page_title: Governorship of Mitt Romney
section_title: State politics
hierarchical_section_title: Governorship of Mitt Romney / State politics
caption_attribution_description: English: Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney speaking at ceremony, at Old North Church in Boston, marking the announcement of a Save America's Treasures Historic Preservation grant for the Church, 5/27/2003
context_page_description: Mitt Romney was sworn in as the 70th Governor of Massachusetts on January 2, 2003, along with Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey.
  Romney's term ended on January 4, 2007; he chose not to run for re-election.
context_section_description: Romney's relationship with the state legislature was somewhat fraught. He insisted that discussions with executive branch appointees always go through the governor's office, which left legislators annoyed.  Furthermore, he withheld giving the legislators permanent authority to create new committees or to grant committee chairs pay increases.  Romney was disinclined towards making political deals with the legislature, saying: "I ran on the platform of cleaning up the mess on Beacon Hill, [and] reform means changing the way things are. Legislatures by and large, despite the political titles, are conservative. They don't want to change the way things work. So of course it's going to be a battle."
  On a personal level, Romney mostly only dealt with the leadership of the state legislature, and rarely developed any political or social relationships with most of the members.  Indeed, he failed to memorize the names and faces of all of them, and sometimes greeted them incorrectly as a result.  Legislators complained that he did not extend customary courtesies towards them, such as seat locations at public events, legislative liaison practices, and access to an elevator within the capitol building.
  In 2004, the legislature passed a measure over his veto that took away the governor's ability to appoint a body to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate and instead set a schedule an early special election.  This was in large part an attempt to keep a seat in Democratic hands should Senator John Kerry's campaign in the 2004 United States presidential election, succeed.  (This measure was reversed in 2009 following the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, permitting the then-Democratic governor to promptly appoint to fill the vacancy, pending the mandated election no more than 160 days after the vacancy occurred.)
  In any case, Romney did not think much of Kerry, labeling him "a very conflicted person" who would be "a most unfortunate person to have as president of the United States."
  By comparison, Romney expressed a measure of admiration for his one-time electoral rival, saying "Senator Kennedy is a workhorse."
  In the Massachusetts Senate elections, 2004 and Massachusetts House election, 2004, Romney campaigned heavily to try to recruit Republican candidates to contest seats, coming up with 131 such candidates, an unusually large number for the weak Massachusetts Republican party to field.  Overseeing a $3 million fund-raising effort for what he called Team Reform, he financed radio and television convincement campaigns on issues such as tuition for children of illegal immigrants.  However, his efforts were for naught. Republicans lost two seats in the state House and one seat in the state Senate, and the Democrats who had supported some of Romney's measures but were nonetheless still targeted took personal offense at the entire effort. Romney subsequently made a conscious decision to focus less on the state Republican Party and more on bipartisanship at the state level and his own interests at the national level.
  Romney issued 844 vetoes as governor, the large share of which were overturned by one or the other of the state houses.  Late in Romney's term, his vetoes issued began to annoy Republicans in the legislature and he lost support among them too. Every veto in his final year in office was overturned by the legislature.
  Nevertheless, Romney defended the practice: "I know how to veto. I like vetoes. I've vetoed hundreds of spending appropriations as governor."
caption: Governor Romney speaking at a ceremony, at the Old North Church in Boston, marking the announcement of a Save America's Treasures Historic Preservation grant for the Church, May 27, 2003.
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