The house that Mitt built

The house

that Mitt built

Mitt Romney, the talented and charismatic former

head of Bain Capital, is running for president of the

United States. Those who worked with him during his

private-sector years in the 1980s and 1990s describe

a consulting superstar who succeeded in private

equity while presiding,

pater familias-like, over a

team of notably aggressive and ambitious investment

professionals. David Snow examines Romney's legacy

at Bain Capital and the leadership characteristics

of a man who may be the next American president.

investigative report:

mitt romney

In 1990, when a Goldman Sachs investment

banker told Mitt Romney to "shut

up", the preternaturally calm co-founder

of Bain Capital momentarily lost his cool.

Romney was at the time on a leave of

absence from his private equity firm to

rescue his former employer, consulting

firm Bain & Co., which like many overleveraged

businesses then was teetering on

the brink of bankruptcy. The turnaround

gig was tough, but perfectly suited to

Romney's virtuosity for analysis, messsorting

and interpersonal refereeing.

Here was a top consulting business,

known as a breeding ground for good

ideas, now caught in a financial death

spiral of its own making. Romney was

attempting to play the many impatient

constituents against each other until the

spiraling was brought under control. But

the Goldman banker in question was

rather more explicit in expressing his

impatience, telling Romney in a meeting

that the only hope for Bain & Co.'s resuscitation

was for it to first enter into bankruptcy

protection. Romney, an ace

communicator, began his rebuttal, but

was abrasively cut short. "I thought that

he would probably kill the guy," says a

person who witnessed the confrontation.

"That was probably the maddest I've ever

seen Mitt."

While Romney was used to – even an

instigator of – vigorous, needling debate,

being told to shut up deeply offended

him, not because it was directed at him,

but because it was impolite. Romney, the

devout Mormon who never swore, drank

or missed Monday-night family gatherings,

demanded aggressive analysis,

aggressive dealmaking and aggressive

peer review from his team. But he took

exception when people responded to this

distinctly Bain brand of competitive

energy with something other than a

veneer of good manners.

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86 private equity international september 2007

Romney's nice-guy persona was

backed up by the confidence of

someone who succeeded at everything

he did. The undisputed alpha dog at

Bain Capital had no need to bark. Even

years after his departure, it is notable

that at a firm bursting with self-confidence

and ambition, Romney is still

viewed with something akin to awe.

Says Josh Bekenstein, a Bain Capital

managing director and one of the firm's

first professionals: "The thing that one

cannot overstate is how smart Mitt is.

He's a very, very smart guy. We interact

with a lot of smart people, but I never

felt that I was in a room where there

were people that were smarter than

Mitt."

"Mitt was someone who was almost

too good to be true," says Charles

"Chip" Baird, the founder of

Greenwich, Connecticut private equity

firm North Castle Capital Partners and

a consultant at Bain & Co. during

Romney's years there. "He is so good

at so many different things, and that's

what drives some people bonkers."

The confidence that Romney

inspired was such that his ownership of

Bain Capital's management company

was welcomed by the firm's other partners.

Romney was widely seen as the

"glue" to the firm he built. When, in

2001, he turned the firm over to its

employees, there was some worry

among limited partners that the exit of

pater familias

would bring disorder to

the house of Bain.

massachusetts avenue

Romney was wildly successful in

private equity, but the private equity

industry was not big enough for

Romney's ambitions. After a stint overseeing

the scandal-marred Salt Lake

City Winter Olympics, Romney was

elected governor of Massachusetts,

becoming, against considerable odds, a

Republican overseeing a traditional

Democratic stronghold. He is now

running for president of the United

States of America. Romney must first

defeat John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani

and possibly Fred Thompson in rolling

state Republican primary elections that

begin in January. The winner of the

Republican primaries will face the

Democratic nominee in the 2008 US

presidential elections.

Romney is viewed as more socially

conservative than McCain and

Giuliani – a potential advantage for

securing the Republican nomination,

until one factors in his religion, which

is a minus for many of the same

socially conservative voters. Romney

also has a potential liability in the form

of his career in private equity, due not

to any particular decisions he made at

Bain Capital, but because of the generally

low opinion many voters have of

buyout firms. Romney lost a 1994 bid

for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in part

because of negative publicity he

received from union bosses, who

claimed that Bain Capital had fired

workers at a tyre-making portfolio

company.

Not surprisingly, there is no mention

of the terms "buyout" or even "private

equity" on the official Mitt Romney

campaign web site. Bain Capital, one

reads near the end of Romney's bio, is

"one of the nation's most successful

venture capital and investment companies".

Romney's decision to downplay

his years at Bain Capital in favour of

more recent accomplishments is politically

astute, but it does obscure the fact

that his success at Bain Capital was the

platform that allowed him to enter

politics. It was the first time that

Romney was able to build and control

his own organisation. It created for

Romney a degree of public recognition,

not to mention vast personal wealth

(Romney is entitled to receive distributions

from Bain Capital entities until

February 2009). Romney's years at

Bain Capital also allowed him to build

out a network of wealthy and

connected admirers, especially on Wall

Street, who are now among the

strongest supporters of his pro-business

agenda.

Of course, public office was not an

unexpected goal for Romney – politics

was after all the family business. He is

the son of George Romney, the former

governor of Michigan and himself a

former Republican White House

hopeful (the senior Romney lost to

Richard Nixon in the 1968 Republican

primaries after voicing skepticism

about the war in Vietnam).

George Romney first built his

private-sector career during the 1940s

and 1950s in the automobile industry.

Mitt Romney entered the business

world through the hot industry of the

late 1970s – business consulting. After

graduating with a joint degree from

Mitt Romney and Bill Bain in 1990. Romney, a star consultant at Bain & Co.,

was chosen to spearhead the firm's foray into private equity.

september 2007

private equity international page 87

Harvard's business and law schools,

Romney was hired at Boston

Consulting Group. But just three years

later, in 1978, he joined a firm cofounded

by Bill Bain and several other

Boston Consulting defectors.

At the time, Bain & Co was encountering

explosive growth and attracting

the best and brightest from MBA

programmes, remembers North

Castle's Baird.

Romney was quickly promoted to

the equivalent of a partner at Bain &

Co. and became the youngest of seven

senior professionals at the firm.

"Certainly, he was a star," says Baird.

"He was someone that clients liked

and was someone that people liked to

work for."

Romney had all the ingredients

necessary for achievement in the business

of selling business advice. "A

huge part of the consulting business is

trust," adds Baird. "Mitt is someone

who is and comes across as an ingenuous,

personable, straight shooter.

Second, consultants are paid to solve

business problems, and Mitt is enormously

capable as an analyst, as a

manager of an analytical process, as a

synthesizer of options and solutions,

and then as a communicator of what

can be often quite obtuse, arcane types

of analyses, put in a language that a

general manager in a plastics company

can understand."

In addition to consulting across a

range of industries, including hospitals,

textiles and publishing, Romney took

up the role of human capital acquirer

for Bain & Co. "We were hiring huge

numbers of people," says Baird. "From

1978 to 1989 we went from 40 to

1,400 people, and for a big chunk of

that time, Mitt was responsible for

hiring."

Romney became an assiduous evaluator

and manager of people, and the

role allowed him to hone a talent for

building an organisation that

achieved, as distinct from building a

personal support system. He grew

into "someone who was not wildly

involved in the details," says Baird.

"He would help the manager in the

process outline, but not get involved

in the day to day analytical exercise,

necessarily."

Not that Romney was incapable of

marshalling the details when called

upon. Baird remembers a particular

consulting assignment that Bain & Co

was bidding on, where it became

apparent that the firm was on track to

lose. Romney personally stepped in at

the last minute. "Mitt stayed up all

night and wrote the whole proposal,"

says Baird. "He literally wrote every

word. [It became] the biggest single

piece of work that Bain had ever won

in a competitive process."

principal transition

By 1984, with the consulting business

still highly lucrative, the senior partners

of Bain & Co. took notice of a

small but growing cluster of groups

that would eventually come to be

known as private equity firms.

According to Bekenstein, a client

posed a question: "You guys do such a

great job giving strategic advice to

clients, why don't you try to invest in

companies and participate in the

equity appreciation of those companies?"

Romney, along with another top

producer within the consulting firm

named Coleman Andrews, stepped

forward to lead Bain & Co.'s expedition

into private investments. The two

were selected for the job because of "a

combination of them being incredibly

talented, and in the course of their

careers they had expressed interest in

something more entrepreneurial than

being consultants," says Geoffrey

Rehnert, a co-chief executive officer of

Boston-based private equity firm

Audax Group, and a co-founder of

Bain Capital.

Romney and Andrews suggested,

and the rest of the partners agreed,

that Bain Capital would seek to apply

Bain & Co-style strategic consulting

advice to the companies in which it

would invest.

The firm would "try a different

strategy than most buyout firms were

pursuing at the time," says Bekenstein.

"We wanted to look for buyouts that

might be complex and have operational

opportunities, and for venture

capital deals that weren't just about

technology."

In retrospect, Romney's move into

the private equity business seems like

a no-brainer, given the eventual

success of Bain Capital. But at the

time, Bain & Co., with roughly 600

consultants worldwide, was "about as

successful an organization as you can

imagine," notes Baird. "It was

growing at crazy rates, everybody was

getting promoted and getting paid

more. Mitt jumped off the merry-goround

to do something which I'd say

at that point was a question."

To round out the initial Bain Capital

team, Romney hired Bekenstein, while

Andrews, who was then based in

California, hired Rehnert, who had just

joined the consulting firm out of

Stanford Law School. "I was fortunate,"

says Rehnert.

The first Bain Capital fund, called

simply Bain Capital Fund, was a

friends and family affair. At a Bain &

Co. partners meeting in 1984, a piece

of paper was passed around the table

upon which the partners wrote the

amounts of their respective commitments.

This added up to $12 million.

Romney and Andrews didn't think it

was enough, and so the two set out to

"Mitt jumped off the

merry-go-round to

do something which

I'd say at that point

was a question."

meet with people in the Bain network

for additional commitments. By the

end of the year, Bain Capital held a

final close on $37 million and a new

private equity franchise was born.

The deal between Bain Capital and

the partners of Bain & Co. gave the

consulting firm fifty percent of the

carried interest as well as an interest in

the general partnership of the firm. For

technical reasons, Romney's and

Andrews' salaries were initially paid by

Bain & Co.

Bain Capital declined to give details

on its evolving ownership structure.

Coleman Andrews left Bain Capital

in 1986 to pursue his interests in the

airline industry. He was replaced by

Robert White, another Bain & Co.

consultant.

White, Bekenstein, Rehnert and

Romney became the four general partners

of Bain Capital, with Romney,

aged 38, a good decade older than his

three partners. Although all partners

were involved in all aspects of the firm,

a pattern emerged whereby "Mitt was

clearly the adult. He was the guy who

flew out to meet with the CEO to negotiate

the transaction" while the others

focused more on financial models and

deal terms, says Rehnert.

"Mitt's got a commanding presence

when he comes into a room," adds

Rehnert. "People notice him. He's

charismatic and energetic."

The young firm had two early, audacious

successes. And while Romney

will likely not use the phrase "leveraged

buyouts" during his presidential

campaign, Bain Capital's first two

homeruns were highly leveraged,

classic mid-1980s LBOs. The first was

Calumet Coach Company, a provider

of mobile medical-imaging units. The

deal, sourced by Rehnert in 1986,

involved an equity cheque of $1

million and $10 million in debt.

Twenty-seven months later Bain

Capital exited the deal with a 35-times

multiple on its investment. It was the

firm's first leveraged buyout.

Next came Accuride, a division of

tyre giant Firestone that was spun-out

by Bain Capital near the end of 1986.

The deal was referred by Bain & Co., a

pleasing validation of hoped-for synergies

between the two firms. Bain

Capital invested $2.6 million in equity

and structured the deal with 40-to-1

leverage. Fifteen months later the

company was sold and Bain Capital

realised 24 times its investment.

Calumet Coach and Accuride alone

would return three times the value of

the first Bain Capital fund.

All involved were pleased with the

results, and the next Bain Capital fund

received commitments from three

insurance companies and the Bessemer

Trust Company, in addition to

enriched friends and family.

battleship bain

The stage was set for Bain Capital to

grow beyond its pass-the-hat origins,

and at this point Romney's most valuable

skill sets kicked in. Rehnert argues

that the press coverage focused on

Romney's dealmaking during those

years misses the essence of his success

with Bain Capital, which was as a

builder of an organisation.

Remembers Bekenstein: "He was a

huge believer in finding the best people.

That was always the most important

thing."

A person who used to work closely

with Bain Capital says the firm developed

a reputation for hiring highly

ambitious, intelligent, even "cocky",

professionals, at least in the eyes of the

limited partners and investment

bankers who interfaced with them. The

term "Battleship Bain" came to be used

by some investment bankers, the

person says (several Bain Capital

professionals say they have never heard

of this term). The person summarises

the reputation of the firm's deal professionals

under Mitt Romney as "not the

Care Bears".

Bekenstein says Bain Capital's

culture remains one of "ambitious

people" in a very competitive market,

but he adds that he is confident that

Bain professionals are also perceived in

the market to be "respectful". "There's

no yelling and screaming at the firm,"

he says.

Romney, perhaps taking a cue from

his legal training, encouraged a decision-

making culture whereby the

smart, aggressive Bain professionals

would gather and intensely debate

investment and strategic options.

Romney often played the Socratic

referee. His goal, says Bekenstein, was

to arrive at consensus, but not without

first going through a rigorous discussion.

Mike Goss, the current Bain Capital

chief financial officer who joined the

firm in its earliest years, says that all

partners at the firm were expected to

ask tough questions of each other, but

no one was a more persistent questioner

than Romney. Says Goss: "If you

suddenly said that you weren't interested

in doing the deal any more, Mitt

would switch sides and ask you to

explain why."

Adds Bekenstein: "If Mitt and other

team members asked a bunch of tough

questions, and the deal team said,

okay, maybe we should pass on this

deal, Mitt would be the first guy to say,

'Well wait a second, are you sure you

want to kill the deal? Maybe we should

evaluate it some more.'"

"The culture at Bain has never, ever

been, 'Let's just do this the easy way,'"

says Goss.

Still, says Rehnert, "Mitt was not a

deal junkie. In the 1980s there were a

lot of guys who negotiated because

they loved the sport of negotiation.

Over time there were plenty of deal

junkies at Bain Capital. Mitt became a

manager of deal junkies. He was smart

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88 private equity international september 2007

"The culture at Bain

has never, ever been,

'Let's just do this

the easy way.'"

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private equity international page 89

enough to hire and train and develop

them. It was during the course of the

growth of Bain Capital that he really

learned how to run an organisation."

Those on the other side of the table

from Bain Capital pros during a transaction

learned to expect the attack of

the deal junkies. Romney encouraged a

very aggressive approach to negotiations.

"It's going over every term," says

a person familiar with Bain's negotiating

style. "If there are 20 cookies on

the table, I'm going to explain why I

deserve 16 and you deserve four. And if

you only give me 15 cookies, I want the

biggest ones."

Under Romney, Bain Capital took

the unorthodox step of moving from a

20 percent to a 30 percent carry. The

firm remains one of the few large

private equity firms to charge higher

than a 20 percent carry. The change

came in 1998 with Bain's sixth fund,

just before Romney left to lead the Salt

Lake Olympics. A source says the

impetus to raise the carry came from

Romney and Bekenstein, although

Bekenstein says it was a collaborative

decision among the firm's partners. He

says Bain Capital had a very peopleintensive

style of investing, and the

extra carry was conceived of mostly as

a way to help pay this larger team.

A limited partner source says Bain

Capital raised its carry because,

frankly, it could – the firm's track

record by 1998 was phenomenal, with

an average return on each Bain deal of

roughly 100 percent.

With returns like that, Rehnert says

of the move to 30 percent carry, "It

would almost be stupid not to charge

premium carry."

While Bain Capital worked relentlessly

to get the best terms for the firm,

within the firm several current and

former employees describe a general

sense that compensation was remarkably

fair under Romney. "Mitt was

very generous with economics," says

someone who worked for Romney.

"People got paid what they deserved."

Romney created a system around

compensation at the firm, which

involved extensive peer review,

although Romney ultimately

"controlled the money bag", as a Bain

insider puts it. Several Bain insiders

note that Romney structured a

compensation methodology that most

agreed was transparent. Goss says he

remembers being hired by Romney,

and asking about what it would take to

become a partner at the firm. He was

impressed when Romney, without

promising anything, replied: "All I can

tell you is that we will give you a piece

of the pie if we believe that the pie will

get bigger as a result of your having a

piece."

Anyone who underperformed at

Bain likely would not get a lecture

directly from Romney. "He was good

at creating an organisation where

colleagues delivered the pressure and

the bad news," says Rehnert. "Mitt

would set the stage for the information

to be received."

While Bain & Co. owned a stake in

the early Bain Capital funds, the

creation of Bain Capital Inc. in 1992

saw Romney become the 100 percent

owner of the firm's management

company, which technically gave him

control of decision making at the firm.

In practice, however, Romney broadly

shared economics and kept in place a

governance structure characterised by

consensus-building among the many

professionals. The other Bain Capital

professionals saw Mitt's ownership not

only as acceptable, but as a much

simpler alternative to the many other

potential structures, given the trust

they placed in Romney. "People were

willing to concede that," says Rehnert.

"He had established enough credibility,

enough trust, that it was better to have

him be the sole decision maker rather

than have a bunch of young guys

beating each other up" in deciding on a

shared ownership structure.

Ironically, given his future in politics,

Romney enforced a no-press policy

throughout his firm, a policy which

persists in a somewhat relaxed form to

this day. The radio-silence helped build

up an elite aura around Bain Capital,

but by the time Romney left, there

existed an antagonistic relationship

between the firm and some members of

the media. In 2000, this relationship

was tidily summed up when, on the

occasion of a very rare interview with a

trade reporter, a Bain Capital senior

partner began by saying: "You guys

give us abysmal coverage."

Mitt and wife Ann on the campaign trail

Life and work at Bain Capital under

Romney was not all grind. The head of

the firm occasionally unleashed a

wicked sense of humour against his

colleagues. And though he never

drank, Romney would join in any celebrations

with the firm. People at Bain

Capital also observed that Romney

would religiously head home early

each Monday for an evening with his

family. "He was very committed to

that. He'd just get up from his desk and

go," says someone who worked with

him at the time. "But he'd work his ass

off the rest of the time."

romney to the rescue

As Bain Capital grew, it became

apparent that Romney was restless

for different challenges. In 1990,

R o m n e y a g r e e d t o r e t u r n

temporarily to Bain & Co. as CEO

to help the damaged consulting firm

through a painful restructuring.

Rehnert says he considers this period

to have highlighted Romney at his

best. "In the end, everyone was

better off if Bain & Co. survived,"

remembers Rehnert. "But if it was

going to go bankrupt, any one of

these parties would have been better

off being the ones who pushed it into

bankruptcy, because they would

have gotten more out of the bankruptcy

if they were the ones who

asserted their claim first. So he had

to have everyone sit still and

convince them that they'd be better

off sitting still. In the end, he was

able to inspire enough trust and

confidence in all of these warring

factions that he was going to get the

job done. Even though a lot of smart

people thought it was hopeless, he

wound up making it work."

Not long after returning to Bain

Capital following the restructuring of

Bain & Co., Romney took a much

larger lateral step away from the firm.

In 1994, he campaigned for the Senate

seat of Ted Kennedy. "He gave a little

consideration as to what would

happen if he got elected," says Rehnert.

"There were some contingency plans

made for governance and ownership in

the event that he got elected."

Bekenstein credits the collaborative

decision-making process encouraged

by Romney for preparing the firm for

a post-Mitt world. "When he ran for

the Senate in 1994, he was gone for

about nine months, and we continued

to run the firm and make decisions as

we had when Mitt was around," says

Bekenstein.

Romney was not successful at

winning Ted Kennedy's seat. In the

wake of this defeat, however, he set

his sights on bigger prizes, and sought

to give himself greater visibility on a

national stage. In 1999, with the 2002

Salt Lake Olympics approaching, Mitt

made himself available to clean up yet

another mess, this one related to a

bribery scandal embroiling the

Olympic committee. In 2001, to

dispel any doubts as to his ongoing

connection with Bain Capital,

Romney said at a press conference

that he had agreed to transfer his

ownership of Bain Capital to his partners,

and to do so "without financial

consideration".

While indicating he would

continue to be involved as a limited

partner with Bain Capital, Romney

said at the press conference: "I didn't

want [Bain Capital managing directors]

to wonder whether I [was]

going to be coming back to take over

again . . . I didn't want them to

wonder whether .. . I was going to

show up at the front door and say,

'O.K. everybody, move over one

office, I'm here again.'"

Last month, the Romney campaign

filed a financial disclosure form that

described Romney's separation from

Bain Capital as such: "As part of his

retirement from Bain Capital, he

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90 private equity international september 2007

Romney and political rival, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani,

share a stage during a recent candidates debate.

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private equity international page 91

entered into a non-compete, non-hire

agreement running through February

11, 2009 which provides him with a

passive, declining profit share that is

fixed by contract in certain Bain

Capital entities, and the right to

make passive investments in certain

Bain Capital investments."

A source says this arrangement

refers to Romney's share of the carried

interest in Bain Capital entities. (It is

unclear what is identified in a footnote

to the Romney financial disclosure,

which says that the "Ann D.

Romney Blind Trust" has a right to

receive profits until February 2009

from an entity called "Bain Capital").

The campaign announcement took

pains to note that the former

governor has since 2003 not had

"any control over the assets acquired

or disposed of".

Certainly, Romney has continued

to benefit from his passive affiliation

with Bain Capital. But he left money

on the table. Allowing that, until

fairly recently, the management

company of a private equity firm was

not deemed to be a thing of great

value, had Romney retained ownership

of Bain Capital until today, this

asset could have been worth $10

billion or more, using the current

(albeit fluctuating) valuations of

Fortress and Blackstone as proxies.

The Romney campaign has disclosed

that the candidate's net worth is

somewhere between $190 million

and $250 million.

Romney's decision to transfer the

firm's management company to its

employees stands in contrast to the

many other examples of founders

now seeking to monetise their respective

franchises. "Mitt could have

kept that," says a former colleague.

"Maybe he could have put it in a

trust, but he chose the. . . approach

to pass it on to the generation of

people who are producing, and not

the entrepreneurial 'I founded it and

therefore I deserve $7 billion'"

approach.

"He chose to go away with

hundreds of millions of dollars,"

adds the former colleague. "Could he

have had billions? Sure."

Although all at Bain Capital

expected less involvement from

Romney because of his leadership in

the Olympics, his departure from the

firm was not expected by all within the

broader Bain network, according to a

source in close contact with the firm at

the time. While there was acknowledgement

among LPs that the firm's

partners would continue to build the

firm, there was also some anxiety

expressed that the "glue" of the firm,

Romney, was no longer in place.

A person who attended Bain

Capital's May 2000 annual general

meeting describes a somewhat

emotional gathering of LPs, Bain

professionals and the next generation

of leadership, at which senior partners

spoke with pride about their 15 years

together, and their determination to

make the firm thrive going forward.

The firm has certainly thrived post-

Mitt, growing to $50 billion under

management across multiple asset

classes. In private equity, the firm has

among the largest platforms in the

world. Bain is reportedly raising as

much as $15 billion for its next fund.

From a governance perspective,

Romneyesque zeal for consensusdriven

decision-making continues.

The 51 managing directors delegate

authority to numerous committees.

No individual partner has stepped

forward to replace Romney as the

leader of Bain Capital.

Romney's final departure from the

firm went smoothly. But his charismatic

presence was evidently a harder

thing to unwind. A person who

frequently visited the Bain offices in

Boston during the 2000 period noted

that Romney's office remained fully

furnished and untouched for months

following his move to Salt Lake City.

On the walls hung large individual

portraits of his family members.

Romney was no longer boss, but the

challenge of boxing up and clearing

out the founders' belongings was

perhaps more complex than might

have been the case at a firm with a

different history.

romney timeline

1971

Graduates from Brigham

Young University as valedictorian.

1975

Graduates from Harvard

University with joint graduate

degrees in law and business.

Joins Boston Consulting Group.

1978

Joins Bain & Co.

1984

Co-founds Bain Capital with

$37 million in capital commitments

from Bain & Co. partners and

people in the Bain network.

1990

Returns temporarily to

turn around Bain & Co. as the

consulting giant teeters on the brink

of bankruptcy.

1994

Runs against longtime

Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy,

a Democrat, but loses with 41 percent

of the vote. Romney returns to

Bain Capital.

1999

Leaves Bain Capital to manage

the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic

Winter Games.

2001

Announces that he has transferred

his ownership in the firm for

no financial consideration.

2003

Sworn in as governor of

Massachusetts with 50 percent of the

vote, defeating Shannon O'Brien.

2007

Gubernatorial term ends and

Romney files to run for the

Republican nomination for president.

Republican primary elections begin

next January. The winner will run

against the Democratic nominee for

the White House.