Mitt Romney
Willard Mitt Romney is an American businessman and retired politician who served as 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 U.S. presidential election.
Romney is a son of George W. Romney, a former governor of Michigan, and a member of the prominent Romney family. Born in Detroit and raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Mitt spent over two years in France as a Mormon missionary. He married Ann Davies in 1969, and has five sons with her. Active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout his adult life, Romney served as bishop of his ward and later as a stake president for an area covering Boston and many of its suburbs. By 1971, he had participated in the political campaigns of both his parents. In 1971, Romney graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English from Brigham Young University and in 1975 he completed a JD–MBA program from Harvard. He became a management consultant and in 1977 joined Bain & Company in Boston. As Bain's chief executive officer, he helped lead the company out of a financial crisis. In 1984, he co-founded and led the spin-off company Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm that became one of the largest of its kind in the nation.
After stepping down from his positions at Bain Capital and in the LDS Church, Romney ran as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts in 1994 and lost to the incumbent, Ted Kennedy. He then resumed his position at Bain Capital. Years later, a successful stint as president and CEO of the then-struggling Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics led to a relaunch of his political career. Elected governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Romney helped develop and later signed a health care reform law that provided near-universal health insurance access through state-level subsidies and individual mandates to purchase insurance. He also presided over the elimination of a projected $1.2–1.5 billion deficit through a combination of spending cuts, increased fees, and closing corporate tax loopholes.
Romney did not seek reelection in 2006, instead focusing on his campaign for the Republican nomination in the 2008 presidential election, which he lost to Senator John McCain. Romney ran for president again four years later and was the Republican nominee in the 2012 presidential election, becoming the first LDS Church member to be a major party's nominee. He lost the election to President Barack Obama. After reestablishing residency in Utah, Romney ran for U.S. Senate in 2018. When Romney won the Republican nomination and general election, he became the first person in modern American history to be elected governor and U.S. senator of different states.
Generally considered a moderate or neoconservative Republican, Romney was the lone Republican to vote to convict Donald 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 marched alongside Black Lives Matter protestors, voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, supported gun control measures, and did not vote for Trump in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential elections. He has long been hawkish on relations with Iran, China, and Russia, and was one of Israel's staunchest supporters in Congress. In 2023, Romney announced he would not run for reelection in 2024 and retired from the Senate when his term expired in 2025.
Early and personal life
Heritage and youth
Willard Mitt Romney was born on March 12, 1947, at Harper University Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, one of four children born to automobile executive George W. Romney and actress and homemaker Lenore Romney. His mother was a native of Logan, Utah, and his father was born to American parents in a Mormon colony in Chihuahua, Mexico. Of primarily English descent, he also has Scottish and German ancestry. A fifth-generation member of the LDS Church, he is a great-grandson of Miles Park Romney and a great-great-grandson of Miles Romney, who converted to Mormonism in its first decade. Another great-great-grandfather, Parley P. Pratt, helped lead the early church.Romney has three older siblings: Margo, Jane, and Scott. He was named 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 expressed a preference for "Mitt". In 1953, the family moved from Detroit to the affluent suburb of Bloomfield Hills and his father became the chairman and CEO of American Motors the following year and helped the company avoid bankruptcy and return to profitability. By 1959, his father had become a nationally known figure in print and on television, and Mitt idolized him.
Romney attended public elementary schools until seventh grade, when he enrolled as one of only a few Mormon students at Cranbrook School, a private upscale boys' preparatory school a few miles from his home. Many students there came from backgrounds even more privileged than his. Not particularly athletic, he also did not distinguish himself academically. He participated in his father's successful 1962 gubernatorial campaign, and later worked as an intern in the governor's office. Romney took up residence at Cranbrook when his newly elected father began spending most of his time at the state capitol.
At Cranbrook, Romney helped manage the ice hockey team, and joined the pep squad. During his senior year, he joined the cross country running team. He belonged to 11 school organizations and school clubs, including the Blue Key Club, a booster group he had started. During his final year there, his academic record improved but fell short of excellence. Romney was involved in several pranks while attending Cranbrook. He has since apologized for them, stating that some of them may have gone too far. In March of his senior year, he began dating Ann Davies; she attended the private Kingswood School, Cranbrook's sister school. The two became informally engaged around the time he graduated from high school in June 1965.
College, France mission, marriage, and children
Romney attended Stanford University during the 1965–1966 academic year. He was not part of the counterculture of the 1960s then taking form in the San Francisco Bay Area. As opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War grew, a group staged a May 1966 sit-in at Stanford's administration building to demonstrate against draft status tests; Romney joined a counterprotest against that group. He continued to enjoy occasional pranks.In July 1966, he began a 30-month stint in France as a Mormon missionary, a traditional rite of passage in his family. He arrived in Le Havre, where he shared cramped quarters under meager conditions. Rules against drinking, smoking, and dating were strictly enforced.
On average, individual Mormon missionaries do not gain many converts and Romney was no exception: he later estimated 10 to 20 for his entire mission. He initially became demoralized and later recalled it as the only time when "most of what I was trying to do was rejected."
Romney soon gained recognition within the mission for the many homes he called on and the repeat visits he was granted. He became a zone leader in Bordeaux in early 1968, and soon thereafter became an assistant to the mission president in Paris. While in Paris, Romney resided at the Mission Home for several months, and enjoyed a mansion far more comfortable than the accommodations he experienced elsewhere in the country.
When the French expressed opposition to the U.S. role in the Vietnam War, Romney debated them. Those who yelled at him and slammed their doors in his face merely reinforced his resolve.
In June 1968, while in southern France and driving an automobile that was hit by another vehicle, Romney was seriously injured. The crash killed one of his passengers, the wife of the mission president.
Romney then became co-president of a mission that had become demoralized and disorganized after the May 1968 general strike and student uprisings and the car accident. With Romney rallying the others, the mission met its goal of 200 baptisms for the year, the most in a decade. By the end of his stint in December 1968, he was overseeing the work of 175 others. As a result of his experience there, Romney developed a lifelong affection for France and its people, and has remained fluent in French.
At their first meeting following his return, Romney and Ann Davies reconnected and decided to get married. Before their wedding, Romney moved to Utah and enrolled at Brigham Young University, where Ann had been studying. They married on March 21, 1969, in a civil ceremony in Bloomfield Hills and the next day, they flew to Utah for a Mormon wedding ceremony at the Salt Lake Temple; Ann had converted to the faith while he was away.
Romney had missed much of the tumultuous anti-Vietnam War movement in America while in France. Upon his return, he was surprised to learn that his father had joined that movement during his unsuccessful 1968 presidential campaign. George was now serving in President Richard Nixon's cabinet as United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. In a June 1970 newspaper profile of children of cabinet members, Mitt said that U.S. involvement in the war had been misguided – "If it wasn't a political blunder to move into Vietnam, I don't know what is" – but supported Nixon's ongoing Cambodian Incursion as a sincere attempt to end the war. During the U.S. military draft for the Vietnam War, Romney sought and received two 2-S student deferments, then a 4-D ministerial deferment while living in France as a missionary. He later sought and received two additional student deferments. When those ran out, he drew number 300 in the December 1969 draft lottery, ensuring he would not be drafted.
At culturally conservative BYU, Romney remained separated from much of the upheaval of that era. He became president of the Cougar Club booster organization and showed a newfound discipline in his studies. During his senior year, he took a leave of absence to work as driver and advance man for his mother's unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign; together, they visited all 83 Michigan counties. Romney graduated from BYU in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and a 3.97 GPA. He gave commencement addresses to both the College of Humanities and the whole of BYU.
The Romneys' first son, Taggart, was born in 1970 while they were undergraduates at BYU and living in a basement apartment. Their son Matthew was born in 1971 and Joshua in 1975. Benjamin and Craig were born after Romney had begun his career.
Romney wanted to pursue a business career, but his father advised him that a Juris Doctor degree would be valuable to his career even if he never practiced law. As a result, he enrolled in the recently created four-year joint Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration program coordinated between Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. He readily adapted to the business school's pragmatic, data-driven case study method of teaching. Living in a Belmont, Massachusetts, house with Ann and their two children, his social experience differed from that of most of his classmates. He was nonideological and did not involve himself in the political issues of the day. Romney graduated from Harvard in 1975. He was named a Baker Scholar for graduating in the top 5% of his business school class and received his Juris Doctor degree cum laude for ranking in the top third of his law school class.