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April 30, 2007
Romney's 'sixth son' handles campaign money
Mitt Romney has five sons, but if he had another, it would be Spencer Zwick.
The 28-year-old Salt Lake City native has been the presidential candidate's right-hand man for years, and now as Romney's national finance director, he is heading up the most crucial part of Romney's White House bid.
Fueled by donors in states with a high concentration of Mormons, Republican Mitt Romney has raised more money in the Interior West than any other presidential candidate, an analysis of federal election records show.
Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, collected nearly $4.5 million from the region in the first quarter of 2007. While Salt Lake City not suprisingly topped the list, Romney also raised a considerable amount of money in towns like Idaho Falls, Idaho and Mesa, Ariz.
An array of donors who never had given money in a federal election opened their wallets to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney this year, drawn to him through his networks in the business world and the Mormon church.
Utah, seldom a go-to state for politicians seeking money, was Romney's second most generous state, reflecting the ties he has built there through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and his time as president of the Salt Lake Olympics Organizing Committee.
The tension between the campaigns of Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney was palpable when Harvard University gathered together top GOP strategists last month.
The issue was Romney's Mormon religion and for a few minutes, the audience was transfixed by an exchange between McCain advisers Bill McInturff and Stuart Stevens and Romney advisers Alex Castellanos and Ben Ginsberg.
In May, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and 2008 Republican presidential hopeful, will give the commencement address at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. What better opportunity for Mr. Romney to discuss the issue of his Mormon faith before an audience of evangelicals?
When John F. Kennedy spoke before Protestant clergymen in Houston in 1960, he sought to dispel the fear that as a Catholic president, he would be subject to direction from the pope. As a Mormon, Mr. Romney faces ignorance as well as fear of his church and its political influence. More Americans, polls show, are willing to accept a woman or an African-American as president than a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the first Mormon in history to make a serious run for president. Notre Dame political science professor David Campbell speaks with Scott Simon about the role of religion in Romney's run for the Republican nomination.
Despite his early fundraising success, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is spending more and more time defending his religion on the campaign trail.
KUTV news reporter Katie Baker visited churches in Salt Lake City and found that faith seems to be a top campaign issue.
Mitt Romney is riding high this week after his victory in "the first primary," which consists of raising cold, hard cash to compete: more than $20 million in the first quarter, $5 million more than his closest contender, Rudy "Lay off my wife!" Giuliani. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) came in a lackluster third with $12.5 million.
Romney's campaign benefited from two distinct donor networks, according to media accounts: Wall Street and Mormons. GOP front-runner Rudy, struggling with one of those weird media freak shows erupting around his wife, Judith (her alleged participation in future Cabinet meetings and former puppy killings), must be a little envious on both counts.
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign said Monday that it had raised $20 million in the first quarter, tapping two distant but rich networks — Wall Street and the Mormon Church — to easily outpace his better-known Republican primary rivals.
Conservative author says Romney can overcome "Mormon problem"
Conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt thinks Mitt Romney's biggest opposition comes not from evangelical Christians who view Mormonism as a cult, but rather from secular liberals who remain skeptical of anyone who believes in revelation, divine intervention or miracles.
Writers in Slate and The New Republic, for example, called Romney's Mormon beliefs ludicrous and suggested that believing them disqualified him from office. That is bigotry, pure and simple, Hewitt says, and all people of faith should condemn it - or no one is safe.
You've probably heard by now that Mitt Romney has a Mormon problem. It seems every pollster of note has published a poll showing that many Americans consider Mr. Romney's membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - commonly called the Mormon Church - a potential deal-breaker.
John F. Kennedy faced a similar challenge as he campaigned to become the first president who was a member of the Roman Catholic Church. Many are encouraging Mr. Romney, the Republican former governor of Massachusetts, to borrow several pages from the JFK playbook - especially the speech he delivered to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September 1960.
Many religious conservatives worry that if Mitt Romney becomes president, it will help legitimize LDS missionary work abroad and condemn extra converts to hell. Liberals, meanwhile, see a chance to use his faith to show he is "too weird" to be president.
That is according to conservative evangelical radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, who just wrote a book titled, "A Mormon in the White House? 10 Things Every American Should Know about Mitt Romney." It is published by Regnery Publishing, which prints conservative titles.
Presidential hopeful and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said faith is important to him, but voters should look at a person's entire character when choosing a president and not focus on just one area.
Romney made his comments Thursday night on CNN during an interview with Larry King.
A phone poll for King's TV show found that 63 percent of respondents believe religion should matter when considering a presidential candidate.
How much of a "Mormon question" does former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney face in his presidential campaign? According to recent polls, a quarter of Americans say they wouldn't vote for a Mormon as president. That compares with only 5 percent who say they wouldn't vote for a Catholic or a Jew.
Romney's biggest problem is with evangelicals, who constitute nearly half of all Republican primary voters in the South and more than one-third in the Midwest. A Rasmussen poll shows that 53 percent of evangelicals wouldn't vote for a Mormon as president.
America is supposed to be a country of religious tolerance. Just ask anybody — except, maybe, Mitt Romney. Almost 50 years after John F. Kennedy addressed the Greater Houston Ministerial Association — an act seen as tabling the issue of religion in presidential politics — the campaign of the former governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Romney, is still being dogged by religious prejudices.
To Romney strategist, questions on faith fair game
It's appropriate for the public to ask questions about Mitt Romney's Mormon faith as he pursues his presidential campaign, a top Romney campaign strategist said yesterday.
Strategist Alex Castellanos was speaking at a forum of Republican presidential advisers held at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He was asked why the media seemed to be celebrating the fact that the country may elect its first African-American or woman president, but treating the specter of its first Mormon president with suspicion.
As students at a Christian university debate the invitation of a presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, a Mormon, to speak at their upcoming commencement ceremony, a new Gallup poll found that Americans' favorable and unfavorable views of the Mormon religion are almost evenly split.
According to poll results, 46 percent of Americans say they have an unfavorable opinion of the Mormon religion in general while 42 percent have a favorable opinion.
Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Mitt Romney have emerged as the leading presidential favorites among party insiders, according to a new Los Angeles Times poll, which found deep partisan divisions over the country's direction and top issues in the 2008 campaign.
The survey showed former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina in second place among Democratic Party leaders, ahead of Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. It pointed up danger signs for Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who trailed Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, and former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, the leader among Republicans in national voter surveys.
If Republicans pick Mitt Romney as their presidential candidate and the country elects him to the White House, the Mormon Church will seize the Oval Office and realize its long-held political ambition.
Does anyone apparently believe that kind of gibberish? Apparently, alas.
Religion – that is, having a preference for a particular religion or denomination – is one of the key traits voters say they look for in a presidential candidate. And not believing in God is a major electoral turnoff, according to a new poll of voters.
CHARLES DUNN: Romney could do for Mormons what JFK did for Catholics
In 1960, the junior senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, surprised political pundits by breaking through the anti-Catholic barrier and winning the Democratic Party's presidential nomination against the opposition of two long-powerful senators, Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson.
Today's political pundits discount the chances of a Mormon former governor from Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, in his battle against two better-known candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, Sen. John McCain and "America's mayor," Rudolph Giuliani.
Regent students upset at Romney’s choice as speaker
Selecting presidential candidate Mitt Romney as its May commencement speaker has riled some of Regent University's students and alumni who say his Mormon faith clashes with the school's bedrock evangelical Christianity.
"What we're against is the fact that Mormonism is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from Christian values and what we believe," said Doug Dowdey, a Virginia Beach pastor who said he graduated from Regent's divinity school last year.
Days before presidential candidate John McCain visits Utah, his campaign says the Arizona senator condemns any attack against his opponent, Mitt Romney, over his Mormon faith.
It's an issue that has been popping up recently in South Carolina, a primary state that is home to many evangelical voters and one that Romney has visited often in recent months.
"A presidential contest is a leadership test, not a religious one," McCain spokesman Danny Diaz said Tuesday when asked whether the senator denounces such attacks.
While Mitt Romney condemns polygamy and its prior practice by his church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Republican presidential candidate's great-grandfather had five wives and at least one of his great-great-grandfathers had 12. Douglas C. Pizac, Associated PressParley P. Pratt, the great-great-grandfather of Mitt Romney, was a polygamist with 12 wives. Polygamy was not just a historical footnote but a prominent element in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to become the first LDS president.
Even before Mitt Romney's presidential announcement last week, his Mormon faith was becoming the hottest "religious issue" since 1960, when John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, became the first - and still only - non-Protestant to be elected president in U.S. history. This week, for instance, a USA Today cover story asked: "Will Mormon faith hurt bid for White House?" In December, Time magazine wondered: "Can a Mormon be President?"
While other Mormons hold important posts in Washington - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is the highest-ranking elected Mormon in the land - Romney is the first member of what is officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to have a shot at a major party nomination for president. Thus the questions about a church that some have accused of being little more than a cult.
Mitt Romney ventured to redrock country Wednesday in hopes of raking in more campaign green.
And Dixie delivered, aides say, to the tune of $250,000 to $300,000 in what is believed to be the largest political fundraiser ever staged in southern Utah.
Haynes: Romney’s religion shouldn’t matter, but it does
Where Mitt Romney goes to church doesn’t disqualify him for public office: Article VI of the U.S. Constitution famously declares that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
But when the former Massachusetts governor declared his candidacy for president Feb. 13, news coverage focused heavily on one issue: Romney’s Mormon faith. Officially we have no religious test — but unofficially, religious affiliation (or lack thereof) can determine the outcome of elections.
Utahns shell out up to $2,300 each to help boost Mitt
Some 500 Utahns contributed as much as $2,300 each to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign at a Tuesday evening fund-raiser in Salt Lake City that included an endorsement from a majority of state GOP lawmakers.
Politics and religion were front and center on the campaign trail in a heated exchange for Mitt Romney this weekend. Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints are trying to make the topic of faith a polite conversation.
Traditional Christians have long had problems with some Latter-day Saint beliefs, as was the case in Florida this weekend. This is the reason for an ongoing event called "An Evangelical and a Mormon in Conversation."
Evangelicals Urged not to Shun Romney over his Mormonism
A law professor and conservative talk-show host says Republican presidential candidate "Mitt Romney has a Mormon problem -- and so does the rest of the country." He cautions Christians against criticizing the candidate's Mormon beliefs during the campaign, saying such an approach will inevitably backfire.
Mitt Romney spent last week on a presidential candidate announcement tour, speaking in Michigan and Iowa on Tuesday, then hitting South Carolina, New Hampshire and Boston before heading to Florida. Today, in the second installment of Outlook's occasional series on the presidential candidates, classmates, colleagues and competitors from the past remember Romney and his journey from former governor's son to former governor. Also inside: a crash course on the Mormon faith and public life.
Even before Mitt Romney's presidential announcement last Tuesday, his Mormon faith was becoming the hottest "religious issue" since 1960, when John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, became the first -- and still only -- non-Protestant to be elected president in U.S. history. This week, for instance, a USA Today cover story asked: "Will Mormon faith hurt bid for White House?" In December, Time magazine wondered: "Can a Mormon be President?"
Feb. 18, 2007 — Following is a transcript of George Stephanopoulos' interview with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, and Romney's wife Ann on "This Week."
Am I the only practicing Mormon who's not excited about Mitt Romney's run for president? It's not like his first order of business will be a $10,000 tax credit for all Latter-Day Saints. (But imagine what that would do for the missionary effort.) In my mind there's very little to be gained from Romney's candidacy, and a great deal to be lost.
Yesterday, Mitt Romney formally announced his candidacy for president. All three nightly newscasts covered the announcement, but not at the top of the show: Romney was the sixth story on ABC's "World News Tonight" and the ninth on the "Evening News" and NBC "Nightly News."
Conversation With Ann Romney, Wife of Republican Presidential Contender Mitt Romney
Ann Romney is a mother of five, grandmother to ten and the wife of Republican presidential contender and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Ann Romney was also diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998, but she insists that she's "totally onboard" with her husband's bid for the White House.
Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, came to a state where he has not lived for 41 years to declare his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, becoming the latest presidential candidate to position himself as an outsider running against Washington.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney returned to his native state of Michigan on Tuesday to kick off his bid officially for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
It's easy to find Mormons who have run into misconceptions about their faith. Take Jeff Hartley, executive director of the Republican Party in Utah, a state that's 70% Mormon. "I only have one mom. I only have one wife," he says. "That's not the understanding that a lot of people have."
Backers & Money: Romney, other hopefuls in early fight to stand out in '08 presidential race
An early need for a lot of money and even more supporters in the 2008 presidential election is driving White House hopeful Mitt Romney and other contenders to start their campaigns before the first primary date is even set in stone.
Wllard Mitt Romney enters the press room at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, where a conclave of conservative GOP congressmen has gathered to plot its resurrection. Assuming his place before the cameras, the former Massachusetts governor checks the floor to find his mark: two strips of white tape forming a small X on the low-pile carpet beneath his feet.
As he begins campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is facing a threshold issue: Will his religion — he is a Mormon — be a big obstacle to winning the White House?
Republican Mitt Romney says he will formally join the 2008 race for the White House next Tuesday with an announcement in his home state of Michigan, then embark on a two-day tour of three early-primary states before heading back to Boston.
From myths to missionaries: Taking a look at the truth about Mormonism
The race for president is already underway. Hillary Clinton, along with other Democratic contenders like Barack Obama and John Edwards, dominate media attention, leaving readers to wonder about the Republican competition.
One such Republican presidential hopeful is Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts. Aside from a lack of front-page publicity, Romney finds himself facing other obstacles. Romney is being criticized because of his religion, according to a USA Today article by David E. Campbell and J. Quin Monson.
1. Willard Mitt Romney was born in March 1947. (He stopped using Willard, the name of his father's friend J. Willard Marriott, founder of the hotel chain, in kindergarten. Mitt was the name of his father's cousin, a football player for the Chicago Bears in the 1920s.) His father, George, was chairman and president of the American Motors Corp. and governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969. His mother, Lenore, began a career in the theater arts before marrying George. She ran for the U.S. Senate in 1970. He has one brother and two sisters.
The Republican presidential candidate whose telegenic looks have earned him the nickname "Matinee Mitt" prefers to talk about keeping taxes low and defeating global jihad.
But many voters want to know how he is guided by his Mormon faith.
"I get asked a good deal," Mitt Romney told The Daily Telegraph. "I'm proud of my heritage, proud of my faith."
Romney's LDS faith examined on ABC's 'Nightline' *see the video*
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the least-known of the top-tier candidates mentioned for president, the least-liked, and probably faces the greatest challenge of any of them.
Republican Mitt Romney yesterday dismissed questions about whether his Mormon faith would be an impediment to his campaign and defended his changing views on abortion.
Insisting he was making inroads in this early-voting Bible Belt state, Romney said he has had “a number of meetings with pastors of various faiths and religious leaders. Almost to a person they’ve subscribed to what Dr. Richard Land (of the Southern Baptist Convention) said, which was: ‘We’re not electing Mitt Romney as pastor in chief.’ ”
Top LDS Church leaders are trying to make it clear that Mormon political candidates, including former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, won't be expected to follow their direction on matters of public policy.
Political observers knowledgeable about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints see the move in a variety of ways, but all agree that an expanded explanation of how the church interacts — or doesn't — with LDS politicians could benefit Romney, or at least give him something to point c
