Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a popular conservative in a bastion of liberalism, is fast becoming a rising Republican star and a potential 2008 presidential candidate by bashing home-state Sen. John Kerry as too left-wing and leading the charge against same-sex “marriage.”
Building on his crusade for a constitutional ban on homosexual “marriage” that has put him and his state at the center of the biggest cultural debate of the year, the telegenic Mr. Romney has not only attacked Mr. Kerry as far more liberal than most voters, but has branded his running mate, Sen. John Edwards, as too inexperienced to be next in line for the presidency.
Mr. Romney has vowed to campaign for President Bush “wherever he wants me to.”
The governor also plans to deliver an address tomorrow before the National Press Club on the challenges the states face from terrorism, and soon will release a book about how he rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City from bankruptcy and steered the events through a safe and successful conclusion in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
Political protocol requires the state’s governor to welcome Democrats formally when they gather in Boston for their national convention later this month to nominate Mr. Kerry.
But the former venture-capital investor who has held the line on taxes when most states have raised them, says he feels no compunction about saying what he really thinks of Mr. Kerry before the convention.
“John Kerry is more liberal than the people at large, and I think John Edwards falls from that same mold,” Mr. Romney said right after Mr. Kerry announced that he had chosen the North Carolina freshman for the No. 2 spot on the ticket.
Democrats cried foul at the sight of the governor using the trappings of his office to denounce their party’s ticket, accusing Mr. Romney of violating laws prohibiting the use of public property for political campaigning. But the governor, who has a 58 percent job-approval score, dismissed such suggestions as politically motivated and “just plain silly.”
“Both Kerry and his running mate are from the left wing of the Democratic Party,” the governor said in a telephone interview Friday, adding that Mr. Edwards is not ready to be second in line for the presidency. “His status as a trial lawyer and relative lack of experience in management and government will be a drawback.”
Making the rounds of national radio and television talk shows last week, the governor further accused Mr. Edwards of being “a pretty glib” trial lawyer “who didn’t have the experience for this job.”
The plunge into the presidential campaign war was hardly Mr. Romney’s first foray into national politics. In recent weeks, he traveled to the District to testify on behalf of a constitutional amendment against same-sex “marriage,” which his state’s Supreme Judicial Court has mandated.
The governor also called on Mr. Kerry to resign his Senate seat because he missed too many roll call votes. Mr. Romney crossed police union picket lines — after Mr. Kerry refused to do so — to deliver a speech to the nation’s mayors.
Last month, he spoke to Republican activists in California’s conservative Orange County and campaigned for Mr. Bush at the opening of Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters in his native Michigan. And he has begun to speak around the country for Republican candidates for Congress.
Tomorrow, Mr. Romney says he will speak about “the challenges faced by the states in the post-9/11 world.”
As for speculation about his future political ambitions, Mr. Romney said running for president is “the furthest thing from my mind.”
“I’m fully consumed with the job I’ve got and with the effort to re-elect the current president,” he said.
But political strategists in both parties say Mr. Romney already has begun courting key Republican constituencies, and they expect him to be a candidate in 2008.
“I know he has presidential ambitions because people who are close to him speak openly of his presidential ambitions,” said Boston business executive Steve Grossman, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and, before that, the state’s Democratic Party chairman.
“He’s playing it in a very careful and calculating way to make himself attractive, both to the socially conservative wing of the Republican Party as well as to the tax-cutting wing of the party,” Mr. Grossman said.
A survey of some Republican leaders suggests that Mr. Romney is impressing them, too.
“We just finished our latest report on the governors, and he ranks as one of the five most fiscally conservative governors in America on economic and budget issues,” said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, which supports tax-cutting candidates with campaign money.
Although Mr. Romney “represents the most liberal state in the union, he’s an impressive guy,” Mr. Moore said. “He’s very free-market-oriented. Socially, he’s probably more to the left. But there’s no question that he has a sterling record on keeping the budget under control and avoiding tax increases at a time when over half the governors have raised taxes,” Mr. Moore said.
Social-conservative leader Paul Weyrich also finds much to like about Mr. Romney and says others do, too.
“I know a lot of people in the pro-family community in Massachusetts are very pleased with him and think he has done a lot for the pro-family movement,” Mr. Weyrich said.
“Some social conservatives feel he did not go far enough when the state court approved same-sex ’marriages.’ They wanted him to petition the government to remove these judges, but he would not touch that,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Romney said he intends to refrain from criticizing the Democratic ticket during the week of July 25, when their national convention gets under way.
“I will not assume the role of the attack dog, attacking the Kerry campaign. I find him to be a personable fellow,” he said. “I just don’t think he will be as effective as the current president.”
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