Mitt Romney - WikiHQ

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.

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 of automobile executive  George W. Romney and actress and homemaker Lenore Romney (née LaFount). His mother was from Logan, Utah, and his father was born to American parents in a Mormon colony in Chihuahua, Mexico. 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.

thumb|upright=.75|alt=Black and white headshot of a young Romney.|Romney in [[Cranbrook Schools|Cranbrook School's 1965 yearbook]]

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. 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 return to profitability. By 1959, his father had become a nationally known figure, and Mitt idolized him. 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.

In 2012, five former classmates described a 1965 episode where Romney, then a senior, took the lead in holding down a younger student while cutting his long, bleached-blond hair with scissors.|group="nb" In March of his senior year, he began dating Ann Davies. The two became informally engaged around the time he graduated from high school in June 1965. 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. The church succeeds in expanding by having huge numbers of missionaries, so that the small number of conversions from each one add up.|group="nb" and Romney was no exception: