Willard Mitt Romney was born in Detroit, Michigan, on March 12, 1947. His father was George Romney, a wealthy automobile executive who served as governor of the state of Michigan and later launched an unsuccessful bid for the US presidency in 1968.
Romney’s family has belonged to the Mormon Church going back five generations, and the future Republican presidential candidate spent two-and-a-half years in France as a missionary for the church after graduating from a private high school.
After returning from France, Romney graduated from Brigham Young University, a private university owned by the Mormon Church, and earned a joint law-MBA degree at Harvard University. In 1977, he was hired by Bain & Company, a Boston-based management consulting firm, where he rose to the position of vice president before leaving to form a private equity firm, Bain Capital, in 1984.
Under his leadership, Bain reaped profits by borrowing money to buy companies, restructure them, and resell them at a profit. The company’s investments and acquisitions included the office supplies giant Staples and the US pizza chain Domino’s.
In 1994, Romney ran for the US Senate in the state of Massachusetts as a Republican but lost to Democratic incumbent Ted Kennedy, brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, who had held the seat for more than 30 years.
In 1999, the organizing committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, hired Romney to take over as the committee’s CEO. He is credited by many for rescuing the Games from fiscal woes, and he was praised by President George W. Bush for the success of the event.
The 2002 Winter Olympics gave Romney a platform from which to relaunch his political aspirations, and in November of that year, after campaigning as a moderate Republican, he was elected governor of the traditionally Democratic-leaning state of Massachusetts.
During his governorship, Romney spearheaded the implementation of a statewide plan to ensure universal health insurance for Massachusetts residents. The bill would eventually become a model for the national health care bill signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010. Romney has vowed to overturn the national law while defending the law he backed in Massachusetts, saying states are better equipped than the federal government to handle such matters.
In 2005, Romney announced that he would not seek reelection in Massachusetts, and he proceeded to build a national network of supporters for a future White House bid. In 2007, he announced he would seek the Republican nomination for the 2008 US presidential election.
Romney campaigned on his track record running businesses and the Winter Olympics, but he was unable to match the support of his party garnered by eventual Republican nominee Sen. John McCain. Romney ended his bid for the presidency in February 2008 but returned four years later to again seek the Republican nomination for president.
After months of acrimonious campaigning and many debates against other Republican primary candidates, Romney emerged as the party’s choice to challenge Democratic incumbent Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election. He was criticized by his rivals during the primary season as a candidate whose positions on issues shift with the political winds, and this criticism has followed him into the race against Obama as well.
Romney, whose personal wealth is estimated at some $250 million, has been portrayed by the Obama campaign as out of touch with Americans struggling through difficult economic times, and his opponents say his tax policies would benefit the wealthy on the backs of middle and lower-class Americans.
Romney, meanwhile, says his success in business has prepared him to implement policies to turn around the US economy, create jobs, and slash the national deficit.
