Mitt Romney by Scott Ronald;

Author:Scott, Ronald;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2011-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Prelude to a Miss

Mitt Romney would not officially announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president until February 2007, a month after he had vacated the governor’s statehouse office in Boston. However, the formal declaration itself may go down as one of the more widely anticipated, not to mention carefully choreographed, events in presidential politics.

His ultimate ambition had been so obvious that in 2002 he pledged to serve out his full term if elected, a covenant he reaffirmed in 2004. Technically, he delivered on his promise. Yet he spent all or part of a whopping 212 days in 2006 outside the state, establishing the organization he would need in place to mount an effective campaign for the presidency once he was out of office. While she would be the last to complain, Romney’s handpicked lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey, was, as noted by the Republican Party officials and media scorekeepers alike, fighting and losing a sort of proxy battle for him against Deval Patrick (an Obama buddy), a fight that many Republicans and Democrats say Mitt might have lost, had he stood for reelection. Ultimately, Patrick became the first Democrat to sit in the Commonwealth’s corner office since Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988, and its first of African descent as well.

The biggest loser in all this jockeying may have been Charlie Baker, a highly regarded and very popular young Republican, the former “turnaround” CEO of Harvard-Pilgrim Healthcare, one of the nation’s better-run HMOs. Most Republicans had considered him the likely successor to his then-boss, Governor Paul Celucci. Unfortunately for Baker, Celucci left office midterm to accept an appointment as ambassador to Canada, propelling his ill-prepared lieutenant governor, Jane Swift, into the top spot.

As it became clearer with each passing day that Jane “Not-so-Swift”—as she became known far and wide—was not ready for prime time as Republicans had hoped and would never be elected governor in 2002, Baker considered challenging her in the party primaries.

Then, like the good party soldier he is said to be, the dutiful Baker stood aside when white knight Mitt raced triumphantly back from Utah to Boston. If Charlie felt snubbed, he would be the last to acknowledge it.

Four years later, Baker again dutifully stood aside for Mitt’s handpicked, if unlikely, successor, Kerry Healey. Finally, in 2010, Baker got a crack at what he had been seeking all these years. However, this time he was up against an iconic incumbent, Governor Patrick—the first black governor of the Commonwealth and a close friend of the wildly popular (in Massachusetts) president of the United States, Barack Obama.

Oddly, Romney’s support for Baker was practically invisible until the final weeks of the campaign. Baker led in the early polls, which finally seemed to energize the popular, if a little too laid back, Governor Patrick, who had often seemed oblivious to the killer political realities of Beacon Hill.

He had gotten off to a bad start four years earlier. After trouncing Romney’s annointed successor, Patrick had opted for a Cadillac instead of a more modest mode of transportation.

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