She may have lost her husband his first campaign. Can she win him this one?
Amy Sly for BuzzFeed
Ann Romney swore her first campaign would be her last.
The candidate's wife hit bottom in the waning days of her husband's 1994 Senate bid, having fought and fumbled her way through the Massachusetts slugfest with notable clumsiness and unease. Her one moment in the spotlight had produced a disastrous interview, turning her into a magnet for mockery by the state's pundits. Later, Ted Kennedy's aides would gleefully boast to the Boston Herald that it was Ann — that gaffe-prone, unrelatable picture of privilege — who had derailed her husband's campaign, and secured their boss's re-election.
Riding to a rally in Quincy, Mass. a few days before election day — the race all but called, and her husband asleep beside her — Mrs. Romney was asked if she foresaw more politics in their future.
"Never," she responded, according to the Boston Globe. "You couldn't pay me to do this again."
Eighteen years later, Ann Romney is not only doing this again, she has become an unquestionable campaign star: a dynamic speaker, graceful mommy warrior, and ceaselessly sympathetic figure whom the campaign is counting on to sell her husband's presidential candidacy to women voters. Her persona today is so far distant from the caricature that emerged in 1994 that it's easy to forget that her political poise was hard-earned.
But her evolution as a political spouse has been a rocky one, a range of people close to the three past Romney campaigns said — a journey marked at its start by high-profile fumbles, ruined friendships, and an escalating "disdain" for the press.
"Whatever skills she has as a campaigner have developed over time, but the bottom line is she's a mom, not a political person," said Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior campaign adviser who's worked with the Romneys for the past decade. "She's devoted to her husband and family."
That family-first mentality may have been what led her to keep such a low profile through most of her husband's first campaign. Mitt Romney, a phenom in the insular world of private equity, had made his millions in relative obscurity as Ann raised their five boys in the tony Boston suburb of Belmont. When Mitt made the decision to throw his hat in the ring, she still had two teenage boys at home, and those who knew Mrs. Romney at the time said parenting remained her top priority.
Laura Raposa, a gossip columnist for the Boston Herald, recalled her first meeting with the Romneys in the early days of the election.
"We met for lunch at the Four Seasons, which I'm sure Mitt didn't like very much because it was so expensive, and we had a great time," she told BuzzFeed. "[Mrs. Romney] was so engaging...You'd ask her about her kids, and her face would light up."
She also became something a mother figure to the campaign's staff and volunteers.
"Food was her big thing," recalled an adviser to the 1994 campaign. "She would have snacks for us everywhere we went... She was also very instrumental in organizing volunteers. She would put out the word to her network in the Belmont area... A lot of my interns were BYU kids, Mormon students, and they were, like, just the best kids."
Raposa, the gossip columnist, got the sense that Mrs. Romney was still cautiously dipping her toe into the choppy waters of public life, unsure of whether she was ready to be submerged.
In befriending Raposa and her Herald colleague, the candidate's wife dabbled in the indulgences of local celebrity, offering her sons up as "dates" for the columnists to take to a glitzy Boston Magazine event. She would later tell a local radio station that the highlight of the campaign for her was reading about her "hunky" boys — the Herald's word, not hers — strutting their stuff in Beantown’s elite media circles.
But for all her backstage charm and flirtation with the spotlight, Mrs. Romney remained largely unknown to the Massachusetts public — until October. With polls showing Romney in a dead heat with Kennedy, she accepted a standing interview request from the Boston Globe's Jack Thomas. The campaign was reluctant to push her to the front, said one senior adviser, but she insisted.
"I was just very nervous about that, especially with that reporter," said the adviser. "I kept saying to her, 'Everything is on the record here, he's going to try to seduce you into saying stuff.' And she just said, 'I'm fine with that.'"
The campaign's concerns turned out to be more than warranted.
When the 4,000-word feature was published in the Globe under the headline, "Ann Romney's Sweetheart Deal," it was full of ammunition for the Kennedy machine. The article showed her fretting about her figure — "I'm thin, but not 117 pounds, so I'm not as thin as I should be" — and recalling "living on the edge" as a married college couple, getting by on nothing but their American Motors stock. In perhaps the most damaging revelation, Ann confided that, in 25 years of marriage, she and Mitt had never had an argument.
"Isn't that strange?" she asked the reporter innocently. "It's like people might think there's something wrong with our relationship."
The pundits pounced. One columnist referred to the Romneys as the "wax couple," while local radio hosts sneered at their too-perfect marriage. As is often the case in Boston, the Globe got the goods, but the Herald made the point with its blunt, memorable headline: "Daughter of Privilege Knows Little of Real World."
The adviser to the 1994 campaign told BuzzFeed Mrs. Romney wasn't entirely to blame for the mess, claiming she was duped by an exceptionally manipulative reporter who had promised a sympathetic puff profile.
"He was, like, crying with her when she talked about losing both parents to cancer in a year," the adviser recalled. "Oh, it was pathetic... But you can make anyone sound like a murderer with these interviews if you want to."
To this day, some Massachusetts conservatives believe that Thomas, the author of the devastating profile, was being coached by his Democratic strategist wife. (Thomas did not respond to requests for comment). In any case, the story dealt a major blow to the campaign, and helped draw a caricature that would follow Ann Romney’s husband for the next two decades: That of the out-of-touch Ken doll with no grasp of life outside the Barbie Dream House.
The campaign had been taking fire from the Boston Globe throughout the race, from exposes of the candidate's years at Bain Capitol, to investigations into his service as a local Mormon Bishop. But for Mrs. Romney, sources said, this perceived betrayal cemented her mistrust for Boston's paper of record — one that would eventually grow into a deep-seated resentment for news media at large.
"She's disdainful of the media," said a Massachusetts Republican operative who has worked closely with the couple. "But the Romneys have never been fans of the Globe, in particular. You know, the Globe being a liberal newspaper, the Romneys really felt the brunt of it in 1994. Since then, they have always only just tolerated the media."
From Mrs. Romney's perspective, she had been personally betrayed by the Globe columnist, at a tremendous cost to her family.
"I think she learned a huge lesson from that," said the 1994 campaign aide. "I think sometimes that's a bitter pill to swallow when you learn stuff like that. But she became a much better subject after that because she got an education on how tough it is."
And the challenges to Ann Romney didn’t all come from Democrats and newspapers. But some of the most cutting criticism came from fellow churchgoers in Boston's small Latter-day Saint community.
Most notably, a liberal group called Mormons Against Romney formed to oppose their lay leader-turned-Senate-candidate, aggressively organizing against his campaign and leaking unflattering stories to local press, Mormon author Ron B. Scott wrote in Mitt Romney: An Inside Look at the Man and His Politics.
According to Scott, Judith Dushku, a prominent feminist and leader of the anti-Romney group, publicly confronted Mrs. Romney — who attended the same Mormon ward as her — and shouted, "I know you, Ann Romney. What are you hiding? Speak to me!"
Fielding such harsh attacks from former friends was an experience that Mrs. Romney wouldn't soon forget, according to Scott:
The following Sunday [after the campaign ended], Judy Dushku remembered approaching Ann Romney at church, hoping to make peace and move on. “I cannot forgive what you did to us,” Mrs. Romney snapped protectively, rejecting Judy’s hand of fellowship. “Don’t you ever, ever talk to me again.”
The rift was so deep, Scott wrote, that when the Mormon wards were redrawn, local authorities made sure to separate the families, a move known as the "Dushku gerrymander."
"I think she was just exhausted by the end of it," said one campaign adviser. "You put your whole family through the ringer, and you just kind of think, 'Do I want to do this again?'"
Indeed, even as speculation mounted that Romney would take on John Kerry in 1996, those closest to Mrs. Romney wondered whether she would ever allow him to put her through another political campaign.
All that changed after the Salt Lake Olympics.
