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Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American businessman, Housing and Urban Development Secretary and former Governor of Massachusetts. Romney is also a former candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2008 United States presidential election.

Romney was CEO of Bain & Company, a management consulting firm, and co-founder of Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm. After his business career Romney was elected the 70th Governor of Massachusetts in 2002. Romney served one term and did not seek re-election in 2006; his term expired January 4, 2007. Shortly after the November 4th election, then President-Elect John McCain announced that Mitt Romney would serve as HUD Secretary.

Early life and education
Romney was born in Detroit, Michigan, and is the son of former Michigan Governor, American Motors chairman and 1968 presidential candidate George W. Romney, and 1970 Michigan U.S. Senatorial candidate Lenore Romney. He was named "Willard" after hotel magnate J. Willard Marriott, his father's best friend. Mitt, his middle name, was the nickname of his father's cousin Milton Romney, who played quarterback for the Chicago Bears from 1925 to 1929. Mitt Romney has three older siblings: Lynn Romney Keenan; Jane Romney Robinson; and G. Scott Romney.

Romney graduated from the Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 1965. After attending Stanford University for two quarters, Romney served in France for 30 months as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Subsequently, Romney attended Brigham Young University, where he graduated as valedictorian, earning his Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude in English in 1971. Romney received a ministerial deferment from the military draft while in France, and three years of deferments while a student. When he became eligible for military service in 1970, his high number in the annual draft lottery meant he would not be drafted.

In 1975, Romney graduated from a joint Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration program coordinated between Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. He graduated cum laude from the law school and was named a Baker Scholar for graduating in the top five percent of his business school class.

Business career
After graduation, Romney remained in Massachusetts and went to work for the Boston Consulting Group, where he had interned during the summer of 1974. From 1978 to 1984, Romney was a vice president of Bain & Company, Inc., another management consulting firm based in Boston. In 1984, Romney left Bain & Company to co-found a spin-off private equity investment firm, Bain Capital. During the 14 years he headed the company, Bain Capital's average annual internal rate of return on realized investments was 113 percent, making money primarily through leveraged buyouts. He invested in or bought many well-known companies such as Staples, Brookstone, Domino's, Sealy Corporation and Sports Authority.

In 1990, Romney was asked to return to Bain & Company, which was facing financial collapse. As CEO, Romney managed an effort to restructure the firm's employee stock-ownership plan, real-estate deals and bank loans, while increasing fiscal transparency. Within a year, he had led Bain & Company through a highly successful turnaround and returned the firm to profitability without layoffs or partner defections.

Romney left Bain Capital in 1998 to head the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games Organizing Committee. He and his wife have a net worth of between 250 and 500 million USD, not including Romney's blind trust in the name of their children, which is valued at about $100 million.

Turning around the 2002 Winter Olympics
Romney served as president and CEO of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games held in Salt Lake City. In 1999, before Romney was hired, the event was running $379 million short of its revenue benchmarks. Plans were being made to scale back the games in order to compensate for the fiscal crisis. The Games were also damaged by allegations of bribery involving top officials, including then Salt Lake Olympic Committee (SLOC) President and CEO Frank Joklik. Joklik and SLOC vice president Dave Johnson were forced to resign.

On February 11, 1999, Romney was hired as the new president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Romney revamped the organization's leadership and policies, reduced budgets, and boosted fund raising. He also worked to ensure the safety of the Games following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by coordinating a $300 million security budget. Despite the initial fiscal shortfall, the Games ended up clearing a profit of $100 million, not counting the $224.5 million in security costs contributed by outside sources.

Romney contributed $1 million to the Olympics, and donated the $825,000 salary he earned as President and CEO to charity. He wrote a book about his experience titled Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games.

Campaign for United States Senate, 1994
In 1994, Romney won the Massachusetts Republican Party's nomination for U.S. Senate after defeating businessman John Lakian in the primary. Some early polls showed Romney close to Senator Ted Kennedy. One Boston Herald/WCVB-TV poll taken after the September 20, 1994 primary showed Romney ahead 44 percent to 42 percent, within the poll's sampling margin of error. Kennedy, who typically faced only "token" GOP opposition for his senate seat was more vulnerable than usual in 1994, in part because of the unpopularity of the Democratic Congress as a whole and also because this was Kennedy's first election since the William Kennedy Smith trial in Florida, in which Ted Kennedy had taken some public relations hits regarding his character. President Bill Clinton traveled to Massachusetts to campaign for Kennedy.

After Romney touted his business credentials and his record at creating jobs within his company, Kennedy ran campaign ads showing an Indiana company bought out by Romney's firm, Bain Capital, and interviews with its union workers who had been fired and criticized Romney for the loss of their jobs, one saying, "I don’t think Romney is creating jobs because he took every one of them away." Romney claimed that 10,000 jobs were created because of his work at Bain, but private detectives hired by Kennedy found a factory bought by Bain Capital that had suffered a 350-worker strike after Bain had cut worker pay and benefits. Although both Kennedy and Romney supported the abortion rights established under Roe v. Wade, Kennedy accused Romney of being "multiple choice" on the issue, rather than "pro choice." Romney is now pro-life and opposes Roe. According to figures in The Almanac of American Politics 1996, which relies on official campaign finance reports, Romney spent over $7 million of his own money, with Kennedy spending more than $10 million from his campaign fund, mostly in the last weeks of the campaign (this was the second-most expensive race of the 1994 election cycle, after the Dianne Feinstein vs. Michael Huffington Senate race in California). In a September poll, Romney had a 43% to 42% lead. A month later, however, Kennedy led in the polls 50% to 32. Kennedy won the election with 58 percent of the vote to Romney's 41 percent, the second smallest margin in Kennedy's nine elections to the Senate through 2006.

Campaign for Governor, 2002
In 2002, Republican Lieutenant Governor Jane Swift was expected to campaign for the governor's office. Swift had served as acting governor after Republican Governor Paul Cellucci resigned upon being appointed U.S. Ambassador to Canada. Swift was viewed as an unpopular executive, and her administration was plagued by political missteps and personal scandals. Many Republicans viewed her as a liability and considered her unable to win a general election against a Democrat. Prominent GOP activists campaigned to persuade Romney to run for governor. One poll taken at this time showed that Republicans favored Romney over Swift by more than 50 percentage points. Swift decided not to seek her party's nomination.

Massachusetts Democratic Party officials claimed that Romney was ineligible to run for governor, citing residency issues. The Massachusetts Constitution requires seven consecutive years of residency prior to a run for office. Romney claimed residency in Utah from 1999 to 2002, during his time as president of the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee. In 1999 he listed himself as a part-time Massachusetts resident. The Massachusetts Democratic Party filed a complaint with the Massachusetts State Ballot Law Commission, which eventually ruled that Romney was eligible to run for office. The ruling was not challenged in court.

Supporters of Romney hailed his business record, especially his success with the 2002 Olympics, as that of one who would be able to bring a new era of efficiency into Massachusetts politics. Romney contributed $6.3 million to his own campaign during the election, a state record at the time. Romney was elected Governor in November 2002 with 50 percent of the vote over Democratic candidate Shannon O'Brien, who received 45 percent of the vote.