Last Year of Term
On December 14, 2005, Romney announced that he would not seek re-election for a second term as governor, fueling speculation about a run for the White House in 2008 in the face of rising dissatisfaction with the Republican Party in the state.
In 2006, his last year as governor, Romney spent all or part of 212 days out of state, laying the foundation for his anticipated presidential campaign. The cost of the Governor's security detail for out-of-state trips increased from $63,874 in fiscal year 2005 to a cost of $103,365 in the first 11 months of fiscal year 2006. Romney's use of state troopers for security during his campaign trips was criticized by former Governor Michael Dukakis, who never traveled with state troopers during his 1988 presidential run, and Mary Boyle of Common Cause who complained that "he people of Massachusetts are essentially funding his presidential campaign, whether they like it or not." A Romney spokesman noted that Romney did not accept a salary while he was Governor and that he paid for his personal and political travel, while the superintendent of the State Police pointed out that the Governor never requested the security and that the security detail followed the Governor on all trips. In some cases his statements made while campaigning elsewhere in the country came back to affect him in Massachusetts, such as when he caused offense by using the term "tar baby" in Iowa in reference to the potential pitfalls of taking responsibility for the Big Dig.
Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey became the Republican nominee for the 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial race and subsequently lost overwhelmingly to Democratic nominee Deval Patrick.
At the end of Romney's term, several of his staffers purchased the hard drives from their state-issued computers, and emails were deleted from the server. The amounts expended purchasing the drives came to nearly $100,000. Under the Massachusetts Public Records Law, the emails did not have to be made public but did have to be preserved. Terry Dolan, who worked as director of administration under Romney and several other governors, has said that scrubbing the servers was a common practice but that selling the hard drives was not. When news of the actions became widely known in 2011, a Romney spokesperson said that the purchase of the computer equipment "complied with the law and longtime executive branch practice." State government officials and aides to Romney's three predecessors as governor said that they did not know of any prior sales of hard drives to staffers. When questioned on the subject in 2011, Romney responded that he had not wanted the information to be available to "opposition research teams".
Romney's term ended January 4, 2007. Romney filed papers to establish a formal exploratory presidential campaign committee on his next-to-last day in office as governor.
Read more about this topic: Governorship Of Mitt Romney
Famous quotes containing the words year and/or term:
“For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 23:10,11.
“In eloquence, the great triumphs of the art are when the orator is lifted above himself; when consciously he makes himself the mere tongue of the occasion and the hour, and says what cannot but be said. Hence the term abandonment, to describe the self-surrender of the orator.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)