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Governor of Massachusetts
2002 gubernatorial campaign
Main article: Massachusetts gubernatorial election, 2002
In 2002, Republican Acting Governor Jane Swift's administration was plagued by political missteps and personal scandals.[159] Many Republicans viewed her as a liability and considered her unable to win a general election.[163] Prominent party figures – as well as the White House – wanted Romney to run for governor,[161][164] and the opportunity appealed to him for its national visibility.[165] One poll taken at that time showed Republicans favoring Romney over Swift by more than 50 percentage points.[166] On March 19, 2002, Swift announced she would not seek her party's nomination, and hours later Romney declared his candidacy,[166] for which he would face no opposition in the primary.[167] In June 2002, the Massachusetts Democratic Party challenged Romney's eligibility to run for governor, noting that state law required seven years' consecutive residence and that Romney had filed his state tax returns as a Utah resident in 1999 and 2000.[168][169] In response, the bipartisan Massachusetts State Ballot Law Commission unanimously ruled that he had maintained sufficient financial and personal ties to Massachusetts and was therefore an eligible candidate.[170]Romney again ran as a political outsider.[159] He played down his party affiliation,[162] saying he was "not a partisan Republican" but rather a "moderate" with "progressive" views.[171] He touted his private sector experience as qualifying him for addressing the state's fiscal problems[167] and stressed his ability to obtain federal funds for the state, giving his Olympics record as evidence.[151][154][172] He proposed to reorganize the state government while eliminating waste, fraud, and mismanagement.[162][173] The campaign was the first to use microtargeting techniques, in which fine-grained groups of voters were reached with narrowly tailored messaging.[174]
To overcome the image that had damaged him in the 1994 Senate race – that of a wealthy corporate buyout specialist out of touch with the needs of regular people – a series of "work days" were staged throughout the campaign, in which Romney performed blue-collar jobs such as herding cows and baling hay, unloading a fishing boat, and hauling garbage.[173][175][176] Television ads highlighting the effort, as well as one portraying his family in gushing terms and showing him shirtless,[175] received a poor public response and contributed to his being behind his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts State Treasurer Shannon O'Brien, in polls as late as mid-October.[173][176] He rebounded with ads that accused O'Brien of being a failed watchdog for state pension fund losses in the stock market and that associated her husband, a former lobbyist, with the Enron scandal.[162][176] During the election he contributed over $6 million – a state record at the time – to the nearly $10 million raised for his campaign overall.[177][178] Romney was elected governor on November 5, 2002, with 50 percent of the vote to O'Brien's 45 percent.[179]
Tenure, 2003–2007
Main article: Governorship of Mitt Romney
Romney supported raising various fees by more than $300 million, including those for driver's licenses, marriage licenses, and gun licenses.[162][184] He increased a special gasoline retailer fee by two cents per gallon, generating about $60 million per year in additional revenue.[162][184] (Opponents said the reliance on fees sometimes imposed a hardship on those who could least afford them.)[184] Romney also closed tax loopholes, in the interests of both better fairness and revenue increases, that brought in another $181 million from businesses over the next two years and over $300 million for his term.[162][190][191] He did so in the face of conservative and corporate critics that considered them tax increases.[190][191]
The state legislature, with the governor's support, also cut spending by $1.6 billion, including $700 million in reductions in state aid to cities and towns.[192] The cuts also included a $140 million reduction in state funding for higher education, which led state-run colleges and universities to increase tuition by 63 percent over four years.[162][184] Romney sought additional cuts in his last year as governor by vetoing nearly 250 items in the state budget, but all were overridden by the heavily Democratic legislature.[193]
The cuts in state spending put added pressure on localities to reduce services or raise property taxes, and the share of town and city revenues coming from property taxes rose from 49 to 53 percent.[162][184] The combined state and local tax burden in Massachusetts increased during Romney's governorship but remained below the national average.[162]
Romney sought to bring near-universal health insurance coverage to the state. This came after Staples founder Stemberg told him at the start of his term that doing so would be the best way he could help people,[194][195][196] and after the federal government, owing to the rules of Medicaid funding, threatened to cut $385 million in those payments to Massachusetts if the state did not reduce the number of uninsured recipients of health care services.[182][194][197] Although he had not campaigned on the idea of universal health insurance,[196] Romney decided that because people without insurance still received expensive health care, the money spent by the state for such care could be better used to subsidize insurance for the poor.[195][196]
After positing that any measure adopted not raise taxes and not resemble the previous decade's failed "Hillarycare" proposal, Romney formed a team of consultants from diverse political backgrounds.[182][194][197] Beginning in late 2004, they came up with a set of proposals more ambitious than an incremental one from the Massachusetts Senate and more acceptable to him than one from the Massachusetts House of Representatives that incorporated a new payroll tax.[182][194][197] In particular, Romney pushed for incorporating an individual mandate at the state level.[21] Past rival Ted Kennedy, who had made universal health coverage his life's work and who, over time, had developed a warm relationship with Romney,[198] gave the plan a positive reception, which encouraged Democratic legislators to cooperate.[194][197] The effort eventually gained the support of all major stakeholders within the state, and Romney helped break a logjam between rival Democratic leaders in the legislature.[194][197]
There really wasn't Republican or Democrat in this. People ask me if this is conservative or liberal, and my answer is yes. It's liberal in the sense that we're getting our citizens health insurance. It's conservative in that we're not getting a government takeover.
—Mitt Romney upon passage of the Massachusetts health reform law in 2006.[194]
At the beginning of his governorship, Romney opposed same-sex marriage and civil unions, but advocated tolerance and supported some domestic partnership benefits.[197][205][206] Faced with the dilemma of choosing between same-sex marriage or civil unions after the November 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision legalizing same-sex marriages (Goodridge v. Department of Public Health), Romney reluctantly backed a state constitutional amendment in February 2004 that would have banned same-sex marriage but still allow civil unions, viewing it as the only feasible way to ban same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.[207] In May 2004, the governor instructed town clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but citing a 1913 law that barred out-of-state residents from getting married in Massachusetts if their union would be illegal in their home state, no marriage licenses were to be issued to out-of-state same-sex couples not planning to move to Massachusetts.[205][208] In June 2005, Romney abandoned his support for the compromise amendment, stating that the amendment confused voters who oppose both same-sex marriage and civil unions.[205] Instead, he endorsed a petition effort led by the Coalition for Marriage & Family that would have banned same-sex marriage and made no provisions for civil unions.[205] In 2004 and 2006, he urged the U.S. Senate to vote in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment.[209][210]
In 2005, Romney revealed a change of view regarding abortion, moving from the "unequivocal" pro-choice position expressed during his 2002 campaign to a pro-life one in opposition to Roe v. Wade.[197] He subsequently vetoed a bill on pro-life grounds that would expand access to emergency contraception in hospitals and pharmacies (the veto was overridden by the legislature).[211]
Romney generally used the bully pulpit approach towards promoting his agenda, staging well-organized media events to appeal directly to the public rather than pushing his proposals in behind-doors sessions with the state legislature.[197] He dealt with a public crisis of confidence in Boston's Big Dig project – that followed a fatal ceiling collapse in 2006 – by wresting control of the project from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.[197] After two years of negotiating the state's participation in the landmark Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that instituted a cap and trade arrangement for power plant emissions in the Northeast, Romney pulled Massachusetts out of it shortly before its signing in December 2005, citing a lack of cost limits for industry.[212]
During 2004, Romney spent considerable effort trying to bolster the state Republican Party, but it failed to gain any seats in the state legislative elections that year.[162][213] He was given a prime-time appearance at the 2004 Republican National Convention, and was already being discussed as a potential 2008 presidential candidate.[214] Midway through his term, Romney decided that he wanted to stage a full-time run for president,[215] and on December 14, 2005, announced that he would not seek re-election for a second term.[216] As chair of the Republican Governors Association, Romney traveled around the country, meeting prominent Republicans and building a national political network;[215] he spent part or all of more than 200 days out of state during 2006, preparing for his run.[217]
The governor had a 61 percent job approval rating in public polls after his initial fiscal actions in 2003, but it began to sink after that.[218] The frequent out-of-state travel contributed to a decline in Romney's approval rating towards the end of his term;[218][219] at 34 percent in November 2006, his rating level ranked 48th of the 50 U.S. governors.[220] Dissatisfaction with Romney's administration and the weak condition of the Republican state party were among several factors that led to Democrat Deval Patrick's lopsided win over Republican Kerry Healey, Romney's Lieutenant Governor, in the 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial election.[219][221]
Romney filed to register a presidential campaign committee with the Federal Election Commission on his penultimate day in office as governor.[222] His term ended January 4, 2007.
Peter, THANKS for posting that. As a Mass. resident for the overwhelming majority of my life including ALL of Romney's time as Governor, I say that piece is absolutely accurate. The only difference between "Romneycare" and "Obamacare" is that "Romneycare" is a Mass. only program while "Obamacare" is federal. I am a registered Republican who will not vote for Pres. Obama this Fall, BUT I am really struggling re. whether Romney deserves to be President...I DON'T think he does!
ReplyDeleteWell Bob, unfortunately a vote for anyone other than Romney will be a vote for Obama because no one else has a chance of beating him. So either you vote for the lesser of two evils, or just surrender to the Muslim Resident-in-Chief.
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