page_title: Ann Romney
section_title: Role in 2012 presidential campaign
hierarchical_section_title: Ann Romney / Role in 2012 presidential campaign
caption_attribution_description: English: en:Ann Romney speaking at a Women for Romney rally at en:Marquette University, September 20, 2012.
context_page_description: Ann Lois Romney is an American equestrian, author, and philanthropist. She is the wife of businessman and politician, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah. From 2003 to 2007, Romney was First Lady of Massachusetts, while her husband served as Governor.
  She was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and attended the private Kingswood School there, where she dated Mitt Romney. She converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1966. She attended Brigham Young University, married Mitt Romney in 1969, and in 1975 received a Bachelor of Arts degree in French.
  As First Lady of Massachusetts, Romney served as the governor's liaison for federal faith-based initiatives. She was involved in a number of children's charities, including Operation Kids. She was an active participant in her husband's U.S. presidential campaigns in 2008 and again in 2012, when he was the Republican Party nominee.
  Romney was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998 and has credited a mixture of mainstream and alternative treatments with giving her a lifestyle mostly without limitations.
context_section_description: Regarding another possible run for office by her husband in the 2012 presidential election, Romney said in March 2010 that this time the process would hold no surprises, and that if he decided in favor of doing it, "I'm up to saying, go storm the castle, sweetie."  Although still not liking the political process, which she referred to as "a very difficult game", she urged her husband to run again and was one of the few family members to initially support the notion.
  Once the campaign began, she stumped for her husband in early primary states and criticized the record and ideological direction of the Obama administration.  As part of trying to lighten her husband's image, she sometimes participated in comic setup routines with him.  Romney said that if she became First Lady of the United States, she would seek to work with at-risk youths and on behalf of those with multiple sclerosis. She expressed admiration for three former first ladies, Mamie Eisenhower, Nancy Reagan, and Barbara Bush.
  By December 2011, Romney assumed an even more prominent role in the campaign, as she tried to offer a more rounded and compelling portrait of her husband while he fell behind Newt Gingrich for a stretch in polls.  Her emphasis on their 42 years of marriage and his steadfastness following the onset of her disease offered an implicit but clear contrast with Gingrich's own personal history.  She had long been known within the family as the "Mitt-stabilizer", due to the calming effect she had on her husband, and continued to perform that role during the up-and-down campaign.  In particular, she began appearing with him more often during February 2012 as he dueled with Rick Santorum during the Republican presidential primaries.  Regarding the couple's net worth, she alluded to her health problems and said, "Look, I don't even consider myself wealthy, which is an interesting thing, it can be here today and gone tomorrow. And how I measure riches is by the friends I have and the loved ones that I have and the people that I care about in my life."
  In April 2012, Ann Romney was spotlighted when Democratic commentator Hilary Rosen declared Romney to be unfit to address women's economic issues because as a stay-at-home mother, she had "never worked a day in her life".  In response, Ann Romney issued her first tweet, saying "I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work." Rosen apologized the following day .  Like all presidential candidates' wives, her fashion choices came under scrutiny, with some critics praising her for a contemporary look that avoided standard campaign appearance clichés, while others said she lacked consistency and did not seem to be using the services of a stylist. On August 28, Romney gave a prime-time speech before the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, in which she stressed her own background and her family experiences, in an appeal to women voters.  By early October, she and son Tagg had convinced the campaign to spend more time emphasizing her husband's personal nature and character, rather than simply present issue and record arguments against Obama.
  In the November 6, 2012, general election, Mitt Romney lost as President Obama was re-elected.  The couple, along with the senior campaign staff, had thought they were going to win up until polls closed that evening and returns started coming in. Ann cried as her husband concluded their chances were over, then appeared stricken as she went on stage with him following his concession speech.
caption: Ann Romney at a September 20, 2012, "Women for Romney" campaign rally at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
exif: {"Image Make": "Panasonic", "Image Model": "DMC-FH22", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Ver.1.0", "Image DateTime": "2012:09:20 12:12:30", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "2320", "Image XPKeywords": "[65, 0, 110, 0, 110, 0, 32, 0, 82, 0, 111, 0, 109, 0, 110, 0, 101, 0, 121, 0, 32, 0, 114, 0, 97, 0, 108, 0, 108, 0, 121, 0, 0, 0]", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 14, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "Image Tag 0xC6D2": "[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ... ]", "Image Tag 0xC6D3": "[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ... ]", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "14740", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5019", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/80", "EXIF FNumber": "59/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "800", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:09:20 12:12:30", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:09:20 12:12:30", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "86/25", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "40", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4320", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3240", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "14158", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "224", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "High gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "3768"}