largest of its kind in the nation. His considerable net worth, estimated in 2012 at $190–250 million, helped finance his prior political campaigns.

Active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Romney served during his business career as the bishop of his ward (head of his local congregation) and then stake president in his home area near Boston. After stepping down from Bain Capital and his local leadership role in the church, he ran as the Republican candidate in the 1994 Massachusetts election for U.S. Senate. Upon losing to longtime incumbent Ted Kennedy, he resumed his position at Bain Capital. Years later, a successful stint as President and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics led to a relaunch of his political career.

Elected Governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Romney helped develop and enact into law the Massachusetts health care reform legislation, the first of its kind in the nation, which provided near-universal health insurance access through state-level subsidies and individual mandates to purchase insurance. He also presided over the elimination of a projected $1.2–1.5 billion deficit through a combination of spending cuts, increased fees, and the closure of corporate tax loopholes. Romney did not seek re-election in 2006, instead focusing on his campaign for the Republican nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. He won several primaries and caucuses but lost out to the eventual nominee, Senator John McCain. In 2011, he began campaigning for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, eventually winning enough caucuses and primaries to be nominated with his chosen running mate, Representative Paul Ryan. In doing so, Romney became the first Mormon to be a major party presidential nominee. He was defeated by incumbent President Barack Obama in the November 2012 general election.
 

70th Governor of Massachusetts
In office January 2, 2003 – January 4, 2007
Lieutenant	Kerry Healey
Preceded by	Paul Cellucci Jane Swift (Acting)
Succeeded by	Deval Patrick
Personal details
Born	Willard Mitt Romney March 12, 1947 (age 66) Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Ann Romney (1969–present)
Children	5
Residence	Belmont, Massachusetts Wolfeboro, New Hampshire San Diego, California
Alma mater	Stanford University Brigham Young University (BA) Harvard University (MBA, JD)
Profession	Management consultant,Venture capitalist, Private equity
Religion	The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon)
Positions	Cofounder and CEO, Bain Capital (1984–2002) CEO, Bain & Company (1991–92) CEO, 2002 Winter Olympics Organizing Committee (1999–2002)

Willard Mitt Romney[1] was born on March 12, 1947, at Harper University Hospital in Detroit, Michigan,[2] the youngest child of automobile executive George W. Romney and homemaker Lenore Romney (née LaFount).[3] His mother was a native of Logan, Utah, and his father was born to American parents in a Mormon colony in Chihuahua, Mexico.[4][5] Of primarily English descent, he also has Scottish and German ancestry.[6][7][8] A fifth-generation member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), he is the great-great-grandson of Miles Romney, who converted to the faith in its first decade; another great-great-grandfather, Parley P. Pratt, helped lead the early Church.[9][10][11]

Younger than his three siblings – Margo Lynn, Jane LaFount, and G. Scott – Mitt followed them after a gap of nearly six years.[12] His parents named him after a family friend, businessman J. Willard Marriott, and his father's cousin, Milton "Mitt" Romney, a former quarterback for the Chicago Bears.[13] Romney was referred to as "Billy" until kindergarten, when he indicated a preference for "Mitt".[14] In 1953, the family moved from Detroit to the affluent suburb of Bloomfield Hills.[15] His father became the chairman and CEO of American Motors the following year, soon helping the company avoid bankruptcy and return to profitability.[15] By 1959, his father had become a nationally known figure in print and on television,[16] and the youngster idolized him.[17]

Romney attended public elementary schools until the seventh grade, when he enrolled as one of only a few Mormon students at Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, a traditional private boys' preparatory school.[14][18] Many students there came from backgrounds even more privileged than his.[19] Not particularly athletic, he also did not distinguish himself academically.[17] He participated in his father's successful 1962 Michigan gubernatorial campaign,[20] and later worked for him as an intern in the Governor's office.[17][21] Romney took up residence at Cranbrook when his newly elected father began spending most of his time at the state capitol.[18]

At Cranbrook, Romney helped manage the ice hockey team, and he joined the pep squad.[18] During his senior year, he joined the cross country running team.[14] He belonged to eleven school organizations and school clubs overall, including the Blue Key Club, a booster group he had started.[18] During his final year there, he improved academically but fell short of excellence.[17][19] Romney became involved in several pranks while attending Cranbrook. He has since apologized, stating that some of the pranks may have gone too far.[nb 1] In March of his senior year, he began dating Ann Davies; she attended the private Kingswood School, the sister school to Cranbrook.[19][26] The two became informally engaged around the time of his June 1965 graduation.[17][22]

Romney attended Stanford University during the academic year of 1965–66.[17] He was not part of the counterculture of the 1960s then taking form in the San Francisco Bay Area.[17] As opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War grew, a group staged a May 1966 sit-in at the university administration building to demonstrate against draft status tests; Romney joined a counter-protest against that group.[17][27] He continued to enjoy occasional pranks.[nb 2]

In July 1966, he left the U.S. for a thirty-month stay in France as a Mormon missionary,[17][30] a traditional rite of passage in his family.[nb 3] He arrived in Le Havre, where he shared cramped quarters under meager conditions.[10][32] Rules against drinking, smoking, and dating were strictly enforced.[10] Most individual Mormon missionaries do not gain many converts[nb 4] and Romney was no exception:[32] he later estimated ten to twenty for his entire mission.[37][nb 5] He initially became demoralized and later recalled it as the only time when "most of what I was trying to do was rejected."[32] He soon gained recognition within the mission for the many homes he called on and the repeat visits he was granted.[10] He was promoted to zone leader in Bordeaux in early 1968, and soon thereafter became assistant to the mission president in Paris.[10][32][39] Residing at the Mission Home for several months, he enjoyed a mansion far more comfortable than the lodgings he had elsewhere in the country.[39] When the French expressed opposition to the U.S. role in the Vietnam War, Romney debated them in return, and his views were reinforced by those who yelled and slammed their doors.[10][32]
1968 campaign poster showing a smiling George Romney

Mitt's father George (pictured here in a 1968 poster) lost the Republican presidential nomination to Richard M. Nixon but later served in Nixon's cabinet.

In June 1968, an automobile he was driving in southern France was hit by another vehicle, seriously injuring him and killing one of his passengers, the wife of the mission president.[nb 6] Romney was not at fault in the accident.[nb 6] He became co-president of a mission that had become demoralized and disorganized after the May 1968 general strike and student uprisings and the car accident.[40] With Romney rallying the others, the mission met a goal of 200 baptisms for the year, the most for them in a decade.[40] By the end of his stint in December 1968, he was overseeing the work of 175 others.[32][41] As a result of his stay, Romney developed a lifelong affection for France and its people, and has remained fluent in French.[43][44]

At their first meeting following his return, Romney and Ann Davies reconnected and decided to get married.[45] Romney began attending Brigham Young University (BYU), where she had been studying.[46] The couple married on March 21, 1969, in a civil ceremony in Bloomfield Hills.[47][48] The following day, they flew to Utah for a Mormon wedding ceremony at the Salt Lake Temple (Ann had converted to the faith while he was away).[47][48]

Mitt had missed much of the tumultuous American anti-Vietnam War movement while away in France. Upon his return, it surprised him to learn that his father had joined the movement during his unsuccessful 1968 presidential campaign.[32] George was now serving in President Richard Nixon's cabinet as United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. In a June 1970 newspaper profile of children of cabinet members, Mitt said that U.S. involvement in the war had been misguided – "If it wasn't a political blunder to move into Vietnam, I don't know what is" – but supported Nixon's ongoing Cambodian Incursion as a sincere attempt to bring the war to a conclusion.[49] During the U.S. military draft for the Vietnam War, Romney sought and received two 2-S student deferments, then a 4-D ministerial deferment while living in France as a Mormon missionary. He later sought and received two additional student deferments.[27][50] When those ran out, the result of the December 1969 draft lottery ensured he would not be selected.[27][50][51]

At culturally conservative BYU, Romney remained isolated from much of the upheaval of that era.[32][46] He became president of the Cougar Club booster organization and showed a new-found discipline in his studies.[32][46] During his senior year, he took a leave to work as driver and advance man for his mother Lenore Romney's eventually unsuccessful 1970 campaign for U.S. Senator from Michigan;[22][47] together, they visited all 83 Michigan counties.[52][53] He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English with highest honors in 1971,[46] giving commencement addresses to both the College of Humanities and to the whole of BYU.[nb 7]

The Romneys' first son, Taggart, was born in 1970[34] while they were undergraduates at BYU and living in a basement apartment.[46] Ann subsequently gave birth to Matthew (1971) and Joshua (1975). Benjamin (1978) and Craig (1981) would arrive later, after Romney began his career.[34]

Mitt Romney wanted to pursue a business career, but his father advised him that a law degree would be valuable to his career even if he did not become a lawyer.[56][57] Thus, he enrolled in the recently created joint Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration four-year program coordinated between Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School.[58] He readily adapted to the business school's pragmatic, data-driven case study method of teaching.[57] Living in a Belmont, Massachusetts house with Ann and their two children, his social experience differed from most of his classmates'.[47][57] He was nonideological and did not involve himself in the political issues of the day.[47][57] He graduated in 1975 cum laude from the law school, in the top third of that class, and was named a Baker Scholar for graduating in the top five percent of his business school class.[54][58]
 
Logo of company where Romney began his business career Recruited by several firms, Romney joined the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), reasoning that working as a management consultant for a variety of companies would better prepare him for a future position as a chief executive.[56][59][nb 8] Part of a 1970s wave of top graduates who chose to go into consulting rather than join a large company directly,[61] he found his legal and business education useful in his job.[56] He applied BCG principles such as the growth-share matrix,[62] and executives viewed him as having a bright future there.[56][63]

In 1977, he was hired by Bain & Company, a management consulting firm in Boston formed a few years earlier by Bill Bain and other ex-BCG employees.[56][62][64] Bain would later say of the thirty-year-old Romney, "He had the appearance of confidence of a guy who was maybe ten years older."[65] Unlike other consulting firms, which issued recommendations and then departed, Bain & Company immersed itself in a client's business and worked with them until changes were implemented.[56][62] Romney became a vice-president of the firm in 1978,[14] and worked with clients such as the Monsanto Company, Outboard Marine Corporation, Burlington Industries, and Corning Incorporated.[59] Within a few years, the firm considered him one of their best consultants and clients sometimes sought to use him over more senior partners.[56][66]

Two family incidents during this time later came to light during Romney's political career. A confrontation with a park ranger in 1981 became public in 1994,[nb 9] and from 2007 on there has been persistent interest in a 1983 family road trip with a dog on the roof.Private equity For more details on this topic, see Bain Capital.

In 1984, Romney left Bain & Company to cofound the spin-off private equity investment firm, Bain Capital.[69] He had initially refrained from accepting Bill Bain's offer to head the new venture, until Bain rearranged the terms in a complicated partnership structure so that there was no financial or professional risk to Romney.[56][65][70] Bain and Romney raised the $37 million in funds needed to start the new operation, which had seven employees.[59][71] Romney held the titles of president[72] and managing general partner.[73][74] The sole shareholder of the firm, publications also referred to him as managing director or CEO.[75][76][77]

Initially, Bain Capital focused on venture capital investments. Romney set up a system in which any partner could veto one of these potential opportunities, and he personally saw so many weaknesses that few venture capital investments were approved in the initial two years.[56] The firm's first significant success was a 1986 investment to help start Staples Inc., after founder Thomas G. Stemberg convinced Romney of the market size for office supplies and Romney convinced others; Bain Capital eventually reaped a nearly sevenfold return on its investment, and Romney sat on the Staples board of directors for over a decade.[56][71][78]

Plain logo consisting of white serif letters against dark blue background Logo of Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney cofounded in 1984.

Romney soon switched Bain Capital's focus from startups to the relatively new business of leveraged buyouts: buying existing companies with money mostly borrowed from banking institutions using the newly bought companies' assets as collateral, then taking steps to improve the companies' value, and finally selling those companies once their value peaked, usually within a few years.[56][65] Bain Capital lost money in many of its early leveraged buyouts, but then found deals that made large returns.[56] The firm invested in or acquired Accuride Corporation, Brookstone, Domino's Pizza, Sealy Corporation, Sports Authority, and Artisan Entertainment, as well as some lesser-known companies in the industrial and medical sectors.[56][65][79] Much of the firm's profit was earned from a relatively small number of deals; Bain Capital's overall success-to-failure ratio was about even.[nb 10]

Romney discovered few investment opportunities himself (and those that he did, often failed to make money for the firm).[81] Instead, he focused on analyzing the merits of possible deals that others brought forward and on recruiting investors to participate in them once approved.[81] Within Bain Capital, Romney spread profits from deals widely within the firm to keep people motivated, often keeping less than ten percent for himself.[82] Data-driven, Romney often played the role of a devil's advocate during exhaustive analysis of whether to go forward with a deal.[56][78] He wanted to drop a Bain Capital hedge fund that initially lost money, but other partners disagreed with him and it eventually gained billions.[56] He opted out of the Artisan Entertainment deal, not wanting to profit from a studio that produced R-rated films.[56] Romney served on the board of directors of Damon Corporation, a medical testing company later found guilty of defrauding the government; Bain Capital tripled its investment before selling off the company, and the fraud was discovered by the new owners (Romney was never implicated).[56] In some cases, Romney had little involvement with a company once acquired.[71]

Bain Capital's leveraged buyouts sometimes led to layoffs, either soon after acquisition or later after the firm had concluded its role.[62][70][71] Exactly how many jobs Bain Capital added compared to those lost because of these investments and buyouts is unknown, owing to a lack of records and Bain Capital's penchant for privacy on behalf of itself and its investors.[83][84][85] Maximizing the value of acquired companies and the return to Bain's investors, not job creation, was the firm's fundamental goal.[71][86] Bain Capital's acquisition of Ampad exemplified a deal where it profited handsomely from early payments and management fees, even though the subject company itself ended up going into bankruptcy.[56][78][86] Dade Behring was another case where Bain Capital received an eightfold return on its investment, but the company itself was saddled with debt and laid off over a thousand employees before Bain Capital exited (the company subsequently went into bankruptcy, with more layoffs, before recovering and prospering).[83] Referring to the layoffs that happened, Romney said in 2007: "Sometimes the medicine is a little bitter but it is necessary to save the life of the patient. My job was to try and make the enterprise successful, and in my view the best security a family can have is that the business they work for is strong."[70]

In 1990, facing financial collapse, Bain & Company asked Romney to return.[69] Announced as its new CEO in January 1991,[73][74] he drew a symbolic salary of one dollar[69] (remaining managing general partner of Bain Capital during this time).[73][74] He oversaw an effort to restructure Bain & Company's employee stock-ownership plan and real-estate deals, while rallying the firm's one thousand employees, imposing a new governing structure that excluded Bain and the other founding partners from control, and increasing fiscal transparency.[56][59][69] He got Bain and other initial owners who had removed excessive amounts of money from the firm to return a substantial amount, and persuaded creditors, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, to accept less than full payment.[87] Within about a year, he had led Bain & Company through a turnaround and returned the firm to profitability.[59] He turned Bain & Company over to new leadership and returned to Bain Capital in December 1992.[56][88][89]

Romney took a leave of absence from Bain Capital from November 1993 to November 1994 to run for the U.S. Senate.[47][90] During that time, Ampad workers went on strike, and asked Romney to intervene. Against the advice of Bain Capital lawyers, Romney met the strikers, but told them he had no position of active authority in the matter.[91][92]

By 1999, Bain Capital was on its way towards becoming one of the foremost private equity firms in the nation,[70] having increased its number of partners from 5 to 18, with 115 employees overall, and $4 billion under its management.[65][71] The firm's average annual internal rate of return on realized investments was 113 percent[59][93] and its average yearly return to investors was around 50–80 percent.[80]

Romney took a paid leave of absence from Bain Capital in February 1999 to serve as the President and CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games Organizing Committee.[94][95] Billed in some public statements as keeping a part-time role,[94][96] Romney remained the firm's sole shareholder, managing director, CEO, and president, signing corporate and legal documents, attending to his interests within the firm, and conducting prolonged negotiations for the terms of his departure.[94][97] He did not involve himself in day-to-day operations of the firm or investment decisions for Bain Capital's new private equity funds.[94][97] He retained his position on several boards of directors during this time and regularly returned to Massachusetts to attend meetings.[98]

In August 2001, Romney announced that he would not return to Bain Capital.[99] His separation from the firm concluded in early 2002;[94] he transferred his ownership to other partners and negotiated an agreement that allowed him to receive a passive profit share as a retired partner in some Bain Capital entities, including buyout and investment funds.[82][100] The private equity business continued to thrive, earning him millions of dollars in annual income.[82]

Personal wealth As a result of his business career, Romney and his wife have a net worth of between $190 and $250 million,[100][101] including their retirement account, worth between $20 and $100 million.[102] Most of that wealth has been held in blind trusts since 2003, some of it offshore.[100][103][104] An additional blind trust, valued at $100 million in 2012, exists in the name of their children.[105][106] In 2010, Romney and his wife received about $22 million in income, almost all of it from investments such as dividends, capital gains, and carried interest; and they paid about $3 million in federal income taxes, for an effective tax rate of 14 percent.[107] For the years 1990–2010, their effective federal tax rates were above 13 percent with an average rate of about 20 percent.[108]

Romney has tithed to the LDS Church regularly, and donated to LDS Church-owned BYU.[10][11][109] In 2010, for example, he and his wife gave $1.5 million to the church.[107] The Romney family's Tyler Charitable Foundation gave out about $650,000 in that year, some of which went to organizations that fight diseases.[110] For the years 1990–2010, the Romneys' total charitable donations as portions of their income averaged 14 percent.[108]

Local LDS Church leadership During his business career, Romney held several positions in the local lay clergy. In 1977, he became a counselor to the president of the Boston Stake.[111] He served as bishop of the ward (ecclesiastical and administrative head of his congregation) at Belmont, Massachusetts, from 1981 to 1986.[112][113] As such, in addition to home teaching, he also formulated Sunday services and classes using LDS scriptures to guide the congregation.[114] After the destruction of the Belmont meetinghouse by a fire of suspicious origins in 1984, he forged links with other religious institutions, allowing the congregation to rotate its meetings to other houses of worship during the reconstruction of their building.[113][115]

From 1986 to 1994, Romney presided over the Boston Stake, which included more than a dozen wards in eastern Massachusetts with almost 4,000 church members altogether.[66][114][116] He organized a team to handle financial and management issues, sought to counter anti-Mormon sentiments, and tried to solve social problems among poor Southeast Asian converts.[113][115] An unpaid position, his local church leadership often took 30 or more hours a week of his time,[114] and he became known for his considerable energy in the role.[66] He earned a reputation for avoiding any overnight travel that might interfere with his church responsibilities.[114]

Romney took a hands-on role in general matters, helping in domestic maintenance efforts, visiting the sick, and counseling burdened church members.[112][113][114] A number of local church members later credited him with turning their lives around or helping them through difficult times.[113][114][115] Others, rankled by his leadership style, desired a more consensus-based approach.[113] Romney tried to balance the conservative directives from church leadership in Utah with the desire of some Massachusetts members to have a more flexible application of religious doctrine.[66] He agreed with some requests from the liberal women's group that published Exponent II for changes in the way the church dealt with women, but clashed with women whom he felt were departing too much from doctrine.[66] In particular, he counseled women to not have abortions except in the rare cases allowed by LDS doctrine,[nb 11] and encouraged single women facing unplanned pregnancies to give up their baby for adoption.[66] Romney later said that the years spent as an LDS minister gave him direct exposure to people struggling financially and empathy for those with family problems.[117]

1994 U.S. senatorial campaign
 
Main article: United States Senate election in Massachusetts, 1994

Man smiling at right with sign in background and parents holding toddler at left Campaigning for U.S. Senate in Holyoke, Massachusetts, 1994 For much of his business career, Romney did not take public, political stances.[118][119] He had kept abreast of national politics since college,[32] though, and the circumstances of his father's presidential campaign loss had irked him for decades.[22] He registered as an Independent[47] and voted in the 1992 presidential primaries for the Democratic former senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas.[118][120]

By 1993, Romney had begun thinking about entering politics, partly based upon Ann's urging and partly to follow in his father's footsteps.[47] He decided to challenge incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, who was seeking re-election for the sixth time. Political pundits viewed Kennedy as vulnerable that year – in part because of the unpopularity of the Democratic Congress as a whole, and in part because this was Kennedy's first election since the William Kennedy Smith trial in Florida, in which the senator had suffered some negative public relations regarding his character.[121][122][123] Romney changed his affiliation to Republican in October 1993 and formally announced his candidacy in February 1994.[47] In addition to his leave from Bain Capital, he stepped down from his church leadership role in 1994.[114]

Radio personality Janet Jeghelian took an early lead in polls among candidates for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat, but Romney proved the most effective fundraiser.[124][125] He won 68 percent of the vote at the May 1994 Massachusetts Republican Party convention; businessman John Lakian finished a distant second, eliminating Jeghelian.[126] Romney defeated Lakian in the September 1994 primary with more than 80 percent of the vote.[14][127]

In the general election, Kennedy faced the first serious re-election challenger of his career.[121] The younger, telegenic, and well-funded Romney ran as a businessman who stated he had created ten thousand jobs and as a Washington outsider with a solid family image and moderate stances on social issues.[121][128] When Kennedy tried to tie Romney's policies to those of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, Romney responded, "Look, I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to take us back to Reagan-Bush."[129] Romney stated, "Ultimately, this is a campaign about change."[130]

Romney's campaign was effective in portraying Kennedy as soft on crime, but had trouble establishing its own consistent positions.[131] By mid-September 1994, polls showed the race to be approximately even.[121][132][133] Kennedy responded with a series of ads that focused on Romney's seemingly shifting political views on issues such as abortion;[134] Romney would respond on the latter by stating, "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country."[135] Other Kennedy ads centered on layoffs of workers at the Ampad plant owned by Romney's Bain Capital.[121][136] The latter was effective in blunting Romney's momentum.[78] Kennedy and Romney held a widely watched late-October debate that had no clear winner, but by then, Kennedy had pulled ahead in polls and stayed ahead afterward.[137] Romney spent $3 million of his own money in the race and more than $7 million overall.[138][nb 12] In the November general election, despite a disastrous showing for Democrats nationwide, Kennedy won the election with 58 percent of the vote to Romney's 41 percent,[56] the smallest margin in any of Kennedy's re-election campaigns for the Senate.[141]

The day after the election, Romney returned to Bain Capital, but the loss had a lasting effect; he told his brother, "I never want to run for something again unless I can win."[47][142] When his father died in 1995, Mitt donated his inheritance to BYU's George W. Romney Institute of Public Management.[55] He also joined the board, as vice-chair, of the Points of Light Foundation,[99] which had incorporated his father's National Volunteer Center. Romney felt restless as the decade neared a close; the goal of simply making more money was becoming inadequate for him.[47][142] Although no longer in a local leadership position in his church, he still taught Sunday School.[112] During the long and controversial approval and construction process for the $30 million Mormon temple in Belmont, he feared that, as a political figure who had opposed Kennedy, he would become a focal point for opposition to the structure.[113] He thus kept to a limited, behind-the-scenes role in attempts to ease tensions between the church and local residents.[112][113][115]

2002 Winter Olympics For more details on this topic, see 2002 Winter Olympics.

In 1998, Ann Romney learned that she had multiple sclerosis; Mitt described watching her fail a series of neurological tests as the worst day of his life.[47] After experiencing two years of severe difficulties with the disease, she found – while living in Park City, Utah, where the couple had built a vacation home – a combination of mainstream, alternative, and equestrian therapies that enabled her to lead a lifestyle mostly without limitations.[143] When her husband received a job offer to take over the troubled organization responsible for the 2002 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, to be held in Salt Lake City in Utah, she urged him to accept it; eager for a new challenge, as well as another chance to prove himself in public life, he did.[142][144][145] On February 11, 1999, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games of 2002 hired Romney as their president and CEO.[146]

Photograph of Romney standing with microphone in middle of curling lanes Romney, as president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics, speaking before a curling match Before Romney took the position, the event was running $379 million short of its revenue goals.[146] Officials had made plans to scale back the Games to compensate for the fiscal crisis, and there were fears it might be moved away entirely.[147] Additionally, the image of the Games had been damaged by allegations of bribery against top officials including prior committee president and CEO Frank Joklik. The Salt Lake Organizing Committee forced Joklik and committee vice president Dave Johnson to resign.[148] Utah power brokers, including Governor Mike Leavitt, searched for someone with a scandal-free reputation to take charge of the Olympics, and chose Romney based on his business and legal expertise as well as his connections to both the LDS Church and the state.[145][149] The appointment faced some initial criticism from non-Mormons, and fears from Mormons, that it represented cronyism or made the Games seem too Mormon-dominated.[38] Romney donated to charity the $1.4 million in salary and severance payments he received for his three years as president and CEO, and also contributed $1 million to the Olympics.[150][150]

Romney restructured the organization's leadership and policies. He reduced budgets and boosted fundraising, alleviating the concerns of corporate sponsors while recruiting new ones.[142][145] Romney worked to ensure the safety of the Games following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by coordinating a $300 million security budget.[144] He oversaw a $1.32 billion total budget, 700 employees, and 26,000 volunteers.[146] The federal government provided approximately $400 million[145][151][152] to $600 million[153][154] of that budget, much of it a result of Romney's having aggressively lobbied Congress and federal agencies.[154][155] It was a record level of federal funding for the staging of a U.S. Olympics.[152][155] An additional $1.1 billion of indirect federal funding came to the state in the form of highway and transit projects.[156]

Romney emerged as the local public face of the Olympic effort, appearing in photographs, in news stories, on collectible Olympics pins depicting Romney wrapped by an American flag, and on buttons carrying phrases like "Hey, Mitt, we love you!"[142][145][157] Robert H. Garff, the chair of the organizing committee, later said "It was obvious that he had an agenda larger than just the Olympics,"[142] and that Romney wanted to use the Olympics to propel himself into the national spotlight and a political career.[145][158] Garff believed the initial budget situation was not as bad as Romney portrayed, given there were still three years to reorganize.[145] Utah Senator Bob Bennett said that much of the needed federal money was already in place.[145] An analysis by The Boston Globe later stated that the committee had nearly $1 billion in committed revenues at that time.[145] Olympics critic Steve Pace, who led Utahns for Responsible Public Spending, thought Romney exaggerated the initial fiscal state to lay the groundwork for a well-publicized rescue.[158] Kenneth Bullock, another board member of the organizing committee and also head of the Utah League of Cities and Towns, often clashed with Romney at the time, and later said that Romney deserved some credit for the turnaround but not as much as he claimed.[142] Bullock said: "He tried very hard to build an image of himself as a savior, the great white hope. He was very good at characterizing and castigating people and putting himself on a pedestal."[145]

Despite the initial fiscal shortfall, the Games ended up with a surplus of $100 million.[159] President George W. Bush praised Romney's efforts and 87 percent of Utahns approved of his performance as Olympics head.[23][160] It solidified his reputation as a "turnaround artist",[145][161][162] and Harvard Business School taught a case study based around his actions.[62] U.S. Olympic Committee head William Hybl credited Romney with an extraordinary effort in overcoming a difficult time for the Olympics, culminating in "the greatest Winter Games I have ever seen".[145] Romney wrote a book about his experience titled Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games, published in 2004. The role gave Romney experience in dealing with federal, state, and local entities, a public persona he had previously lacked, and the chance to relaunch his political aspirations.[142]