POLITICAL FIGURES: “In a long-expected announcement, Mitt Romney said on Friday [2-16-18] that he would run for the United States Senate, pledging to bring Utah’s priorities of balanced budgets, strong economy and welcoming borders to Washington.
Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts and the 2012 Republican nominee for president, made the announcement in a two-minute video posted to Twitter and Facebook. He cited his experience as the chief executive of the organizing committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and compared Utah, where his mother was born, favorably to the nation’s capital… And, in a pointed gesture toward the restrictive immigration policies of President Trump, he noted that ‘Utah welcomes legal immigrants from around the world,’ while ‘Washington sends immigrants a message of exclusion.’…
Mr. Romney is popular in Utah, despite not having been born in the state and having spent much of his life elsewhere…
During the 2016 campaign, Mr. Romney decried Mr. Trump as a ‘fraud’ and a ‘phony,’ and said that he was ‘playing the American public for suckers.’ But after the election, he embarked on a more cordial relationship with the president, as his name was one of several in the discussion of possible nominees for Secretary of State…
The two have talked more recently, but Mr. Trump has not offered his support for Mr. Romney’s campaign. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the announcement.”
-Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Mitt Romney Announces Senate Run,” The New York Times online, Feb. 16, 2018