instructing town clerks to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In 2004 and 2008, he urged the US Senate to vote in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment.

He formally announced his candidacy for the 2008 Republican nomination for president on 13th February 2007. His campaign emphasized his profitable career in the world of business and also his stewardship of the Olympics. His political experience as a governor was also stressed upon. He assembled a veteran group of Republican staffers, consultants, and pollsters for his campaign. However, he avoided speaking about his Mormon doctrines.