Mitt Romney, a senator from Utah who was a Republican presidential candidate in the 2012 elections against Barack Obama, announced this Wednesday that he will not run for re-election next year. Romney, 76, has taken advantage of the message of his retirement to call for “a new generation of leaders” in the United States, expressly pointing out the current president, Joe Biden, 80, and his predecessor, Donald Trump, 77, who are the favorites to be the candidates of the two major parties in the presidential elections of November 5, 2024.
Through a published video on his X account, formerly Twitter, Romney has noted the nearly 85 years old he would be at the end of another six-year term if he were to run for re-election. “Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders. They are the ones who have to make the decisions that will shape the world in which they will live. “Now we face critical challenges, the growing national debt, climate change and the ambitious authoritarians of Russia and China,” he said before citing the two favorites for the presidential nomination.
“Neither President Biden nor former President Trump are leading their parties to address these issues. On the deficit and debt, both men refuse to address subsidies, even knowing they account for two-thirds of federal spending. Donald Trump calls global warming a hoax and President Biden offers feel-good solutions that don’t change the world’s climate at all. Regarding China, President Biden invests little in the military and President Trump invests little in our alliances, political motivations that often impede the solutions these challenges demand,” he attacked, concluding: “The next generation of leaders must take America to the next stage of global leadership.”
Romney will be 78 years old when his current term ends. In the United States, there are frequent cases of congressmen and senators who remain in office forever even when physical and mental decline is evident. The senator, who has accumulated 25 years of public service, does not want to be one of them. The state of Utah is strongly Republican, so the party is almost guaranteed to prevail in next year’s elections. However, it was likely that competition would arise within the Republican ranks, given that Romney was one of the first to confront Trump.
He was the only Republican senator to vote to convict the then-president in his first impeachment, for pressuring the Government of Ukraine from the White House to discredit Joe Biden, who would be his electoral rival. In fact, it was the first time in history that a senator voted to convict a president of his party. Furthermore, he was also one of the seven Republican senators who found Trump guilty in the second impeachmentfor incitement to insurrection on January 6, 2021, the day of the assault on the Capitol.
Romney is a traditional conservative, Mormon like the majority of the population of his state, one of those who do not identify with Trump’s populist ways and manners. His seat is open and will be contested in the Republican primaries.
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Billionaire co-founder of Bain Capital, he achieved prestige as president and CEO of the Salt Lake (Utah) Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics. He managed to turn an organization plagued by scandals and bribery into a success that served as a global showcase for Salt Lake City.
Defeated by Obama
He managed to be elected governor of Massachusetts in 2002 from where he sought the Republican nomination for the 2008 presidential elections. He lost to John McCain, but he repeated in the following elections and won the nomination for 2012. He was defeated by Barack Obama, who was running for office. re-election, but he did not manage to get rid of his image as a billionaire regardless of citizens’ concerns.
He confronted Trump from the beginning, pointing out in 2016 that the then-candidate was “a fake, a fraud” and that he was not qualified to be president. He then accepted Trump’s endorsement during the primary for his Senate bid in 2018, but also promised in an op-ed that year that he would “continue to speak out when the president says or does something that is divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive for democratic institutions.”
In the Senate he has been one of the dialogue-oriented and moderate Republicans willing to reach agreements with the Democrats. “Contrary to many expectations, I really enjoy my work in the Senate. The last few years have been especially productive as I have been able to help lead and negotiate the bipartisan infrastructure bill, a broad China strategy process, religious freedom protections, a compromise bill on gun safety, of the electoral accounts law and the emergency financing of covid,” he said in his video this Wednesday.
His willingness to accept the pact shows that he was one of the surprising supporters of the law that protected marriage between homosexuals. The precautions that the law introduced and that allowed Mormon support consisted of an express recognition of religious freedom that prevents churches from being forced to celebrate these homosexual marriages and that protects them from losing exemptions and tax benefits for not doing so. Faith and money have been driving forces in Romney’s life.
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