The Exterminator
2012-12-02 15:43:17 UTC
"Since he lost the election, Romney hasn’t called up some supporters
who contributed.
"For years, as he competed for the affections of GOP activists in
Iowa, Romney called Joni Scotter over and over again— on her
birthdays, on her 50th wedding anniversary. When Scotter’s husband
died this spring, Romney had white roses and lilies delivered to her.
"Scotter said she hasn’t heard from Romney since he lost Iowa on Nov.
6.
“ 'He hasn’t called,” she said. “I know they’re moving to
California . . . so he’s doing his very best to stand back.' ”
====================
"A detached Romney tends wounds in seclusion after failed White House
bid"
By Philip Rucker
December 1, 2012
SAN DIEGO — The man who planned to be president wakes up each morning
now without a plan.
Mitt Romney looks out the windows of his beach house here in La Jolla,
a moneyed and pristine enclave of San Diego, at noisy construction
workers fixing up his next-door neighbor’s home, sending out regular
updates on the renovation. He devours news from 2,600 miles away in
Washington about the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, shaking his head and
wondering what if.
Gone are the minute-by-minute schedules and the swarm of Secret
Service agents. There’s no aide to make his peanut-butter-and-honey
sandwiches. Romney hangs around the house, sometimes alone, pecking
away at his iPad and e-mailing his CEO buddies who have been swooping
in and out of La Jolla to visit. He wrote to one who’s having a liver
transplant soon: “I’ll change your bedpan, take you back and forth to
treatment.”
It’s not what Romney imagined he would be doing as the new year
approaches.
Four weeks after losing a presidential election he was convinced he
would win, Romney’s rapid retreat into seclusion has been marked by
repressed emotions, second-guessing and, perhaps for the first time in
the overachiever’s adult life, sustained boredom, according to
interviews with more than a dozen of Romney’s closest friends and
advisers.
“Is he disappointed? Of course he’s disappointed. He’s like 41,”
adviser Ron Kaufman said, referring to former president George H.W.
Bush. “Forty-one would hate to lose a game of horseshoes to the
gardener in the White House, and Mitt hates to lose. He’s a born
competitor.”
The defeated Republican nominee has practically disappeared from
public view since his loss, exhibiting the same detachment that made
it so difficult for him to connect with the body politic through six
years of running for president. He has made no public comments since
his concession speech in the early hours of Nov. 7 and avoided the
press last week during a private lunch with President Obama at the
White House. Through an aide, Romney declined an interview request for
this story.
After Romney told his wealthy donors that he blamed his loss on
“gifts” Obama gave to minority groups, his functionaries were
unrepentant and Republican luminaries effectively cast him out. Few of
the policy ideas he promoted are even being discussed in Washington.
“Nothing so unbecame his campaign as his manner of leaving it,” said
Robert Shrum, a senior strategist on Democratic presidential
campaigns. “I don’t think he’ll ever be a significant figure in public
life again.”
Yet friends insist Romney is not bitter. Bitterness, said one member
of the family, “is not in the Romney genetic code.”
One longtime counselor contrasted Romney with former vice president Al
Gore, whose weight gain and beard became a symbol of grievance over
his 2000 loss. “You won’t see heavyset, haggard Mitt,” he said.
Friends say a snapshot-gone-viral showing a disheveled Romney pumping
gas is just how he looks without a suit on his frame or gel in his
hair.
“He’s not a poor loser,” said John Miller, a meatpacking magnate who
co-chaired Romney’s finance committee and owns the beach house next
door. “He’s not crying on anybody’s shoulders. He’s not blaming
anybody. . . . He’s doing a lot of personal introspection about the
whole process — and I’m not even sure that’s healthy. There’s nothing
you can do about it now.”
By all accounts, the past month has been most difficult on Romney’s
wife, Ann, who friends said believed up until the end that ascending
to the White House was their destiny. They said she has been crying in
private and trying to get back to riding her horses.
Romney has been keeping in shape with bike rides around La Jolla, past
the bistros and boutiques that hug the rugged coastline. The son of
Detroit — who boasted of the Cadillacs he owned as a sign of support
for the U.S. auto industry during the campaign — was spotted driving a
new black Audi Q7, a luxury sport-utility vehicle manufactured in
Slovakia.
Over Thanksgiving, one of Romney’s five sons, Josh, his wife and their
four children packed into a single bedroom at the Spanish-style villa
on Dunemere Drive here. One friend said they ordered their turkey
dinner from Boston Market, the home-style restaurant chain, because
there were too many kids running around the house to bother with
cooking a feast.
That big renovation to transform the Romney beach house into an 11,000-
square-foot manse complete with a car elevator? It hasn’t begun yet.
Romney also is plotting his next career steps — a return to business,
perhaps, or something in the charitable realm or with the Mormon
Church, said friends who have discussed possibilities with him. He
kept a diary on the campaign trail and is considering writing a book.
“He’s a very vibrant, young 65-year-old. He looks 55 and acts 45,”
Kaufman said. “He’s got a lot of life left in him.”
Romney has ruled out running for another office, adviser Eric
Fehrnstrom said. Still, he doesn’t plan to recede completely from
public life. “He’ll be involved in some fashion because that’s the
commitment of his family to public service,” Fehrnstrom said.
After Romney’s father, George, lost his 1968 presidential race and
finished serving in President Richard M. Nixon’s Cabinet, he ran a
national nonprofit organization that advocated volunteerism. Friends
said Romney has mentioned the Clinton Global Initiative as a model he
might replicate.
Unlike the last two unsuccessful nominees, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.)
and John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Romney had no job waiting for him. His
public platform fell out from under him on election night.
“That transition, to happen so fast — it’s got to be hard. He doesn’t
talk about it or really show it, but I know it’s got to be painful,”
said L.E. Simmons, an oil investor and close friend who visited the
Romneys here the Friday after Thanksgiving.
In private, Romney has told friends he has little interest in helping
the Republican Party rebuild and re-brand itself.
Advisers also said he felt no need to explain himself after his
comments to donors about Obama using the power of incumbency to give
“gifts” to female, black and Latino voters leaked into the public
sphere. One adviser said Romney regretted the remarks “coming out the
way it did.” Fehrnstrom, meanwhile, said, “He was expressing the
frustration that any challenger would feel about an incumbent who used
the powers of his incumbency — as we would have if the shoe was on the
other foot.”
Romney relied heavily on like-minded millionaires such as Simmons to
raise more than $1 billion during the campaign, and he has been
calling many of them to thank them individually for their help. Last
week, he called Jet Blue Airways Chairman Joel Peterson, an old
friend.
“He just said, ‘I’m sorry I let you guys down,’ ” Peterson said. “He
sounded really calm, upbeat, warm. There was no anger or sense of
defensiveness or anything.”
So far, however, Romney hasn’t called up some supporters who
contributed in other ways.
For years, as he competed for the affections of GOP activists in Iowa,
Romney called Joni Scotter over and over again— on her birthdays, on
her 50th wedding anniversary. When Scotter’s husband died this spring,
Romney had white roses and lilies delivered to her.
Scotter said she hasn’t heard from Romney since he lost Iowa on Nov.
6.
“He hasn’t called,” she said. “I know they’re moving to
California . . . so he’s doing his very best to stand back.”
On Nov. 15, his last night in Boston before jetting west, Romney
rented out Il Casale, an Italian restaurant whose owner is a friend,
for about 30 top advisers and staffers.
According to one aide, as everyone went around the dinner table
sharing stories, Romney told the group, “Even though I don’t always
show it, I’m very emotionally attached to you, as if you were all part
of my family, and I’m going to miss you all.”
Friends said Romney plans to reside mostly in La Jolla during the
colder months and in Wolfeboro, N.H., where he has a lakefront
compound, during the warmer months. But he will maintain his official
residency in Massachusetts.
Romney will keep a small office in Boston — he is subletting the space
from Solamere Capital, the private-equity firm founded by his eldest
son, Tagg, and his campaign’s finance chairman, Spencer Zwick — where
his only remaining aide, assistant Kelli Harrison, will manage his
affairs.
Romney has personally helped his out-of-work staffers land new jobs,
holding office hours inside the campaign headquarters for anyone who
wanted his counsel. Campaign chairman Bob White created an internal
résumébank and marshaled the vast donor network to help.
Here in California, there is still some joy, friends say. A photo
surfaced before Thanksgiving showing a grinning Romney riding a roller
coaster during a visit with his grandkids to Disneyland.
Romney also wrote to Miller, who has been out of town, that his La
Jolla neighbor’s house was “a mess” from an ongoing renovation project
and that “nobody was working.”
“He was pulling my leg,” Miller said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-detached-romney-tends-wounds-in-seclusion-after-failed-white-house-bid/2012/12/01/4305079a-38a9-11e2-8a97-363b0f9a0ab3_story.html?hpid=z2
who contributed.
"For years, as he competed for the affections of GOP activists in
Iowa, Romney called Joni Scotter over and over again— on her
birthdays, on her 50th wedding anniversary. When Scotter’s husband
died this spring, Romney had white roses and lilies delivered to her.
"Scotter said she hasn’t heard from Romney since he lost Iowa on Nov.
6.
“ 'He hasn’t called,” she said. “I know they’re moving to
California . . . so he’s doing his very best to stand back.' ”
====================
"A detached Romney tends wounds in seclusion after failed White House
bid"
By Philip Rucker
December 1, 2012
SAN DIEGO — The man who planned to be president wakes up each morning
now without a plan.
Mitt Romney looks out the windows of his beach house here in La Jolla,
a moneyed and pristine enclave of San Diego, at noisy construction
workers fixing up his next-door neighbor’s home, sending out regular
updates on the renovation. He devours news from 2,600 miles away in
Washington about the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, shaking his head and
wondering what if.
Gone are the minute-by-minute schedules and the swarm of Secret
Service agents. There’s no aide to make his peanut-butter-and-honey
sandwiches. Romney hangs around the house, sometimes alone, pecking
away at his iPad and e-mailing his CEO buddies who have been swooping
in and out of La Jolla to visit. He wrote to one who’s having a liver
transplant soon: “I’ll change your bedpan, take you back and forth to
treatment.”
It’s not what Romney imagined he would be doing as the new year
approaches.
Four weeks after losing a presidential election he was convinced he
would win, Romney’s rapid retreat into seclusion has been marked by
repressed emotions, second-guessing and, perhaps for the first time in
the overachiever’s adult life, sustained boredom, according to
interviews with more than a dozen of Romney’s closest friends and
advisers.
“Is he disappointed? Of course he’s disappointed. He’s like 41,”
adviser Ron Kaufman said, referring to former president George H.W.
Bush. “Forty-one would hate to lose a game of horseshoes to the
gardener in the White House, and Mitt hates to lose. He’s a born
competitor.”
The defeated Republican nominee has practically disappeared from
public view since his loss, exhibiting the same detachment that made
it so difficult for him to connect with the body politic through six
years of running for president. He has made no public comments since
his concession speech in the early hours of Nov. 7 and avoided the
press last week during a private lunch with President Obama at the
White House. Through an aide, Romney declined an interview request for
this story.
After Romney told his wealthy donors that he blamed his loss on
“gifts” Obama gave to minority groups, his functionaries were
unrepentant and Republican luminaries effectively cast him out. Few of
the policy ideas he promoted are even being discussed in Washington.
“Nothing so unbecame his campaign as his manner of leaving it,” said
Robert Shrum, a senior strategist on Democratic presidential
campaigns. “I don’t think he’ll ever be a significant figure in public
life again.”
Yet friends insist Romney is not bitter. Bitterness, said one member
of the family, “is not in the Romney genetic code.”
One longtime counselor contrasted Romney with former vice president Al
Gore, whose weight gain and beard became a symbol of grievance over
his 2000 loss. “You won’t see heavyset, haggard Mitt,” he said.
Friends say a snapshot-gone-viral showing a disheveled Romney pumping
gas is just how he looks without a suit on his frame or gel in his
hair.
“He’s not a poor loser,” said John Miller, a meatpacking magnate who
co-chaired Romney’s finance committee and owns the beach house next
door. “He’s not crying on anybody’s shoulders. He’s not blaming
anybody. . . . He’s doing a lot of personal introspection about the
whole process — and I’m not even sure that’s healthy. There’s nothing
you can do about it now.”
By all accounts, the past month has been most difficult on Romney’s
wife, Ann, who friends said believed up until the end that ascending
to the White House was their destiny. They said she has been crying in
private and trying to get back to riding her horses.
Romney has been keeping in shape with bike rides around La Jolla, past
the bistros and boutiques that hug the rugged coastline. The son of
Detroit — who boasted of the Cadillacs he owned as a sign of support
for the U.S. auto industry during the campaign — was spotted driving a
new black Audi Q7, a luxury sport-utility vehicle manufactured in
Slovakia.
Over Thanksgiving, one of Romney’s five sons, Josh, his wife and their
four children packed into a single bedroom at the Spanish-style villa
on Dunemere Drive here. One friend said they ordered their turkey
dinner from Boston Market, the home-style restaurant chain, because
there were too many kids running around the house to bother with
cooking a feast.
That big renovation to transform the Romney beach house into an 11,000-
square-foot manse complete with a car elevator? It hasn’t begun yet.
Romney also is plotting his next career steps — a return to business,
perhaps, or something in the charitable realm or with the Mormon
Church, said friends who have discussed possibilities with him. He
kept a diary on the campaign trail and is considering writing a book.
“He’s a very vibrant, young 65-year-old. He looks 55 and acts 45,”
Kaufman said. “He’s got a lot of life left in him.”
Romney has ruled out running for another office, adviser Eric
Fehrnstrom said. Still, he doesn’t plan to recede completely from
public life. “He’ll be involved in some fashion because that’s the
commitment of his family to public service,” Fehrnstrom said.
After Romney’s father, George, lost his 1968 presidential race and
finished serving in President Richard M. Nixon’s Cabinet, he ran a
national nonprofit organization that advocated volunteerism. Friends
said Romney has mentioned the Clinton Global Initiative as a model he
might replicate.
Unlike the last two unsuccessful nominees, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.)
and John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Romney had no job waiting for him. His
public platform fell out from under him on election night.
“That transition, to happen so fast — it’s got to be hard. He doesn’t
talk about it or really show it, but I know it’s got to be painful,”
said L.E. Simmons, an oil investor and close friend who visited the
Romneys here the Friday after Thanksgiving.
In private, Romney has told friends he has little interest in helping
the Republican Party rebuild and re-brand itself.
Advisers also said he felt no need to explain himself after his
comments to donors about Obama using the power of incumbency to give
“gifts” to female, black and Latino voters leaked into the public
sphere. One adviser said Romney regretted the remarks “coming out the
way it did.” Fehrnstrom, meanwhile, said, “He was expressing the
frustration that any challenger would feel about an incumbent who used
the powers of his incumbency — as we would have if the shoe was on the
other foot.”
Romney relied heavily on like-minded millionaires such as Simmons to
raise more than $1 billion during the campaign, and he has been
calling many of them to thank them individually for their help. Last
week, he called Jet Blue Airways Chairman Joel Peterson, an old
friend.
“He just said, ‘I’m sorry I let you guys down,’ ” Peterson said. “He
sounded really calm, upbeat, warm. There was no anger or sense of
defensiveness or anything.”
So far, however, Romney hasn’t called up some supporters who
contributed in other ways.
For years, as he competed for the affections of GOP activists in Iowa,
Romney called Joni Scotter over and over again— on her birthdays, on
her 50th wedding anniversary. When Scotter’s husband died this spring,
Romney had white roses and lilies delivered to her.
Scotter said she hasn’t heard from Romney since he lost Iowa on Nov.
6.
“He hasn’t called,” she said. “I know they’re moving to
California . . . so he’s doing his very best to stand back.”
On Nov. 15, his last night in Boston before jetting west, Romney
rented out Il Casale, an Italian restaurant whose owner is a friend,
for about 30 top advisers and staffers.
According to one aide, as everyone went around the dinner table
sharing stories, Romney told the group, “Even though I don’t always
show it, I’m very emotionally attached to you, as if you were all part
of my family, and I’m going to miss you all.”
Friends said Romney plans to reside mostly in La Jolla during the
colder months and in Wolfeboro, N.H., where he has a lakefront
compound, during the warmer months. But he will maintain his official
residency in Massachusetts.
Romney will keep a small office in Boston — he is subletting the space
from Solamere Capital, the private-equity firm founded by his eldest
son, Tagg, and his campaign’s finance chairman, Spencer Zwick — where
his only remaining aide, assistant Kelli Harrison, will manage his
affairs.
Romney has personally helped his out-of-work staffers land new jobs,
holding office hours inside the campaign headquarters for anyone who
wanted his counsel. Campaign chairman Bob White created an internal
résumébank and marshaled the vast donor network to help.
Here in California, there is still some joy, friends say. A photo
surfaced before Thanksgiving showing a grinning Romney riding a roller
coaster during a visit with his grandkids to Disneyland.
Romney also wrote to Miller, who has been out of town, that his La
Jolla neighbor’s house was “a mess” from an ongoing renovation project
and that “nobody was working.”
“He was pulling my leg,” Miller said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-detached-romney-tends-wounds-in-seclusion-after-failed-white-house-bid/2012/12/01/4305079a-38a9-11e2-8a97-363b0f9a0ab3_story.html?hpid=z2