My friend and former colleague Erin McPike reported last week that Mitt Romney is moving his official residence from Boston to his vacation home at Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. The first thing that came to mind, of course, is that he’s positioning himself for the state’s first-in-the-nation primary in 2012. Assuming he is running, will this move help him? I think that yes, it will in the primary; no, it won’t in the general; but at the end of the day, it’s all about Romney figuring out somewhere to call home.
First, let me give my thoughts on the primary. With his official residence here, Romney will be a constant presence in the Granite State the next four years and won’t have to explain to those pesky reporters what he’s doing up there. As the former governor to a neighboring state, Romney has high name ID and the local Republicans will probably embrace his desire to flee Taxachusetts (as many of them have probably done).
However, if Romney does win the primary, I don’t think it gives him much of an upper hand in the general election. New Hampshire is probably gone for Republicans for good. Granite State Republicans controlled both houses of the state Legislature from 1911 to 2006 and controlled at least the governorship or Legislature from 1876 to 2006. As recently as 2004, they had two U.S. House and two U.S. Senate seats. These are not temporary whims, they are tectonic shifts.But at the same time, some things never change in New Hampshire. It’s a state of “entrepreneurs and high-tech innovators,” according to the Almanac, and is prosperous and “skeptical of government programs.” This sounds like the ideology of Romney he got tangled up in the purity tests of the culturally conservative wing of the GOP. It sounds like the beliefs of Mitt Romney, the CEO of Bain Capital and the Olympic Games.
Romney’s move not only solves his ideological identity crisis, but also his geographic one. He grew up in Michigan, went to school and ran the Olympics in Utah, managed Bain and governed in Massachusetts, and has a vacation home in New Hampshire. So what does he tell people when they ask where he’s from?
In an article early in the primary process in 2007, Jonathan Martin wrote about candidates like Romney who are national figures rather than politicians with local roots. Barack Obama (Hawaii, Indonesia, Ivy League, Chicago) John McCain (Virginia Beach, U.S. Navy, Arizona) and Hillary Clinton (Chicago, Arkansas, The White House, New York) are other examples. “These are the candidates from nowhere — or everywhere,” he wrote.
For Romney, Martin observed:
Romney arguably has a more solid claim on his Massachusetts ties. Despite his Michigan roots and undergraduate work at Stanford and Brigham Young University, Romney came to Cambridge for a joint MBA/JD in the 1970s and stayed. Still, there was no lack of buzz about his seeking office in Utah after he took over the Salt Lake City Olympic Games. In an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune in 2001, Romney acknowledged his desire to run but appeared conflicted about where to launch his political career. Somewhere between the “geographical poles” of Utah and Massachusetts, he said vaguely when asked in which state it would be. He’ll underscore the point next week when he makes his official announcement — at the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Mich.
In New Hampshire, Romney seems to have found an ideological and geographic home that suits him. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see him launching his 2012 campaign from the heart of the Granite State.