Governor Romney’s Bittersweet Legacy

Romney’s greatest achievement in Massachusetts constitutes a great conflict for him.

For his official portrait, which hangs here in the state capitol building in Boston, Willard Mitt Romney, the 70th governor of Massachusetts, gave precise instructions to artist Richard Whitney on how he should be painted: Seated at his desk, with a photo of his wife on his left and in front of it, a binder of papers with a caduceus, which symbolizes medicine in the U.S., seen on the front cover. It is the healthcare reform law which Romney achieved passage of in Massachusetts in 2006. He chose it in order that it would pass, with him, into political immortality. Today, it is a bittersweet legacy, which Romney shrinks from with Republicans and timidly defends in order to woo independent voters.

Romney’s legacy as governor has become a fundamental issue in the presidential campaign and has come to light in the two organized debates as of the present date, especially the latest, held Tuesday in New York. There, Romney said that he balanced the state’s budget and sought equality in his cabinet. He said nothing about healthcare reform. In his four years governing Massachusetts, with a state legislature controlled by the Democrats, he had little time for reforms. He found himself with his hands tied and therefore decided to promote a health care bill. He did not know then that Barack Obama would use it as a model in the Oval Office for a national reform that has become the Republicans’ bête noire.

“It’s an intrinsic problem in Romney: Lack of principles. He changes his values whenever it’s convenient for him. The case of healthcare reform is a good example. He passed historic legislation that established universal health care in the state, then renounced it because it is not politically convenient.” The person painting Romney in this light is Shannon O’Brien, his Democratic opponent for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. She began with a 10-point lead in the polls, only to be buried in defeat due to the malleability of Romney, willing to adapt himself to what voters desired from him. “I already predicted Romney would use Massachusetts to promote himself for higher office,” she adds.*

The idea of healthcare reform came to Romney in 2004 at a meeting with Jonathan Gruber, professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Romney told me that he considered reforming health care to be a moral obligation. I explained to him that it would not work without an individual mandate,” Gruber now recalls. The individual mandate, the requirement of all state residents to purchase a health insurance policy, was a revolutionary idea at the time. “It is a way of ensuring that insurance companies market insurance at a fair price, expanding the client base,” adds Gruber, who ended up advising President Obama on the issue.*

Romney had his hands tied on the rest of the issues. He was a person of conservative convictions leading one of the most progressive states in the union. In order to win, he had presented himself as a moderate on issues like abortion and gay rights. “There isn’t an ounce of intolerance in him,” explains Jonathan Spampinato, who is openly gay, and was deputy political chief of his electoral campaign. “From the beginning of his campaign he made it clear that he did not support gay marriage. He has maintained this position since I met him.”* The thing is, whether or not Romney brings up that opposition to same-sex unions depends on his audience.

During his mandate, Massachusetts experienced a historic moment for gay activists very much due to the governor. In 2003, the state’s Supreme Court approved same-sex marriage, by judicial means. Romney, already with an eye on the presidency, decided to become a crusader against those unions. He defended constitutional measures to ban them. He participated in religious rallies. In 2005, during a visit to South Carolina he said of gays with an almost repugnant air, “Some are actually having children born to them.”

Romney very much made a habit of the practice of speaking badly about his constituents outside his state. All of this was logical: In 2005 he had already decided he would not run for a second term. He would leave his seat in 2007, in order to immediately run in his first Republican presidential primaries, which he would lose opposite John McCain. In those, he appealed to a very conservative electorate. And in order to woo it, he renounced what could be a moderate legacy in Massachusetts. It did not go over well at home. And these days here in Boston, there is not a great memory of the former governor.

“Only two years after taking office here, Mitt Romney already had his sights set on Washington. The expectations had been very high, and the electorate was very disappointed,” says Thomas Whalen, a political historian at Boston University. “It was evident that he was using this governorship for other purposes.” Whelan added, “This has created the tragedy which his campaign is going through: his greatest achievement, healthcare reform, is something from which he has seen himself obligated to avoid, because it goes against Republican orthodoxy.”**

During the four years Romney was governor, he spent 467 days, more than a year, outside the state. This deeply irritated citizens. He frequently vacationed in New Hampshire or Utah. And when he made promotional political trips, he did not spare it [Massachusetts] from jokes. At a conclave of Republican voters in South Carolina in 2005, he said, “Being a conservative Republican in Massachusetts is a bit like being a cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention,” which did not sit well. An anonymous group in his state began distributing “wanted” flyers with the governor’s face along with the sentence, “Has anyone seen me?”

Now that he is on the verge of the White House, there are no great displays of emotion toward the Romney campaign in the state. When he says “my state” during the debates, he refers to Massachusetts but here they don’t respond to that. Romney was born in Michigan. He lived for some time in Utah. He spends a lot of time in California and New Hampshire. And here in Boston, almost no one sees him as one of their own.

*Translator’s note: This quote could not be sourced, although the author, who is based on the East Coast, may have personally interviewed the source.

**Translator’s note: This quote could not be sourced and may have come from an interview conducted by the author. However, some quotes were close enough to others by Whalen that they may reflect slight changes due to translation. Two possibilities are: “But he raised the expectation bar so high that … he just didn’t deliver” [http://www.npr.org/2012/06/13/154583216/romney-as-governor-confrontation-one-big-deal] or “Ultimately he’s a disappointment because of the great expectations .… The general attitude was, this was a stepping stone for him for something bigger.” [http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/03/28/143410/how-mitt-romney-wielded-power.html]