New Hampshire () is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. New Hampshire ranks 44th in land area, 46th in total area of the 50 states, and 42nd in population.

It became the first post-colonial sovereign nation in the Americas when it broke off from Great Britain in January 1776, and was one of the original thirteen states that founded the United States of America six months later. In June 1788, it became the ninth state to ratify the United States Constitution, bringing that document into effect. New Hampshire was the first U.S. state to have its own state constitution.

It is known internationally for the New Hampshire primary, the first primary in the quadrennial U.S. presidential election cycle. Concord is the state capital, while Manchester is the largest city in the state. It has no general sales tax, nor is personal income (other than interest and dividends) taxed at either the state or local level.

Its license plates carry the state motto: "Live Free or Die". The state nickname is "The Granite State", in reference to its geology and its tradition of self-sufficiency.

Among prominent individuals from New Hampshire are founding father Nicholas Gilman, Senator Daniel Webster, Revolutionary War hero John Stark, editor Horace Greeley, founder of the Christian Science religion Mary Baker Eddy, poet Robert Frost, astronaut Alan Shepard, and author Dan Brown. New Hampshire has produced one president: Franklin Pierce.

New Hampshire's major recreational attractions include skiing, snowmobiling and other winter sports, hiking and mountaineering, observing the fall foliage, summer cottages along many lakes and the seacoast, motor sports at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and Motorcycle Week, a popular motorcycle rally held in Weirs Beach near Laconia in June. The White Mountain National Forest links the Vermont and Maine portions of the Appalachian Trail, and boasts the Mount Washington Auto Road, where visitors may drive to the top of Mount Washington.

Geography

:''See List of counties in New Hampshire, mountains, lakes, and rivers'' New Hampshire is part of the New England region. It is bounded by Quebec, Canada, to the north and northwest; Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east; Massachusetts to the south; and Vermont to the west. New Hampshire's major regions are the Great North Woods, the White Mountains, the Lakes Region, the Seacoast, the Merrimack Valley, the Monadnock Region, and the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee area. New Hampshire has the shortest ocean coastline of any U.S. coastal state, with a length of . New Hampshire was home to the rock formation called the Old Man of the Mountain, a face-like profile in Franconia Notch, until the formation fell apart in May 2003.

The White Mountains range in New Hampshire spans the north-central portion of the state, with Mount Washington the tallest in the northeastern U.S. – site of the second-highest wind speed ever recorded – and other mountains like Mount Madison and Mount Adams surrounding it. With hurricane-force winds every third day on average, over 100 recorded deaths among visitors, and conspicuous krumholtz (dwarf, matted trees much like a carpet of bonsai trees), the climate on the upper reaches of Mount Washington has inspired the weather observatory on the peak to claim that the area has the "World's Worst Weather". In the flatter southwest corner of New Hampshire, the landmark Mount Monadnock has given its name to a class of earth-forms — a ''monadnock'' — signifying, in geomorphology, any isolated resistant peak rising from a less resistant eroded plain.

Major rivers include the Merrimack River, which bisects the lower half of the state north-south and ends up in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Its tributaries include the Contoocook River, Pemigewasset River, and Winnipesaukee River. The Connecticut River, which starts at New Hampshire's Connecticut Lakes and flows south to Connecticut, defines the western border with Vermont. The state border is not in the center of that river, as usually the case, but at the low-water mark on the Vermont side; meaning that the entire river along the Vermont border (save for areas where the water level has been raised by a dam) lies within New Hampshire. Only one town – Pittsburg – shares a land border with the state of Vermont. The "northwesternmost headwaters" of the Connecticut also define the Canadian border with New Hampshire.

The Piscataqua River and its several tributaries form the state's only significant ocean port where they flow into the Atlantic at Portsmouth. The Salmon Falls River and the Piscataqua define the southern portion of the border with Maine. The Piscataqua River boundary was the subject of a border dispute between New Hampshire and Maine in 2001, with New Hampshire claiming dominion over several islands (primarily Seavey's Island) that include the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the case in 2002, leaving ownership of the island with Maine.

The largest of New Hampshire's lakes is Lake Winnipesaukee, which covers in the east-central part of New Hampshire. Lake Umbagog along the Maine border, approximately , is a distant second.

Hampton Beach is a popular local summer destination. About offshore are the Isles of Shoals, nine small islands (four of which are in New Hampshire) known as the site of a 19th century art colony founded by poet Celia Thaxter, as well as the alleged location of one of the buried treasures of the pirate Blackbeard.

It is the state with the second highest percentage of timberland area in the country, after Maine.

New Hampshire has the shortest ocean coastline of any state in the United States, approximately 18 miles long.

New Hampshire is in the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome. Much of the state, in particular the White Mountains, is covered by the conifers and northern hardwoods of the New England-Acadian forests. The southeast corner of the state and parts of the Connecticut River along the Vermont border are covered by the mixed oaks of the Northeastern coastal forests.

The northern third of the state is locally referred to as the "north country" or "north of the notches," in reference to White Mountain passes that channel traffic. It contains less than 5% of the state's population, suffers relatively high poverty, and is losing population as the logging and paper industries decline. However, the tourist industry, in particular visitors who go to northern New Hampshire to ski, snowboard, hike and mountain bike has helped offset economic losses from mill closures.

Climate

New Hampshire experiences a humid continental climate (Koppen climate classification ''Dfa'' in southern areas and ''Dfb'' in the north), with warm, humid summers, cold, wet winters, and uniform precipitation all year. The climate of the southeastern portion is moderated by the Atlantic Ocean and averages relatively milder and wetter weather, while the northern and interior portions experience cooler temperatures and lower humidity. Winters are cold and snowy throughout the state, and especially severe in the northern and mountainous areas. Average annual snowfall ranges from to over across the state.

Average daytime highs are in the mid 70s°F to low 80s°F (around 24–28 °C) throughout the state in July, with overnight lows in the mid 50s°F to low 60s°F (13–15 °C). January temperatures range from an average high of on the coast to overnight lows below in the far north and at high elevations. Average annual precipitation statewide is roughly with some variation occurring in the White Mountains due to differences in elevation and annual snowfall. New Hampshire's highest recorded temperature was in Nashua on July 4, 1911, while the lowest recorded temperature was atop Mount Washington on January 29, 1934. Mount Washington also saw an unofficial reading on January 22, 1885 which, if made official, would tie the all-time record low for New England (also at Big Black River, Maine on January 16, 2009 and Bloomfield, Vermont on December 30, 1933).

Extreme snow is often associated with a nor'easter, such as the Blizzard of '78 and the Blizzard of 1993, when several feet accumulated across portions of the state over 24 to 48 hours. Lighter snowfall of several inches occur frequently throughout winter, often associated with an Alberta Clipper.

New Hampshire, on occasion, is affected by hurricanes and tropical storms although by the time they reach the state they are often extratropical, with most storms striking the southern New England coastline and moving inland or passing by offshore in the Gulf of Maine. Most of New Hampshire averages fewer than 20 days of thunderstorms per year and an average of 2 tornadoes occur annually statewide.

The National Arbor Day Foundation plant hardiness zone map depicts zones 3, 4, 5, and 6 occurring throughout the state and indicates the transition from a relatively cooler to warmer climate as one travels southward across New Hampshire. The 1990 USDA plant hardiness zones for New Hampshire range from zone 3b in the north to zone 5b in the south.

Metropolitan areas

{| style="width:100%;" border="0" |- | colspan=2 |Metropolitan areas in the New England region are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as New England City and Town Areas (NECTAs). The following is a list of NECTAs in New Hampshire: | style="vertical-align:top; width:200px;" rowspan="3"| |- | style="vertical-align:top; width:33%;"|

Berlin

Claremont

Concord

Franklin

Keene

Laconia

| valign=top |

Lebanon – Hartford, VT

Manchester

Nashua Metropolitan Division (part of Boston metropolitan area)

Portsmouth

Rochester – Dover

|- | colspan=2 |''From The New Hampshire Economic and Labor Market Information Bureau'' |}

History

Various Algonquian (Pennacook) tribes inhabited the area prior to European settlement. English and French explorers visited New Hampshire in 1600–1605, and English fishermen settled at Odiorne's Point in present-day Rye in 1623. The first permanent settlement was at Hilton's Point (present-day Dover). By 1631, the Upper Plantation comprised modern-day Dover, Durham and Stratham; in 1679, it became the "Royal Province."

New Hampshire was one of the thirteen colonies that rebelled against British rule during the American Revolution. By the time of the American Revolution, New Hampshire was a divided province. The economic and social life of the Seacoast revolved around sawmills, shipyards, merchant's warehouses, and established village and town centers. Wealthy merchants built substantial homes, furnished them with the finest luxuries, and invested their capital in trade and land speculation. At the other end of the social scale, there developed a permanent class of day laborers, mariners, indentured servants and even slaves.

The only battle fought in New Hampshire was the raid on Fort William and Mary, December 14, 1774, in Portsmouth Harbor, which netted the rebellion sizable quantities of gunpowder, small arms and cannon. (General Sullivan, leader of the raid, described it as, "remainder of the powder, the small arms, bayonets, and cartouche-boxes, together with the cannon and ordnance stores") over the course of two nights. This raid was preceded by a warning to local patriots the previous day, by Paul Revere on December 13, 1774, that the fort was to be reinforced by troops sailing from Boston. According to unverified accounts, the gunpowder was later used at the Battle of Bunker Hill, transported there by Major Demerit, who was one of several New Hampshire patriots who stored the powder in their homes until it was transported elsewhere for use in revolutionary activities.

New Hampshire was a Jacksonian stronghold; the state sent Franklin Pierce to the White House in the election of 1852. Industrialization took the form of numerous textile mills, which in turn attracted large flows of immigrants from Quebec (the "French Canadians") and Ireland. The northern parts of the state produced lumber and the mountains provided tourist attractions. After 1960, the textile industry collapsed, but the economy rebounded as a center of high technology and a service provider.

Since 1952, New Hampshire gained national and international attention for its presidential primary held early in every presidential election year. It immediately became the most important testing grounds for candidates for the Republican and Democratic nominations. The media gave New Hampshire (and Iowa) about half of all the attention paid to all states in the primary process, magnifying the state's decision powers (and spurring repeated efforts by out-of-state politicians to change the rules.)

Demographics

As of the 2010 census, New Hampshire has a population of 1,316,470 residents, which is an increase of 80,684, or 6.5%, from the prior census in 2000.

The center of population of New Hampshire is located in Merrimack County, in the town of Pembroke. The center of population has moved south since 1950, a reflection of the fact that the fastest growth in the state has been along its southern border, which is within commuting range of Boston and other Massachusetts cities.

As of 2004, the population includes 64,000 residents born outside the United States (4.9%).

In 2006, New Hampshire had the lowest birth rate in the nation.

Race and ancestry

According to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau, the racial makeup of New Hampshire was as follows:

93.9% White (92.3% Non-Hispanic White)

2.2% Asian

1.1% Black or African American

0.2% Native American/American Indian

1.6% Two or more races

The largest ancestry groups in New Hampshire are:

22.7% Irish 18.9% English 10.3% Italian 9.4% German 4.8% Scottish 4.5% Polish 2.7% Scots-Irish 2.2% Swedish 1.6% Greek 1.5% Portuguese

The large Irish American and French-Canadian populations are descended largely from mill workers, and many still live in the former mill towns, like Manchester. New Hampshire has the highest percentage (25.5% of the population) of residents of French/French-Canadian/Acadian ancestry of any U.S. state.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 3.41% of the population aged 5 and older speak French at home, while 1.60% speak Spanish.

In Coös County, 16% of the population speaks French at home

Religion

Percentage of New Hampshire residents by religion (from ''USA Today''):

Christian – 72%

* Catholic – 35%

* Protestant – 32%

** Baptist – 6%

** Congregationalist/United Church of Christ – 6%

** Episcopalian/Anglican – 4%

** Methodist – 3%

** Lutheran – 1%

** Pentecostal/Charismatic – 1%

** Presbyterian – 1%

** Protestant, no supplied denomination – 10%

* Unspecified Christian – 5%

Jewish – 1%

Other – 2%

No religion – 17%

Less than 0.5% each –

::Mormon/Latter Day Saints, Churches of Christ, non-denominational, Jehovah's Witnesses, Assemblies of God, Muslim, Buddhist, Evangelical, Church of God, and Seventh-Day Adventist

A survey suggests that people in New Hampshire and Vermont are less likely than other Americans to attend weekly services and only 54% say that they are "absolutely certain there is a God" compared to 71% in the rest of the nation. New Hampshire and Vermont are also at the lowest levels among states in religious commitment. About 23% percent of the respondents attend religious service at least once a week (39% nationally). Thirty-six percent said religion is very important to them (56% nationally). According to the ARDA the largest single Protestant denominations are the United Church of Christ with 34,299; and the United Methodist Church with 18,927 members. The Catholic Church had 431,259 members.

Economy

The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that New Hampshire's total state product in 2008 was $60 billion, ranking 40th in the United States. Median household income in 2008 was $49,467, seventh highest in the country. Its agricultural outputs are dairy products, nursery stock, cattle, apples and eggs. Its industrial outputs are machinery, electric equipment, rubber and plastic products and tourism.

New Hampshire experienced a significant shift in its economic base during the last century. Historically, the base was composed of the traditional New England manufactures of textiles, shoe-making, and small machining shops drawing upon low-wage labor from nearby small farms and from parts of Quebec. Today, these sectors contribute only 2% for textiles, 2% for leather goods, and 9% for machining of the state's total manufacturing dollar value (Source: U.S. Economic Census for 1997, Manufacturing, New Hampshire). They experienced a sharp decline due to obsolete plants and the lure of cheaper wages in the South.

The state's budget in FY2008 was $5.11 billion, including $1.48 billion in federal funds. The issue of taxation is controversial in New Hampshire, which has a property tax (subject to municipal control) but no broad sales tax or income tax. The state does have narrower taxes on meals, lodging, vehicles, business and investment income, and tolls on state roads.

According to the Energy Information Administration, New Hampshire's energy consumption and per capita energy consumption are among the lowest in the country. The Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant, located near Portsmouth, is the largest nuclear reactor in New England and provides about 30 percent of New Hampshire’s electricity. Two natural gas-fired plants and some fossil-fuel powered plants, including the coal-fired Merrimack Station plant in Bow, provide most of the rest.

New Hampshire’s residential electricity use is low compared with the national average, in part because demand for air conditioning is low during the generally mild summer months and because few households use electricity as their primary energy source for home heating. Over half of New Hampshire households use fuel oil for winter heating. New Hampshire has potential for renewable energies like wind power, hydroelectricity, and wood fuel.

The state has no general sales tax and no personal state income tax (the state does tax, at a 5 percent rate, income from dividends and interest) and the legislature has exercised fiscal restraint. Efforts to diversify the state's general economy have been ongoing.

Additionally, New Hampshire's lack of a broad-based tax system (aside from the controversial state-wide property tax) has resulted in the state's local communities having some of the nation's highest property taxes. Overall, New Hampshire remains ranked 49th among states in combined average state and local tax burden.

As of February 2010, the state's unemployment rate was 7.1%. By October 2010, the unemployment rate dropped to 5.4.%

Law and government

The Governor of New Hampshire is John Lynch (Democrat). New Hampshire's two U.S. senators are Jeanne Shaheen (Democrat) and Kelly Ayotte (Republican). New Hampshire's two U.S. representatives are Frank Guinta (Republican) and Charlie Bass (Republican).

New Hampshire is an alcoholic beverage control state, and through the State Liquor Commission it takes in $100 million from the sale and distribution of liquor.

The state has offered civil unions since 1 January 2008, and, on 1 January 2010, same-sex marriage became legal.

Governing documents

The New Hampshire State Constitution of 1783 is the supreme law of the state, followed by the New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated and the New Hampshire Code of Administrative Rules. These are roughly analogous to the federal United States Constitution, United States Code and Code of Federal Regulations respectively.

Branches of government

New Hampshire has a bifurcated executive branch, consisting of the governor and a five-member executive council which votes on state contracts worth more than $5,000 and "advises and consents" to the governor's nominations to major state positions such as department heads and all judgeships and pardon requests. New Hampshire does not have a lieutenant governor; the Senate president serves as "acting governor" whenever the governor is unable to perform the duties.

The legislature is called the General Court. It consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate. There are 400 representatives, making it one of the largest elected bodies in the English-speaking world, and 24 senators. Most are effectively volunteers, nearly half of which are retirees. (For details, see the article on Government of New Hampshire.)

The state's sole appellate court is the New Hampshire Supreme Court. The Superior Court is the court of general jurisdiction and the only court which provides for jury trials in civil or criminal cases. The other state courts are the Probate Court, District Court, and the Family Division.

Local government

New Hampshire is a "Dillon Rule" state, meaning that the state retains all powers not specifically granted to municipalities. Even so, the legislature strongly favors local control, particularly with regard to land use regulations. New Hampshire municipalities are classified as towns or cities, which differ primarily by the form of government. Most towns generally operate on the town meeting form of government, where the registered voters in the town act as the town legislature, and a board of selectmen acts as the executive of the town. Larger towns and the state's thirteen cities operate either on a council-manager or council-mayor form of government. There is no difference, from the point of view of the state government, between towns and cities besides the form of government. All state-level statutes treat all municipalities identically.

New Hampshire has a small number of unincorporated areas that are titled as gores, grants, locations, purchases, or townships. These locations have limited to no self-government, and services are generally provided for them by neighboring towns or the county or state where needed. As of the 2000 census, there were 25 of these left in New Hampshire, accounting for a total population of 175 people (as of 2000); several were entirely depopulated. All but two of these unincorporated areas are located in Coos County.

Politics

The Republican Party and the Democratic Party are the only official parties. A plurality of voters are registered as undeclared, and can choose either ballot in the primary, and then regain their undeclared status after voting. The Libertarian Party had official party status from 1990 to 1994.

New Hampshire primary

New Hampshire is internationally famous for the New Hampshire primary, the first primary in the quadrennial American presidential election cycle. State law requires that the Secretary of State schedule this election at least one week before any "similar event." However, the Iowa caucus has preceded the New Hampshire primary. This primary, as the nation's first contest that uses the same procedure as the general election, draws more attention than those in other states, and has often been decisive in shaping the national contest.

State law permits a town with fewer than 100 residents to open its polls at midnight, and close when all registered citizens have cast their ballots. As such, the communities of Dixville Notch in Coos County and Hart's Location in Carroll County, among others, have chosen to implement these provisions. Dixville Notch and Hart's Location are traditionally the first places in both New Hampshire and the U.S. to vote in presidential primaries and elections.

Nominations for all other partisan offices are decided in a separate primary election. In Presidential election cycles, this is the second primary election held in New Hampshire.

Saint Anselm College in Goffstown has become a popular campaign spot for politicians as well as several national presidential debates because of its proximity to Manchester-Boston Regional Airport.

Election results

In the past, New Hampshire has often voted Republican. Between 1856 and 1988, New Hampshire cast its electoral votes for the Democratic presidential ticket six times: Woodrow Wilson (twice), Franklin D. Roosevelt (three times), and Lyndon B. Johnson (once).

Beginning in 1992, New Hampshire became a swing state in both national and local elections. The state supported Democrats Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008. It was the only state to support Republican George W. Bush in the 2000 election, but not in the 2004 election, in which Democrat John Kerry, a senator from neighboring Massachusetts, won the state.

The Democrats dominated elections in New Hampshire as they did nationally in 2006 and 2008. In 2006, Democrats won both Congressional seats (electing Carol Shea-Porter in the 1st district and Paul Hodes in the 2nd district), re-elected Governor John Lynch, and gained a majority on the Executive Council and in both houses of the legislature for the first time since 1911. Democrats had not held both the legislature and the governorship since 1874. Neither U.S. Senate seat was up for a vote in 2006. In 2008, Democrats retained their majorities, governorship, and Congressional seats; and former governor Jeanne Shaheen defeated incumbent Republican John E. Sununu for the U.S. Senate in a rematch of the 2002 contest.

The 2008 elections resulted in women holding a majority, 13 of the 24 seats, in the New Hampshire Senate, a first for any legislative body in the United States.

In the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans made historic gains in New Hampshire, capturing veto-proof majorities in the state legislature, taking all 5 seats in the Executive Council, electing a new U.S. Senator, Kelly Ayotte, winning both U.S. House seats, and reducing the margin of victory of incumbent Governor John Lynch compared to his 2006 and 2008 landslide wins.

Free State Project

The Free State Project is a proposal to have 20,000 individuals move to New Hampshire, with the intent of reducing the size and scope of government at the local, state, and federal levels. The Free State Project at one time held the annual New Hampshire Liberty Forum and the annual Porcupine Freedom Festival, also known as PorcFest.

Transportation

Highways

New Hampshire has a well-maintained, well-signed network of Interstate highways, U.S. highways, and state highways. State highway markers still depict the Old Man of the Mountain despite that rock formation's demise in 2003. Several route numbers align with the same route numbers in neighboring states. State highway numbering does not indicate the highway's direction. Major routes include:

20px Interstate 89 runs northwest from near Concord to Lebanon on the Vermont border.

20px Interstate 93 is the main Interstate highway in New Hampshire and runs north from Salem (on the Massachusetts border) to Littleton (on the Vermont border). I-93 connects the more densely populated southern part of the state to the Lakes Region and the White Mountains further to the north.

20px U.S. Route 1 runs north-south briefly along New Hampshire's seacoast to the east of and paralleling I-95.

20px U.S. Route 2 runs east-west through Coos County from Maine, intersecting Route 16, skirting the White Mountain National Forest passing through Jefferson and into Vermont.

20px U.S. Route 3 is the longest numbered route in the state, and the only one to run completely through the state from the Massachusetts border to the Canadian border. It generally parallels Interstate 93. South of Manchester, it takes a more westerly route through Nashua. North of Franconia Notch, U.S. 3 takes a more easterly route, before terminating at the Canadian border.

20px U.S. Route 4 terminates at the Portsmouth Traffic Circle and runs east-west across the southern part of the state connecting Durham, Concord, Boscawen and Lebanon.

20px New Hampshire Route 16 is a major north-south highway in the eastern part of the state that generally parallels the border with Maine, eventually entering Maine as Maine Route 16. The southernmost portion of NH 16 is a four-lane freeway, co-signed with U.S. Route 4.

20px New Hampshire Route 101 is a major east-west highway in the southern part of the state that connects Keene with Manchester and the Seacoast region. East of Manchester, NH 101 is a four-lane, limited access freeway that runs to Hampton Beach and I-95.

Air

New Hampshire has 25 public-use airports, four of which have scheduled commercial passenger service. The busiest airport by number of passengers handled is Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in Manchester and Londonderry, which serves the Greater Boston metropolitan area.

Public transportation

Long-distance intercity passenger rail service is provided by Amtrak's ''Vermonter'' and ''Downeaster'' lines.

As of 2009, Boston-centered MBTA Commuter Rail services reach only as far as northern Massachusetts. The New Hampshire Rail Transit Authority is working to extend "Capital Corridor" service from Lowell, Massachusetts to Nashua, Concord, and Manchester, including Manchester-Boston Regional Airport; and "Coastal Corridor" service from Haverhill, Massachusetts, to Plaistow, New Hampshire. Legislation in 2007 created the New Hampshire Rail Transit Authority (NHRTA) with the goal of overseeing the development of commuter rail in the state of New Hampshire. In 2011, Governor John Lynch vetoed HB 218, a bill passed by Republican lawmakers, which would have drastically curtailed the powers and responsibilities of NHRTA.

Eleven public transit authorities operate local and regional bus services around the state, and eight private carriers operate express bus services which link with the national intercity bus network. The New Hampshire Department of Transportation operates a statewide ride-sharing match service, in addition to independent ride matching and guaranteed ride home programs.

Tourist railroads include the Conway Scenic Railroad, Hobo-Winnipesaukee Railroad, and the Mount Washington Cog Railway.

Freight railways

Freight railways in New Hampshire include Pan Am Railways, the New England Central Railroad, the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, and New Hampshire Northcoast Corporation.

Education

High schools

The first high schools in the state were the Boys' High School and the Girls' High School of Portsmouth, established either in 1827 or 1830 depending on the source.

New Hampshire has more than 80 public high schools, many of which serve more than one town. The largest is Pinkerton Academy in Derry, which is owned by a private non-profit organization and serves as the public high school of a number of neighboring towns. There are at least 30 private high schools in the state.

New Hampshire High Schools and The Towns They Serve

New Hampshire public schools with a Web presence

In 2008 the state tied with Massachusetts as having the highest scores on the SAT and ACT standardized tests given to high school students.

Colleges and universities

Antioch University New England

Chester College of New England

The College of Saint Mary Magdalen

Colby-Sawyer College

Daniel Webster College

Dartmouth College

Franklin Pierce University

Hesser College

Lebanon College

New England College

Community College System of New Hampshire:

* White Mountains Community College

* River Valley Community College

* Lakes Region Community College

* New Hampshire Technical Institute

* Nashua Community College

* Great Bay Community College

* Manchester Community College

New Hampshire Institute of Art

Rivier College

Saint Anselm College

Southern New Hampshire University

Thomas More College of Liberal Arts

University System of New Hampshire:

* University of New Hampshire

* University of New Hampshire School of Law

* University of New Hampshire at Manchester

* Granite State College

* Keene State College

* Plymouth State University

Media

Daily newspapers

Other publications

''Area News Group''

''Carriage Towne News'' (covering Kingston and surrounding towns)

''The Exeter News-Letter''

''The Hampton Union''

''Hippo Press'' (covering Manchester, Nashua and Concord)

''Manchester Express''

''The Cabinet Press''

* Milford Cabinet

* Bedford Journal

* Hollis/Brookline Journal

* Merrimack Journal

''The New Hampshire'' (University of New Hampshire student newspaper)

''Business New Hampshire Magazine''

''New Hampshire Business Review''

''New Hampshire Free Press''

''The New Hampshire Gazette'' (Portsmouth alternative biweekly)

Radio stations

:''See List of radio stations in New Hampshire''.

Television stations

ABC affiliate: WMUR, Channel 9, Manchester

PBS member station: WENH, Channel 11, Durham (New Hampshire Public Television); repeater stations in Keene and Littleton

MNTV affiliate: WBIN, Channel 50, Derry

Sports

The following professional sports teams are located in New Hampshire:

!Club	!Sport / League
New Hampshire Fisher Cats
Manchester Monarchs	American Hockey League
New Hampshire Phantoms	USL Premier Development League (soccer)
Manchester Freedom	Independent Women's Football League

The New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon is an oval track which has been visited by national motorsport championships such as the NASCAR Cup Series, the NASCAR Nationwide Series, the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, the Champ Car and the IndyCar Series.

Annually since 2002, high school statewide all stars compete against Vermont in ten sports during "Twin State" playoffs. New Hampshire also has two amateur roller derby leagues with the ManchVegas Roller Girls (USARS) and New Hampshire Roller Derby (WFTDA).

Culture

In the spring, New Hampshire's many sap houses hold sugaring-off open houses. In summer, New Hampshire is home to many county fairs, the largest being the Hopkinton State Fair, in Contoocook. New Hampshire's lake region is home to many summer camps, especially around Lake Winnipesaukee, and is a popular tourist destination. The Peterborough Players have performed every summer in Peterborough, New Hampshire since 1933. In the fall New Hampshire is host to the New Hampshire Highland Games. New Hampshire has also registered an official tartan with the proper authorities in Scotland, used to make kilts worn by the Lincoln Police Department while its officers serve during the games. The fall foliage peaks in mid October. In the winter, New Hampshire's ski areas and snowmobile trails attract visitors from a wide area. After the lakes freeze over they become dotted with ice fishing ice houses, known locally as bobhouses.

In fiction

;Literature

Many novels, plays and screenplays have taken place in New Hampshire. The state has played other roles in fiction, including:

Peterborough is the inspiration for the town of Grover's Corners, in Thornton Wilder's play ''Our Town.''

The novel ''Peyton Place'' was inspired by Gilmanton, New Hampshire.

John Knowles based the Devon School in ''A Separate Peace'' on the Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter.

The prep school in John Irving's ''The World According to Garp'' was also based on the Phillips Exeter Academy. Irving's stepfather was a faculty member at the school, and Irving is an alumnus; New Hampshire settings are common in his works.

''The Hotel New Hampshire'' by John Irving is a 1981 coming of age novel.

;Comics

Bob Montana, the original artist for ''Archie'' Comics, attended Manchester Central High School for a year, and may have based Riverdale High School in part on Central.

Al Capp, creator of the comic strip ''Li'l Abner'', used to joke that Dogpatch, the setting for the strip, was based on Seabrook, where he would vacation with his wife.

;Film and television

Dartmouth College is said to be the inspiration for the film ''Animal House'', as one of the scriptwriters, Chris Miller, studied there.

The character of Josiah Bartlet, President of the United States on the television series ''The West Wing'', was depicted as a two-term New Hampshire governor.

The film ''On Golden Pond'' was filmed and takes place in New Hampshire.

The film ''What About Bob?'' takes place primarily in New Hampshire but was actually filmed in Virginia..

Notable residents or natives

''See article List of people from New Hampshire.''

New Hampshire firsts

On January 5, 1776 at Exeter, the Provincial Congress of New Hampshire ratified the first independent constitution in the Americas, free of British rule.

On June 12, 1800, Fernald's Island in the Piscataqua River became the first government-sanctioned US Navy shipyard.

Started in 1822, Dublin's Juvenile Library was the first free public library.

In 1828, the first women's strike in the nation took place at Dover's Cocheco Mills.

Founded in 1833, the Peterborough Town Library was the first public library, supported with public funds, in the world.

Finished on June 27, 1874, the first trans-Atlantic telecommunications cable between Europe and America stretched from Balinskelligs Bay, Ireland, to Rye Beach.

On February 6, 1901, a group of nine conservationists founded the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, the first forest conservation advocacy group in the US.

In 1908, Monsignor Pierre Hevey organized the nation's first credit union, in Manchester, to help mill workers save and borrow money.

In 1933 the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen held the first crafts fair in the nation.

In July 1944, the Bretton Woods Agreement, the first fully-negotiated system intended to govern monetary relations among independent nation-states, was signed at the Mount Washington Hotel.

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard of Derry rode a Mercury spacecraft and became the first American in space.

In 1963, New Hampshire's legislature approved the nation's first modern state lottery, which began play in 1964.

In 1966, Ralph Baer of Sanders Associates, Inc., Nashua, recruited engineers to develop the first home video game.

Christa McAuliffe of Concord became the first private citizen selected to venture into space. She perished with her six space shuttle Challenger crewmates on January 28, 1986.

On May 17, 1996 New Hampshire became the first state in the country to install a green LED traffic light. New Hampshire was selected because it was the first state to install the red and yellow variety statewide. On May 31, 2007 New Hampshire became "...the first state to recognize same-sex unions without a court order or the threat of one."

See also

Atlantic Ocean

Hampshire, England which New Hampshire is named after

List of National Register of Historic Places in New Hampshire

List of people from New Hampshire

List of places in New Hampshire

New England

U.S. state

References

Further reading

''Land Use in Cornish, N.H.'', a 2006 documentary presentation by James M. Patterson of the Valley News, depicts various aspects of the societal and cultural environment of Northern New Hampshire

External links

;State Government

Official state website

New Hampshire Almanac

Visitnh.gov, New Hampshire Office of Travel and Tourism Development

;U.S. Government

New Hampshire State Guide from the Library of Congress

Energy Facts for New Hampshire

New Hampshire State Facts, USDA Economic Research Service

USGS real-time, geographic, and other scientific resources of New Hampshire

;Other

Internet Movie Database listing of films shot in the state

New Hampshire Historical Society

==Related information==

Category:States of the United States Category:New England Category:Northeastern United States Category:Former British colonies Category:States and territories established in 1788

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The New Hampshire primary is the first in a series of nationwide political party primary elections held in the United States every four years, as part of the process of choosing the Democratic and Republican nominees for the presidential elections to be held the subsequent November.

Although only a few delegates are chosen in the New Hampshire primary, its real importance comes from the massive media coverage it receives (along with Iowa, which holds the first caucuses); in recent years the two states received about as much media attention as all other state primaries combined. An example of this massive media coverage has been seen on the campus of Saint Anselm College, as the campus has held multiple national debates and have attracted media outlets like Fox News, CNN, NBC, and ABC. The publicity and momentum can be enormous from a decisive win by a frontrunner, or better-than-expected result in the New Hampshire primary. The upset or weak showing by a front-runner changes the calculus of national politics in a matter of hours, as happened in 1952 (D), 1968 (D), 1980 (R), and 2008 (D).

Since 1952, the primary has been a major testing ground for candidates for both the Republican and Democratic nominations. Candidates who do poorly frequently drop out, while lesser-known, underfunded candidates who do well in New Hampshire suddenly become serious contenders, garnering large amounts of media attention and campaign funding.

It is not a closed primary, in which votes can be cast in a party primary only by people registered with that party. Undeclared voters — those not registered with any party — can vote in either party primary. However, it does not meet a common definition of an open primary, because people registered as Republican or Democrat on voting day cannot cast ballots in the primary of the other party.

Timing

The scheduled date of the New Hampshire primary always officially starts out as the second Tuesday in March, which is the date when town meetings and non-partisan municipal elections are traditionally held. New Hampshire law stipulates (in section RSA 653:9 of the statute book) that the Secretary of State can change the date to ensure that the New Hampshire primary will take place at least seven days before any "similar election" in any other state. The Iowa caucuses are not considered to be a similar election. In recent election cycles, the New Hampshire primary has taken place the week after the Iowa caucus.

New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary status was threatened in 2007, when both the Republican and Democratic National Committees moved to give more populous states a bigger influence in the presidential race.

Several states also sought to move up the dates of their 2008 primaries in order to have more influence and dilute the power of the New Hampshire primary. Originally held in March, the date of the New Hampshire primary has been moved up repeatedly to maintain its status as first. The 2008 primary was held on January 8.

Significance

There is consensus among scholars and pundits that the New Hampshire primary, because of the timing and the vast media attention, can have a great impact and may even make or break or revive a candidate. Controlling for other factors statistically, a win in New Hampshire increases a candidate's share of the final primary count in all states by 27 percentage points.

Since 1977, New Hampshire has fought hard to keep its timing as the first primary (while Iowa has the first caucus a few days sooner.) State law requires that its primary must be the first in the nation (it had been the first by tradition since 1920). As a result, the state has moved its primary earlier in the year to remain the first. The primary was held on the following dates: 1952-1968, second Tuesday in March; 1972, first Tuesday in March; 1976-1984, fourth Tuesday in February; 1988-1996, third Tuesday in February; 2000, first Tuesday in February (February 1); 2004, fourth Tuesday in January (January 27). The shifts have been to compete with changing primary dates in other states. The primary date for 2008 continued the trend; it was held January 8, the second Tuesday in January.

Before the Iowa caucus first received national attention in the 1970s (Republicans began caucusing in Iowa in 1976), the New Hampshire primary was the first binding indication of which presidential candidate would receive the party nomination. In defense of their primary, voters of New Hampshire have tended to downplay the importance of the Iowa caucus. "The people of Iowa pick corn, the people of New Hampshire pick presidents," said then-Governor John H. Sununu in 1988.

Since then, the primary has been considered an early measurement of the national attitude toward the candidates for nomination. Unlike a caucus, the primary measures the number of votes each candidate received directly, rather than through precinct delegates. The popular vote gives lesser-known candidates a chance to demonstrate their appeal to the electorate at large.

Unlike most other states, New Hampshire permits voters that have not declared their party affiliation to vote in a party's primary. A voter does have to officially join one party or the other before voting; however the voter can change his or her affiliation back to "Undeclared" immediately after voting, and hence he or she only has to belong to a party for the few minutes it takes to fill out and cast a ballot. Voters who are already a member of one party or the other cannot change their affiliation at the polling place: that can only be done before the checklist is closed several weeks prior to the election. New voters can, however, register at the polling place. This is shown in the 2000 Census data, with the ratio of minority residents being six times smaller than the national average (New Hampshire is 96% non-Hispanic white, versus 75% nationally). Politically however, the state does offer a wide sampling of different types of voters. Although it is a New England state, it is not as liberal as some of its neighbors. For example, according to one exit poll, of those who participated in the 2004 Democratic Primary, 4-in-10 voters were independents, and just over 50% said they considered themselves "liberal." Additionally, as of 2002, 25.6% of New Hampshire residents are registered Democrats and 36.7% are Republicans, with 37.7% of New Hampshire voters registered as "undeclared" independents. Also, New Hampshire was the only state in the Northeast to vote for George W. Bush in 2000. This plurality of independents is a major reason why New Hampshire is considered a swing state in general U.S. presidential elections.

Recently, media expectations for the New Hampshire primary have come to be almost as important as the results themselves; meeting or beating expectations can provide a candidate with national attention, often leading to an infusion of donations to a campaign that has spent most of its reserves. For example, in 1992, Bill Clinton, although he did not win, did surprisingly well, with his team dubbing him the "Comeback Kid"; the extra media attention helped his campaign's visibility in later primaries.

New Hampshire's political importance as the first in the nation primary state is highlighted in the documentary film ''Winning New Hampshire''. The film focuses on John Kerry's comeback in 2004 and the decisive effect of the New Hampshire Primary on the Presidential selection process.

The last three presidents (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama) finished second in the New Hampshire Primary before later being elected to the presidency, while the previous 4 before that (excluding Ford, who was not elected) won the New Hampshire Primary.

History

New Hampshire has held a presidential primary since 1916, but it did not begin to assume its current importance until 1952 after NH simplified its ballot access laws in 1949 seeking to boost voter turnout, when Dwight Eisenhower demonstrated his broad voter appeal by defeating Robert A. Taft, "Mr. Republican," who had been favored for the nomination, and Estes Kefauver defeated incumbent President Harry S. Truman, leading Truman to abandon his campaign for a third term. The other President to be forced from running for re-election by New Hampshire voters was Lyndon Johnson, who, as a write-in candidate, managed only a 49-42 percent victory over Eugene McCarthy in 1968 (and won fewer delegates than McCarthy), and consequently withdrew from the race.

The winner in New Hampshire has not always gone to win his party's nomination, as demonstrated by Republicans Harold Stassen in 1948, Henry Cabot Lodge in 1964, John McCain in 2000 and Pat Buchanan in 1996 and Democrats Estes Kefauver in 1952 and 1956, Paul Tsongas in 1992, and Hillary Clinton in 2008.

Before 1992, the person elected president had always carried the primary, but Bill Clinton broke the pattern in 1992, as did George W. Bush in 2000, and Barack Obama in 2008. In 1992, Clinton lost to Paul Tsongas in New Hampshire; in 2000, George W. Bush lost to John McCain in New Hampshire; and in 2008 Barack Obama lost to Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary.

1968

The 1968 New Hampshire Democratic Primary was one of the crucial events in the politics of that landmark year in United States history. Senator Eugene McCarthy began his campaign with a poem that he wrote in imitation of the poet Robert Lowell, "Are you running with me Jesus": :''I'm not matching my stride'' :''With Billy Graham's by the Clyde'' :''I'm not going for distance'' :''With the Senator's persistence'' :''I'm not trying to win a race'' :''even at George Romney's pace.'' :''I'm an existential runner,'' :''Indifferent to space'' :''I'm running here in place ... :''Are you with me Jesus?''

In November 1967, McCarthy declared, "there comes a time when an honorable man simply has to raise the flag" to gauge the country's response and conduct a candidacy for the presidency of the United States by entering the New Hampshire Democratic primary.

On March 12, 1968, McCarthy came within 7 percentage points of defeating President Lyndon Johnson in New Hampshire. Johnson subsequently withdrew from the election with this Shermanesque statement: "I shall not seek, and will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."

2008

Winners and runners-up

''Notes: Winner is listed first. Candidates in bold went on to win their party's nomination.''

Democrats

Primary Date	Winner
January 8, 2008	Senator Hillary Clinton	Senator Barack Obama, Former Senator John Edwards, Governor Bill Richardson, Representative Dennis Kucinich and Former Senator Mike Gravel.
January 27, 2004	Senator John Kerry	Former Governor Howard B. Dean III, General Wesley K. Clark, Senator John Edwards, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich and Reverend Al Sharpton.
February 1, 2000		Former Senator Bill Bradley
February 20, 1996	President Bill Clinton	(no viable opposition)
February 18, 1992	Senator Paul Tsongas	Governor Bill Clinton, Senator Bob Kerrey, Senator Tom Harkin, Former Governor Jerry Brown, and former mayor Larry Agran
February 16, 1988	Governor Michael Dukakis	Congressman Richard A. "Dick" Gephardt, Senator Paul Simon, Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, and Senator Al Gore
February 28, 1984	Senator Gary Hart	Former Vice President Walter Mondale, Senator John Glenn, Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, and Former Senator George McGovern
February 26, 1980	President Jimmy Carter
February 24, 1976	Governor Jimmy Carter
March 7, 1972	Senator Edmund Muskie	Senator George McGovern and Mayor Samuel William Yorty
March 12, 1968	President Lyndon B. Johnson	Senator Eugene McCarthy
March 10, 1964	President Lyndon B. Johnson	(no viable opposition)
March 8, 1960	Senator John F. Kennedy	businessman Paul C. Fisher
March 13, 1956	Senator Estes Kefauver
March 11, 1952	Senator Estes Kefauver	President Harry S. Truman

1948: ''Unpledged delegates''

1944: ''Unpledged delegates''

1940: ''Unpledged delegates''

1936: ''Unpledged delegates''

1932: ''Unpledged delegates''

1928: ''Unpledged delegates''

1924: ''Unpledged delegates''

1920: ''Unpledged delegates''

1916: President T. Woodrow Wilson (unopposed)

Republicans

Primary Date	Winner
January 8, 2008	Senator John McCain	Governor Mitt Romney, Governor Mike Huckabee, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Congressman Ron Paul, Senator Fred Thompson, Congressman Duncan Hunter
January 27, 2004	President George W. Bush	(no viable opposition)
February 1, 2000	Senator John McCain	Governor George W. Bush, Steve Forbes
February 20, 1996	[[Pat Buchanan	Senator Bob Dole, Governor Lamar Alexander
February 18, 1992	President [[George H. W. Bush
February 16, 1988	Vice President George H. W. Bush	Senator Bob Dole, Congressman Jack F. Kemp, Jr., Governor Pierre S. "Pete" du Pont IV, and Reverend Marion G. "Pat" Robertson
February 28, 1984	President Ronald Reagan	(no viable opposition)
February 26, 1980	Governor Ronald Reagan	Ambassador George H. W. Bush, Senator Howard Baker
February 24, 1976		Governor Ronald Reagan
March 7, 1972	President [[Richard Nixon
March 12, 1968	former Vice President Richard M. Nixon
March 10, 1964	Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.*	Senator Barry Goldwater
March 8, 1960	Vice President Richard Nixon	(no viable opposition)
March 13, 1956	President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower	(no viable opposition)
March 11, 1952	General Dwight D. Eisenhower
1948	Governor Harold Stassen

''*'' - write-in candidate

1944: ''Unpledged delegates''

1940: ''Unpledged delegates''

1936: ''Unpledged delegates''

1932: ''Unpledged delegates''

1928: ''Unpledged delegates''

1924: President John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. (unopposed)

1920: General Leonard Wood, Jr. defeated Senator Hiram W. Johnson

1916: ''Unpledged delegates''

2004 Democratic results

57,761 27,314 26,487 18,911 3,114 419 347 257 1,000 219,787

Candidate !! Votes !! % !! Delegates
align="left"	John Kerry	84,390	38.4
align="left"	Howard Dean	|	26.3	9
align="left"	Wesley Clark	|	12.4	0
align="left"	John Edwards	|	12.1	0
align="left"	Joseph Lieberman	|	8.6	0
align="left"	Dennis Kucinich	|	1.4	0
align="left"	Richard Gephardt	|	0.2	0
align="left"	Al Sharpton	|	0.2	0
align="left"	George W. Bush	|	0.1	0
align="left"	Other	|	0.5	0
align="left"	Total	|	100	22 (of 27)

Sources: ''Union-Leader'' (Manchester, NH), CNN, New Hampshire Department of State

2004 Republican results

13,907 3,009 1,888 1,467 941 916 841 836 803 579 388 264 239 154 153 1393 67,833

Candidate !! Votes !! % !! Delegates
align="left"	George W. Bush	53,962	79.55
align="left"	''All Others''	|	20.45
align="left"	John Kerry	|	4.44
align="left"	Howard Dean	|	2.78
align="left"	Wesley Clark	|	2.16
align="left"	Joseph Lieberman	|	1.39
align="left"	John Edwards	|	1.35
align="left"	Richard Boza	|	1.24
align="left"	John Buchanan	|	1.23
align="left"	John Rigazio	|	1.18
align="left"	Robert Haines	|	0.85
align="left"	Michael Callis	|	0.57
align="left"	Blake Ashby	|	0.39
align="left"	Millie Howard	|	0.35
align="left"	Tom Laughlin	|	0.23
align="left"	Bill Wyatt	|	0.23
align="left"	Scatter	|	2.05
align="left"	Total	|	100	29

Sources: Concord Monitor, New Hampshire Department of State, , ,

2000 Democratic results

70,502 3,320 3,920 154,639

Candidate !! Votes !! % !! Delegates
align="left"	Al Gore	76,897	50
align="left"	Bill Bradley	|	46	9
align="left"	John McCain (write-in)	|	2	0
align="left"	Other	|	2	0
align="left"	Total	|	100	22 (of 27)

Source: CNN; Official returns at OurCampaigns.com

2000 Republican results

72,262 30,197 15,196 1,656 2,001 236,802

Candidate !! Votes !! % !! Delegates
align="left"	John McCain	115,490	49
align="left"	George W. Bush	|	30	6
align="left"	Steve Forbes	|	13	2
align="left"	Alan Keyes	|	6	0
align="left"	Gary Bauer	|	1	0
align="left"	Other	|	1	0
align="left"	Total	|	100	17

Source: CNN

Vice-Presidential results

A Vice-Presidential preference primary was also formerly held at the New Hampshire Primary. New Hampshire State Senator Jack Barnes, who won the 2008 Republican contest, co-sponsored a bill in 2009 which would eliminate the Vice Presidential preference ballot. The bill passed both houses of the state legislature and will take effect in 2012.

The only time a non-incumbent won the Vice Presidential primary and then went on to be formally nominated by his or her party was in 2004, when Democratic U.S. Senator John Edwards won as a write-in candidate. (Edwards, who was running for President at the time, did not actively solicit Vice Presidential votes.)

In 1968, the sitting Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic Vice Presidential primary, and then later won the Presidential nomination after the sitting President Lyndon B. Johnson dropped out of the race.

The following candidates received the greatest number of votes at each election.

John Barnes, Jr. January 27 February 1 February 20 February 18 February 16 February 28 February 26 February 24 March 7 March 12 March 10 March 8 March 13 March 11

Year !! Date !! Republican !! Democratic !! Libertarian
align="left"	2008	January 8	|	Raymond Stebbins
align="left"	2004	|	Dick Cheney*	John Edwards*
align="left"	2000	|	William Bryk	Wladislav D. Kubiak
align="left"	1996	|	Colin Powell*	Al Gore*	Irwin Schiff*
align="left"	1992	|	Herb Clark Jr.	Endicott Peabody	Nancy Lord*
align="left"	1988	|	Wayne Green	David Duke
align="left"	1984	|	George H. W. Bush>George Bush*	Gerald Willis
align="left"	1980	|	Jesse A. Helms	Walter Mondale*
align="left"	1976	|	Wallace Johnson	Auburn Lee Packwood
align="left"	1972	|	Spiro Agnew*	Jorge Almeyda*
align="left"	1968	|	Austin Burton	Hubert Humphrey*
align="left"	1964	|	Richard Nixon*	Robert Kennedy*
align="left"	1960	|	Wesley Powell*	Wesley Powell*
align="left"	1956	|	Richard Nixon*	Adlai Stevenson II>Adlai Stevenson*
align="left"	1952	|	Styles Bridges*	Estes Kefauver*

''*'' - write-in candidate

Sources: New Hampshire Department of State, New Hampshire Political Library

See also

United States presidential primary

United States presidential election

United States presidential election debates

American presidential debate

United States presidential nominating convention

United States Electoral College

Early Votes

Ames (Iowa) Straw Poll on a Saturday in August prior to the election year, since 1979

Iowa caucus first official election year event since 1972

Reform Plans

United States presidential primary reform proposals

Graduated Random Presidential Primary System

Delaware Plan

Rotating Regional Primary System

Interregional Primary Plan

National Primary

References

''Winning New Hampshire'', a film on the history and significance of the NH Primary, 2004

The New Hampshire Political Library

2004 primary results (CNN)

2000 primary results (CNN)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/politics/7812403.htm

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/09/powerlines-meyerson.php

http://www.nhprimary.com Local coverage of the primary from The Telegraph of Nashua, NH.

http://www.nhelects.com Local coverage of the primary from The Keene Sentinel of Keene, NH.

Social Media coverage of the New Hampshire by the Creepy Sleepy podcast

Radio Row Coverage of the New Hampshire Primary by the Talk Radio News Service and Ellen Ratner

Germond, Jack. "A Cold, Hard Look", ''Washingtonian'', January 1, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-01-09.

Notes

Category:United States presidential primaries Category:Politics of New Hampshire

fr:Primaire du New Hampshire he:הפריימריז בניו המפשייר

Name	Mitt Romney
Alt	Portrait of Mitt Romney
Order	70th
Office	Governor of Massachusetts
Term start	January 2, 2003
Term end	January 4, 2007
Lieutenant	Kerry Healey
Predecessor	Paul Cellucci (Governor)Jane Swift (acting)
Successor	Deval Patrick
Birth date	March 12, 1947
Birth place	Detroit, Michigan
Birthname	Willard Mitt Romney
Nationality	American
Party	Republican
Residence	Belmont, MassachusettsWolfeboro, New HampshireSan Diego, California
Spouse
Children	Tagg (b. 1970) Matt (b. 1971) Josh (b. 1975) Ben (b. 1978) Craig (b. 1981)
Alma mater	Brigham Young University (B.A.)Harvard Law School (J.D.)Harvard Business School (M.B.A.)
Profession	Businessman, politician, author
Religion	The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon)
Signature	Mitt Romney Signature.svg }}

Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American businessman and politician. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and is a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.

Romney is the son of George W. Romney (the former Governor of Michigan) and Lenore Romney. He was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and then served as a Mormon missionary in France. He received his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University, and thereafter earned Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration joint degrees from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. Romney entered the management consulting business which led to a position at Bain & Company, eventually serving as its CEO to lead it out of crisis. He was also co-founder and head of the spin-off company Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm which became highly profitable and one of the largest such firms in the nation, and the wealth Romney accumulated there would help fund all of his future political campaigns. He ran as the Republican candidate in the 1994 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts but lost to incumbent Ted Kennedy. Romney organized and steered the 2002 Winter Olympics as President and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, and helped turn the troubled Games into a financial success.

Romney won the election for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002, but did not seek reelection in 2006. During his term, he presided over a series of spending cuts and increases in fees that eliminated a projected $3 billion deficit. He also signed into law the Massachusetts health care reform legislation, which provided near-universal health insurance access via subsidies and state-level mandates and was the first of its kind in the nation. During the course of his political career, his positions or rhetorical emphasis have shifted more towards American conservatism in several areas.

Romney ran for the Republican nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, winning several caucus and primary contests, though he ultimately lost the nomination to John McCain. In the following years he published ''No Apology: The Case for American Greatness'' and gave speeches and raised campaign funds on behalf of fellow Republicans. On June 2, 2011, Romney announced that he would seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Political observers and public opinion polls place him as a front-runner in the race.

Early life

Romney was born in Detroit. He is the youngest child of George W. Romney, a man of humble upbringing who by 1948 had become an automobile executive, and Lenore Romney (née LaFount). His mother was a native of Logan, Utah and his father had been born in Mexico to American parents. The three siblings before him were Margo Lynn, Jane LaFount, and G. Scott, followed by Mitt after a gap of six years. Romney was named after hotel magnate J. Willard Marriott, his father's best friend, and his father's cousin Milton "Mitt" Romney, 1925–1929 quarterback for the Chicago Bears.|group="nb"}}

When he was five, the family moved from Detroit to the affluent suburb of Bloomfield Hills. His father became CEO of American Motors and turned the company around from the brink of bankruptcy; by the time he was twelve, his father had become a nationally known figure in print and on television. Romney idolozed his father, read automotive trade magazines, kept abreast of automotive developments, and aspired to be an executive in the industry himself one day. His father also presided over the Detroit Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to which the family belonged. Romney went to public elementary schools and then from seventh grade on, attended Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, a private boys preparatory school of the classic mold where he was the lone Mormon and where many students came from even more privileged backgrounds. He was not particularly athletic and at first did not excel at academics. While a sophomore, he participated in the campaign in which his father was elected Governor of Michigan. George Romney was re-elected twice; Mitt worked for him as an intern in the governor's office, and was present at the 1964 Republican National Convention when his moderate father battled conservative party nominee Barry Goldwater over issues of civil rights and ideological extremism. Romney had a steady set of chores and worked summer jobs, including being a security guard at a Chrysler plant.

Initially a manager for the ice hockey team and a pep squad member, during his final year at Cranbook, Romney joined the cross country running team and improved academically, but was still not a star pupil. His social skills were strong, however, and he won an award for those "whose contributions to school life are often not fully recognized through already existing channels." Romney was an energetic child who enjoyed pranks.|group="nb"}} In March of his senior year, he began dating Ann Davies, two years behind him, whom he had once known in elementary school; she attended the private Kingswood School, the sister school to Cranbrook. The two informally agreed to marriage around the time of his June 1965 graduation.

Experiences from 1965 to 1975

Romney attended Stanford University for a year. Although the campus was becoming radicalized with the beginnings of 1960s social and political movements, he kept a well-groomed appearance and enjoyed traditional campus events. In May 1966, he was part of a counter-protest against a group staging a sit-in in the university administration building in opposition to draft status tests.

In July 1966, Romney left for 30 months in France as a Mormon missionary, a traditional duty that his father and other relatives had done. He arrived in Le Havre with ideas about how to change and promote the French Mission, while facing physical and economic deprivation in their cramped quarters. Rules against drinking, smoking, and dating were strictly enforced. Like most Mormon missionaries, he did not gain many converts, with the nominally Catholic but secular, wine-loving French people proving especially resistant to a religion that prohibits alcohol. He became demoralized, and later recalled it as the only time when "most of what I was trying to do was rejected." In Nantes, Romney was bruised defending two female missionaries against a horde of local rugby players. He continued to work hard; having grown up in Michigan rather than the more insular Utah world, Romney was better able to interact with the French. He was promoted to zone leader in Bordeaux in early 1968 and subsequently became assistant to the mission president in Paris, the highest position for a missionary. Romney's support for the U.S. role in the Vietnam War were only reinforced when the French greeted him with hostility over the matter and he debated them in return. He also witnessed the May 1968 general strike and student uprisings.

In June 1968, an automobile Romney was driving in southern France was hit by another vehicle, seriously injuring him and killing one of his passengers, the wife of the mission president. As they drove through the village of Bernos-Beaulac, a Mercedes that was passing a truck missed a curve and suddenly swerved into the opposite lane and hit the Citroën DS Romney was driving in a head-on collision. Trapped between the steering wheel and door, the unconscious and seriously injured Romney had to be pried from the car; a French police officer mistakenly wrote ''Il est mort'' in his passport. The wife of the mission president was killed and other passengers were seriously injured as well. George Romney relied on his friend Sargent Shriver, the U.S. Ambassador to France, to go to the local hospital and discover that Mitt had survived. The fault for the accident was attributed completely to the driver of the other vehicle. Romney had suffered broken ribs, a fractured arm, a concussion, and facial injuries, but recovered quickly without needing surgery.|name="nb-acc"|group="nb"}} Fault for the accident was attributed completely to the other driver. After recovering, Romney became co-acting president of a mission demoralized and disorganized by the May civil disturbances and the car accident. Romney rallied and motivated the others and they met an ambitious goal of 200 baptisms for the year, the most for the mission in a decade. By the end of his stint in December 1968, Romney was overseeing the work of 175 fellow members. The experience in France changed Romney. It showed him the fragility of life and the need for a seriousness of purpose, and he gained a capacity for organization and a record of success that he had theretofore lacked. It also represented a crucible, after having been only a half-hearted Mormon growing up: "On a mission, your faith in Jesus Christ either evaporates or it becomes much deeper. For me it became much deeper."

While he was away, Ann Davies had converted to the LDS Church, guided by George Romney, and had begun attending Brigham Young University. Mitt was nervous that she had been wooed by others while he was away, and indeed she had dated others, but at their first meeting following his return they reconnected and agreed to quickly get married. That happened on March 21, 1969, in a Bloomfield Hills civil ceremony presided over by a church elder; the following day the couple flew to Utah for a wedding ceremony at the Salt Lake Temple.

Romney began attending Brigham Young too. He had missed much of the tumultuous American anti-Vietnam War movement while away, and was surprised to learn that his father had turned against the war during his ill-fated 1968 presidential campaign. Regarding the military draft, Romney had initially gotten a student deferment, then like most other Mormon missionaries had received a ministerial deferment while in France, then got another student deferment. When those ran out, his high number in the December 1969 draft lottery (300) meant he would not be selected.

At culturally conservative Brigham Young, Romney continued to be separated from much of the upheaval of the era, and did not join the few protests against the war or the LDS Church's policy against giving full membership to blacks. He became president and successful fundraiser for the all-male Cougar Club and showed a new-found discipline in his studies. In his senior year he took leave to work as driver and advance man for his mother Lenore Romney's eventually unsuccessful 1970 campaign for U.S. Senator from Michigan. He graduated from Brigham Young in 1971, earning a Bachelor of Arts in English and giving commencement addresses to both his own College of Humanities and to the whole university.

The Romneys' first son, Tagg, was born in 1970 while both were undergraduates at Brigham Young and living in a basement apartment. They subsequently welcomed Matt (1971), Josh (1975), Ben (1978), and Craig (1981). Ann Romney's work as a stay-at-home mom would enable her husband to pursue his career.

Romney still wanted to pursue a business path, but his father, by now serving in President Richard Nixon's cabinet as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, advised that a law degree would be valuable. Thus Romney became one of only 15 students to enroll at the recently created joint Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration four-year program coordinated between Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. Fellow students noted Romney's strong work ethic and buttoned-down appearance; he lived in a Belmont, Massachusetts house with Ann and by now two children. He graduated in 1975 ''cum laude'' from the law school, in the top third of that class, and was named a Baker Scholar for graduating in the top five percent of his business school class.

Business career

Romney was heavily recruited and, after graduation, chose to remain in Massachusetts and go to work for Boston Consulting Group (BCG), thinking that working as a management consultant to a variety of companies would prepare him for a future job as a chief executive. | author=Heinlein, Gary | newspaper=The Detroit News | date=February 14, 2007}} but never worked as a lawyer. |group="nb"}} Romney's legal and business education proved valuable in this role, and he quickly became a rising star while applying BCG principles such as the growth-share matrix.

In 1977, he was hired away by Bain & Company, a management consulting firm in Boston that had been formed a few years earlier by Bill Bain and other former BCG employees. Bain would later say of the thirty-year-old Romney, "He had the appearance of confidence of a guy who was maybe ten years older." With Bain & Company, Romney proved adept at learning the "Bain way", which consisted of immersing itself in each client's business, and not simply to issue recommendations, but to stay with the company until they were effectively changed for the better. With a record of success with clients such as the Monsanto Company, Outboard Marine Corporation, Burlington Industries, and Corning Incorporated, Romney became a vice president of the firm in 1978 and within a few years one of its best consultants. Romney became a firm believer in Bain's methods; he later said, "The idea that consultancies should not measure themselves by the thickness of their reports, or even the elegance of their writing, but rather by whether or not the report was effectively implemented was an inflection point in the history of consulting."

thumb|right|Logo of company that Romney co-foundedRomney was restless for a company of his own to run, and in 1983 Bill Bain offered him the chance to head a new venture that would buy into companies, have them benefit from Bain techniques, and then reap higher rewards than just consulting fees. Romney was initially cautious about accepting the offer, and Bain re-arranged the terms in a complicated partnership structure so that there was no financial or professional risk to Romney. Thus, in 1984, Romney left Bain & Company to co-found the spin-off private equity investment firm, Bain Capital. Bain and Romney spent a year raising the $37 million in investment money needed to start the new operation, which had fewer than ten employees. As general partner of the new firm, Romney was frugal and cautious, spending little on office appearance and finding the weak spots in so many potential deals that by 1986, very few had been done. At first, Bain Capital focused on venture capital opportunities. Their first big success came with a 1986 investment to help start Staples Inc., after founder Thomas G. Stemberg convinced Romney of the market size for office supplies; Bain Capital eventually reaped a nearly sevenfold return on its investment, and Romney sat on the Staples board of directors for over a decade.

Romney soon switched Bain Capital's focus from startups to the relatively new business of leveraged buyouts: buying existing firms with money mostly borrowed against their assets, partnering with existing management to apply the "Bain way" to their operations (rather than the hostile takeovers practiced in other leverage buyout scenarios), and then selling them off in a few years. Bain Capital lost most of its money in many of its early leveraged buyouts, but then started finding successes with spectacular returns. Indeed, during the 14 years Romney headed the company, Bain Capital's average annual internal rate of return on realized investments was 113 percent. Romney excelled at presenting and selling the deals the company made. The firm initially gave a cut of its profits to Bain & Company, but Romney later persuaded Bain to give that up.

The firm successfully invested in or acquired many well-known companies such as Accuride, Brookstone, Domino's Pizza, Sealy Corporation, Sports Authority, and Artisan Entertainment, as well as lesser-known companies in the industrial and medical sectors. Romney's cautious instincts were still in force at times; he wanted to drop a Bain Capital hedge fund that initially lost money, but other partners prevailed and it eventually gained billions. He also personally opted out of the Artisan Entertainment deal, not wanting to profit from a studio that produced R-rated films. Romney was on the board of directors of Damon Corporation, a medical testing company later found guilty of defrauding the government; Bain Capital tripled its investment before selling off the company, with the fraud being discovered by the new owners (Romney was never implicated). In some cases Romney had little involvement with a company once acquired.

Bain Capital's leveraged buyouts sometimes led to layoffs, either soon after acquisition or later after the firm had left. Bain Capital officials later said that overall, more jobs were added than lost due to these buyouts. In any case, maximizing the value of acquired companies and the return to Bain's investors, not job creation, was the firm's fundamental goal, as it was for most private equity operations. Regarding job losses, Romney later said, "Sometimes the medicine is a little bitter but it is necessary to save the life of the patient. My job was to try and make the enterprise successful, and in my view the best security a family can have is that the business they work for is strong." Bain Capital's acquisition of Ampad exemplified a deal where it profited handsomely from early payments and management fees, even though the subject company itself ended up going into bankruptcy. Bain was among the private equity firms that took the most such fees, and more cases happened as Romney was leaving the firm. He said in retrospect, "It is one thing that if I had a chance to go back I would be more sensitive to. It is always a balance. Great care has got to be taken not to take a dividend or a distribution from a company that puts that company at risk. [Having taken a big payment from a company that later failed] would make me sick, sick at heart."

In 1990, Romney was asked to return to Bain & Company, which was facing financial collapse. He was announced as its new CEO in January 1991 (but drew only a symbolic salary of one dollar). Romney managed an effort to restructure the firm's employee stock-ownership plan, real-estate deals and bank loans, while rallying the firm's thousand employees, imposing a new governing structure that included Bain and the other founding partners giving up control, and increasing fiscal transparency. Within about a year, he had led Bain & Company through a highly successful turnaround and returned the firm to profitability without further layoffs or partner defections. He turned Bain & Company over to new leadership and returned to Bain Capital in December 1992.

During his years in business, Romney tithed by giving millions of dollars to the LDS Church. He served as ward bishop for Belmont from 1984 to 1986, acting as the ecclesiastical and administrative head of his congregation. From 1986 to 1994 he presided over the Boston Stake, which included more than a dozen congregations in eastern Massachusetts.

Romney left Bain Capital in February 1999 to serve as the President and CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games Organizing Committee. By that time, Bain Capital was on its way to being one of the top private equity firms in the nation, having increased its number of partners from 5 to 18, having 115 employees overall, and having $4 billion under its management. Bain Capital's approach of applying consulting expertise to the companies it invested in became widely copied within the private equity industry. His experience at Bain & Company and Bain Capital gave Romney a business-oriented world view – centering around a hate of waste and inefficiency, a love for data and charts and analysis and presentation, and a belief in keeping an open mind and seeking opposing points of view – that he would take with him to the public sector. As a result of his business career, by 2007 Romney and his wife had a net worth of between $190 and $250 million, most of it held in blind trusts. Although gone, Romney received a passive profit share as a retired partner in some Bain Capital entities. An additional blind trust existed in the name of the Romneys' children and grandchildren that was valued at between $70 and $100 million as of 2007. The couple's net worth remained in the same range as of 2011, and was still held in blind trusts.

1994 U.S. senatorial campaign

Romney had been thinking about entering politics for a while. He decided to take on longtime incumbent Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, who 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 Kennedy had taken some public relations hits regarding his character. Romney changed his affiliation from Independent to Republican in October 1993 and formally announced his candidacy in February 1994. He stepped down from his position at Bain Capital during the run.

Romney came from behind to win the Massachusetts Republican Party's nomination for U.S. Senate after buying substantial television time to get out his message, gaining overwhelming support in the state party convention, and then defeating businessman John Lakian in the September 1994 primary with over 80 percent of the vote. In the general election, Kennedy faced the first serious re-election challenger of his career in the young, telegenic, and very well-funded Romney. Romney ran as a fresh face, as a successful entrepreneur who stated he had created ten thousand jobs, and as a Washington outsider with a strong family image and moderate stands on social issues. Romney stated: "Ultimately, this is a campaign about change." After two decades out of public view, his father George re-emerged during the campaign as well.

Romney's campaign was effective in portraying Kennedy as soft on crime, but had trouble establishing its own positions in a consistent manner. By mid-September 1994, polls showed the race to be approximately even. Kennedy responded with a series of attack ads, which focused both on Romney's seemingly shifting political views on issues such as abortion and on the treatment of workers at a paper products plant owned by Romney's Bain Capital. Kennedy and Romney held a widely watched late October debate without a clear winner, but by then Kennedy had pulled ahead in polls and stayed ahead afterward. 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–Michael Huffington Senate race in California).

In the November general election, despite a disastrous showing for Democrats overall, Kennedy won the election with 58 percent of the vote to Romney's 41 percent, the smallest margin in Kennedy's eight re-election campaigns for the Senate.

2002 Winter Olympics

Romney returned to Bain Capital the day after the election, but still smarted from the loss, and told his brother, "I never want to run for something again unless I can win." His father died in 1995 and his mother in 1998, and Romney felt restless as the decade neared a close; the goal of just making more money was losing its appeal to him. He had stepped down as Boston Stake president in order to run for the Senate, and while still teaching Sunday School, was largely uninvolved in the long and somewhat controversial construction of a Mormon temple in Belmont. Ann Romney was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998; Romney described watching her fail a series of neurological tests as the worst day of his life. After two years of severe difficulties with the disease, she found in Park City, Utah (where the couple had built a vacation home) a mixture of mainstream, alternative, and equestrian therapies that gave her a lifestyle mostly without limitations. When the offer came for Romney to take over the troubled 2002 Olympic Winter Games, to be held in Salt Lake City in Utah, she urged him to take it, and eager for a new challenge, he did. On February 11, 1999, Romney was hired as the new president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.

Before Romney came on, the event was running $379 million short of its revenue benchmarks. Plans were being made to scale back the games to compensate for the fiscal crisis and there were fears the games might be moved away entirely. The Games had also been damaged by allegations of bribery involving top officials, including prior Salt Lake Olympic Committee president and CEO Frank Joklik. Joklik and committee vice president Dave Johnson were forced to resign. Romney's appointment faced some initial criticism from non-Mormons, and fears from Mormons, that it represented cronyism or gave the games too Mormon an image.

Romney revamped the organization's leadership and policies, reduced budgets, and boosted fund raising. He soothed worried corporate sponsors and recruited many new ones. He admitted past problems, listened to local critics, and rallied Utah's citizenry with a sense of optimism. Romney worked to ensure the safety of the Games following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by ignoring those who suggested the games be called off and coordinating a $300 million security budget. He became the public face of the Olympic effort, appearing in countless photographs and news stories and even on Olympics souvenir pins. Romney's omnipresence irked those who thought he was taking too much of the credit for the success, or had exaggerated the state of initial distress, or was primarily looking to improve his own image. Overall he oversaw a $1.32 billion budget, 700 employees, and 26,000 volunteers.

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 broke the record for most private money raised by any individual for an Olympics games, summer or winter. His performance as Olympics head was rated positively by 87 percent of Utahns. Romney and his wife contributed $1 million to the Olympics, and he donated to charity the $1.4 million in salary and severance payments he received for his three years as president and CEO.

Romney was widely praised for his successful efforts with the 2002 Winter Olympics including by President George W. Bush, and it solidified his reputation as a turnaround artist. Harvard Business School taught a case study based around Romney's successful actions. Romney wrote a book about his experience titled ''Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games'', published in 2004. The role gave Romney experience in dealing with federal, state, and local entities, a public persona he had previously lacked, and the chance to re-launch his political aspirations. Indeed, he was mentioned as a possible candidate for statewide office in both Massachusetts and Utah, and also as possibly joining the Bush administration.

Governor of Massachusetts

2002 gubernatorial campaign

In 2002, Republican Acting Governor Jane Swift's 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 that time showed Republicans favoring Romney over Swift by more than 50 percentage points. In March 2002, Swift decided not to seek her party's nomination, and so Romney was unopposed in the Republican party primary.

Massachusetts Democratic Party officials contested Romney's eligibility to run for governor, citing residency issues involving Romney's time in Utah as president of the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee. In June 2002, the Massachusetts State Ballot Law Commission unanimously ruled that Romney was eligible to run for office.

Romney ran as a political outsider again. Supporters of Romney hailed his business record, especially his success with the 2002 Olympics, as the record of someone who would be able to bring a new era of efficiency into Massachusetts politics. The campaign was the first to use microtargeting techniques, in which fine-grained groups of voters were reached with narrowly tailored messaging. Romney contributed over $6 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 his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts State Treasurer Shannon O'Brien, who received 45 percent.

Tenure, 2003–2007

Romney was sworn in as the 70th governor of Massachusetts on January 2, 2003. Both houses of the Massachusetts state legislature held large Democratic majorities. He picked his cabinet and advisors more on managerial abilities than partisan affiliation. Upon entering office in the middle of a fiscal year, Romney faced an immediate $650 million shortfall and a projected $3 billion deficit for the next year. Unexpected revenue of $1.0–1.3 billion from a previously enacted capital gains tax increase and $500 million in unanticipated federal grants decreased the deficit to $1.2–1.5 billion. Through a combination of spending cuts, increased fees, and removal of corporate tax loopholes, by 2006 the state had a $600–700 million surplus.

thumb|left|upright|alt=Mitt Romney resting on a wooden desk, flanked by an American flag, a picture of his wife, a lamp, and a painting of mountains|Official Massachusetts State House portrait of Governor Mitt Romney, by artist [[Richard Whitney (artist)|Richard Whitney]]Romney supported raising various fees by more than $300 million, including those for driver's licenses, marriage licenses, and gun licenses. Romney increased a special gasoline retailer fee by 2 cents per gallon, generating about $60 million per year in additional revenue. (Opponents said the reliance on fees sometimes imposed a hardship on those who could least afford them.) Romney also closed tax loopholes that brought in another $181 million from businesses over the next two years. The state legislature, with Romney's support, also cut spending by $1.6 billion, including $700 million in reductions in state aid to cities and towns. The cuts also included a $140 million reduction in state funding for higher education, which led state-run colleges and universities to increase tuition by 63 percent over four years. Romney sought additional cuts in his last year as Massachusetts governor by vetoing nearly 250 items in the state budget, but all of them were overridden by the Democratic-dominated legislature.

The cuts in state spending put added pressure on local property taxes; the share of town and city revenues coming from property taxes rose from 49 percent to 53 percent. The combined state and local tax burden in Massachusetts increased during Romney's governorship but still was below the national average. According to the Tax Foundation, that per capita burden was 9.8 percent in 2002 (below the national average of 10.3 percent), and 10.5 percent in 2006 (below the national average of 10.8 percent).

Romney was at the forefront of a movement to bring near-universal health insurance coverage to the state, after a business executive told him at the start of his term that doing so would be the best way he could help people and after the federal government, due to the rules of Medicaid funding, threatened to cut $385 million in those payments to Massachusetts if the state did not reduce the number of uninsured recipients of health care services. Despite not having campaigned on the idea of universal health insurance, Romney decided that because people without insurance still received expensive health care, the money spent by the state for such care could be better used to subsidize insurance for the poor.

After positing that any measure adopted not raise taxes and not resemble the previous decade's failed "Hillarycare" proposal, Romney formed a team of consultants from different political backgrounds that beginning in late 2004 came up with a set of innovative proposals more ambitious than an incremental one from the Massachusetts Senate and more acceptable to him than one from the Massachusetts House of Representatives that incorporated a new payroll tax. In particular, Romney successfully pushed for incorporating an individual mandate at the state level. Past rival Ted Kennedy, who had made universal heath coverage his life's work and who over time developed a warm relationship with Romney, gave Romney's plan a positive reception, which encouraged Democratic legislators to work with it. The effort eventually gained the support of all major stakeholders within the state, and Romney helped break a logjam between rival Democratic leaders in the legislature.

On April 12, 2006, Romney signed the resulting Massachusetts health reform law, which requires nearly all Massachusetts residents to buy health insurance coverage or face escalating tax penalties such as the loss of their personal income tax exemption. The bill also establishes means-tested state subsidies for people who do not have adequate employer insurance and who make below an income threshold, by using funds previously designated to compensate for the health costs of the uninsured. He vetoed eight sections of the health care legislation, including a controversial $295-per-employee assessment on businesses that do not offer health insurance and provisions guaranteeing dental benefits to Medicaid recipients. The legislature overrode all eight vetoes; Romney's communications director Eric Fehrnstrom responded by saying, "These differences with the Legislature are not essential to the goal of getting everyone covered with insurance." Romney said of the measure overall, "There really wasn't Republican or Democrat in this. People ask me if this is conservative or liberal, and my answer is yes. It's liberal in the sense that we're getting our citizens health insurance. It's conservative in that we're not getting a government takeover." The law was the first of its kind in the nation and became the signature achievement of Romney's term in office.|group="nb"}}

At the beginning of his governorship, Romney opposed same-sex marriage and civil unions, but advocated tolerance and supported some domestic partnership benefits. Faced with the dilemma of choosing between same-sex marriage or civil unions after the November 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision legalizing same-sex marriages (''Goodridge v. Department of Public Health''), Romney reluctantly backed a state constitutional amendment in February 2004 that would have banned same-sex marriage but still allow civil unions, viewing it as the only feasible way to ban same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. In May 2004 Romney instructed town clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but citing a 1913 law that barred out-of-state residents from getting married in Massachusetts if their union would be illegal in their home state, no marriage licenses were to be issued to out-of-state same-sex couples not planning to move to Massachusetts. In June 2005, Romney abandoned his support for the compromise amendment, stating that the amendment confused voters who oppose both same-sex marriage and civil unions. Instead, Romney endorsed a petition effort led by the Coalition for Marriage & Family that would have banned same-sex marriage and made no provisions for civil unions. In 2004 and 2006 he urged the U.S. Senate to vote in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment.

In 2005, Romney revealed a change of view regarding abortion, moving from an "unequivocal" pro-choice position expressed during his 2002 campaign to a pro-life one where he opposed ''Roe v. Wade''. He vetoed a bill on pro-life grounds that would expand access to emergency contraception in hospitals and pharmacies.

Romney generally used the bully pulpit approach towards promoting his agenda, staging well-organized media events to appeal directly to the public rather than pushing his proposals in behind-doors sessions with the state legislature. Romney was especially effective in dealing with a crisis of confidence in Boston's Big Dig project following a fatal ceiling collapse in 2006, wresting control of the project from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority and helping ensure that it would eventually complete.

During 2004, Romney spent considerable effort trying to bolster the state Republican Party, but it failed to gain any seats in the state legislative elections that year. Given a prime-time appearance at the 2004 Republican National Convention, Romney was already being discussed as a potential 2008 presidential candidate. Midway through his term, Romney decided that he wanted to stage a full-time run for president, and on December 14, 2005, Romney announced that he would not seek re-election for a second term as governor. As chair of the Republican Governors Association, Romney traveled around the country, meeting prominent Republicans and building a national political network; he spent part or all of more than 200 days out of state during 2006, preparing for his run. Romney's frequent out-of-state travel contributed towards his approval rating declining in public polls towards the end of his term. He conceded that 2006 would be a difficult year for Republicans and that they would likely lose gubernatorial seats, including possibly his own. The weak condition of the Republican state party was one of several factors that led to Democrat Deval Patrick's lopsided win over Republican Kerry Healey in the 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial election.

Romney filed to register a presidential campaign committee with the Federal Election Commission on his penultimate day in office as governor. Romney's term ended January 4, 2007.

2008 presidential campaign

Romney formally announced his candidacy for the 2008 Republican nomination for president on February 13, 2007, at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. In his speech, Romney frequently invoked his father and his own family and stressed experiences in the private, public, and voluntary sectors that had brought him to this point. He said, "Throughout my life, I have pursued innovation and transformation," and casting himself as a political outsider, said, "I do not believe Washington can be transformed from within by a lifelong politician."

thumb|left|alt=Mitt Romney addressing an audience from atop a stage|Romney holding an "Ask Mitt Anything" session in [[Ames, Iowa|Ames, Iowa, in May 2007]]The assets that Romney's campaign began with included his résumé of success in the business world and his rescuing of the Salt Lake Olympics, which matched the commonly held notion that American industry had star players who could straighten out what was wrong in the nation's capital. Romney also had solid political experience as governor together with a political pedigree courtesy of his father, a strong work ethic and energy level, and a large, wholesome-looking family that seemed so perfect as to be off-putting to some voters. Ann Romney, who had become an outspoken advocate for those with multiple sclerosis, was in remission and would be an active participant in his campaign, helping to soften his political personality. Moreover, with his square jaw, handsome face, and ample hair graying at the temples, Mitt Romney matched one of the common images of what a president should look like. Romney's liabilities included having run for senator and served as governor in one of the nation's most liberal states, having taken some positions there that were opposed by the party's conservative base, and subsequently shifting those positions. The candidate's Mormon religion was also viewed with suspicion and skepticism by some in the Evangelical portion of the party.

Romney assembled for his campaign a veteran group of Republican staffers, consultants, and pollsters. He was little-known nationally, though, and stayed around the 10 percent range in Republican preference polls for the first half of 2007. Romney's strategy was to win the first two big contests, the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, and carry the momentum and visibility gained through the big Super Tuesday primaries and on to the nomination. He proved the most effective fundraiser of any of the Republican candidates, with his Olympics ties helping him with fundraising from Utah residents and from sponsors and trustees of the games. He also partly financed his campaign with his own personal fortune. These resources, combined with his August 2007 win in the Iowa Straw Poll and the mid-year near-collapse of nominal front-runner John McCain's campaign, made Romney a threat to win the nomination and the focus of the other candidates' attacks. Romney's staff suffered from internal strife and the candidate himself was indecisive at times, constantly asking for more data before making a decision. Persistent questions about the role of religion in Romney's life, as well as Southern Baptist minister and former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee's rise in the polls based upon an explicitly Christian-themed campaign, led to the December 6, 2007, "Faith in America" speech.

thumb|upright|right|alt=Mitt and Ann Romney standing side by side against an American flag|Mitt and Ann Romney in late December 2007 at a campaign event in Londonderry, New HampshireIn the January 3, 2008, Iowa Republican caucuses, the first contest of the primary season, Romney received 25 percent of the vote and placed second to the vastly outspent Huckabee, who received 34 percent. Of the 60 percent of caucus-goers who were evangelical Christians, Huckabee was supported by about half of them while Romney by only a fifth. A couple of days later, Romney won the lightly contested Wyoming Republican caucuses. At a Saint Anselm College debate, Huckabee and McCain pounded away at Romney's image as a flip flopper. Indeed, this label would stick to Romney through the campaign (but was one that Romney rejected as unfair and inaccurate, except for his acknowledged change of mind on abortion). Romney seemed to approach the campaign as a management consulting exercise, and showed a lack of personal warmth and political feel; journalist Evan Thomas wrote that Romney "came off as a phony, even when he was perfectly sincere." Romney's staff would conclude that competing as a candidate of social conservatism and ideological purity rather than of pragmatic competence had been a mistake.

Romney finished in second place by five percentage points to the resurgent McCain in the next-door-to-his-home-state New Hampshire primary on January 8. Romney rebounded to win the January 15 Michigan primary over McCain by a solid margin, capitalizing on his childhood ties to the state and his vow to bring back lost automotive industry jobs which was seen by several commentators as unrealistic.|group="nb"}} On January 19, Romney won the lightly contested Nevada caucuses, but placed fourth in the intense South Carolina primary, where he had effectively ceded the contest to his rivals. McCain gained further momentum with his win in South Carolina, leading to a showdown between him and Romney in the Florida primary.

thumb|left|alt=Mitt Romney surrounded by people, holding a microphone and smiling|Romney at a rally in Michigan in mid-January 2008For ten days, Romney campaigned intensively on economic issues and the burgeoning subprime mortgage crisis, while McCain repeatedly and inaccurately asserted that Romney favored a premature withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.|group="nb"}} McCain won key last-minute endorsements from Florida Senator Mel Martinez and Governor Charlie Crist, which helped push him to a five percentage point victory on January 29. Although many Republican officials were now lining up behind McCain, Romney persisted through the nationwide Super Tuesday contests on February 5. There he won primaries or caucuses in several states, including Massachusetts, Alaska, Minnesota, Colorado and Utah, but McCain won more, including large states such as California and New York. Trailing McCain in delegates by a more than two-to-one margin, Romney announced the end of his campaign on February 7 during a speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. Altogether, Romney had won 11 primaries and caucuses, received about 4.7 million total votes, and garnered about 280 delegates.

Romney endorsed McCain for president a week later. He soon founded the Free and Strong America PAC, a political action committee whose stated mission was to raise money for other Republican candidates and to promote Republican policies. Romney became one of the McCain campaign's most visible surrogates, appearing on behalf of the GOP nominee at fundraisers, state Republican party conventions, and on cable news programs. His efforts earned McCain's respect and the two developed a warmer relationship; he was on the nominee's short list for the vice presidential running mate slot, where his experience in matters economic would have balanced one of McCain's weaknesses. McCain, behind in the polls, opted instead for a high-risk, high-reward "game changer" and selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Romney continued to work for McCain's eventually unsuccessful general election campaign.

Between presidential campaigns

Following the election, Romney paved the way for a possible 2012 presidential campaign by keeping much of his PAC's money to pay for salaries and consulting fees for his existing political staff and to build up a political infrastructure for what might become a $1 billion campaign three years hence. He also had a network of former staff and supporters around the nation who were eager for him to run again. He continued to give speeches and raise campaign funds on behalf of fellow Republicans, but turned down many potential media appearances so as not to become overexposed. He earned over $374,000 in fees for speeches before business, educational, and motivational groups. He served on the board of directors of Marriott International in 2010, earning over $113,000, then stepped down from it in early 2011.

The Romneys sold their main home in Belmont and their ski house in Utah, leaving them an estate along Lake Winnipesaukee in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and an oceanfront home in the La Jolla district of San Diego, California, that they had bought the year before. Both locations were near some of the Romneys' grandchildren, who by 2010 numbered fourteen. The San Diego location was also ideal for Ann Romney's multiple sclerosis therapies and for recovering from her late 2008 diagnosis and lumpectomy for mammary ductal carcinoma in situ. Romney maintained his voting registration in Massachusetts, however, and bought a smaller condominium in Belmont during 2010. Following the August 2009 death of his past rival and sometime ally Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Romney declared that he had no interest in running in the special January 2010 election to replace him. Romney was an early supporter of Scott Brown, the successful Republican candidate in that race. Some of Romney's former aides were used by Brown's campaign and Romney raised funds for Brown. In February 2010, Romney had a minor altercation with LMFAO musical group member Skyler Gordy, known as Sky Blu, on an airplane flight.

Romney's book, ''No Apology: The Case for American Greatness'', was released on March 2, 2010; an 18-state promotional book tour was undertaken. The book, which debuted atop the New York Times Best Seller list, avoided anecdotes about Romney's personal or political life and focused much of its attention on a presentation of his views on economic and geopolitical matters. Earnings from the book were donated to charity.

Polls of various kinds showed Romney remaining in the forefront of possible 2012 presidential contenders. In nationwide opinion polling for the 2012 Republican Presidential primaries, he has often led polls or been in the top three along with Palin and Huckabee. He finished first in the CPAC straw poll in 2009 and second in 2010 and 2011 behind Ron Paul, won the Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll in 2010, and won the New Hampshire Straw Poll in 2011. A January 2010 ''National Journal'' poll of political insiders found that a majority of Republican insiders, and a plurality of Democratic insiders, predicted Romney would become the party's 2012 nominee. Pew Research Center and Gallup Poll results showed that during 2009 and 2010, more in the general public were viewing him favorably (36 to 40 percent) than unfavorably (28 to 29 percent); this was a marked improvement from the days of his 2008 presidential campaign, when the reverse had been true.

Romney campaigned heavily for Republican candidates around the nation in the 2010 midterm elections, and raised the most funds of any of the prospective 2012 Republican presidential candidates. Appearances during early 2011 found Romney emphasizing how his experience could be applied towards solving the nation's economic problems and presenting a more relaxed visual image.

2012 presidential campaign

On April 11, 2011, Romney announced in a video taped outdoors at the University of New Hampshire that he had formed an exploratory committee as a first step for a potential run for the Republican presidential nomination, saying "It is time that we put America back on a course of greatness, with a growing economy, good jobs and fiscal discipline in Washington." The announcement represented the culmination of Romney's activities; as one Quinnipiac University political science professor stated, "We all knew that he was going to run. He's really been running for president ever since the day after the 2008 election."

Romney stood to possibly gain from the Republican electorate's tendency to nominate candidates who had previously run for president and were "next in line" to be chosen. Perhaps his greatest hurdle in gaining the Republican nomination was opposition to the Massachusetts health care reform law that he had signed five years earlier. The early stages of the race found Romney as the apparent front-runner in a weak field, especially in terms of fundraising prowess and organization. As many potential Republican candidates decided not to run (including Mike Pence, John Thune, Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee, and Mitch Daniels), Republican party figures searched for plausible alternatives to Romney.

On June 2, 2011, Romney formally announced the start of his campaign. Speaking on a farm in Stratham, New Hampshire, he stressed economic issues and said that the nation was suffering from "President Obama's own misery index". He said that, "In the campaign to come, the American ideals of economic freedom and opportunity need a clear and unapologetic defense, and I intend to make it – because I have lived it."

Romney took the early fundraising lead, raising four times more in the second quarter of 2011 than his nearest Republican opponent. He ran a low-key, low-profile campaign at first and avoided statements about the ongoing U.S. debt ceiling crisis until the final days, when he said he opposed the Budget Control Act of 2011 that resolved it.

Political positions

For much of his business career, Romney had no tangible record of political positions taken. He followed national politics avidly in college, and the circumstances of his father's presidential campaign loss would grate on him for decades, but his early philosophical influences were often non-political, such as in his missionary days when he read and absorbed Napoleon Hill's pioneering self-help tome ''Think and Grow Rich'' and encouraged his colleagues to do the same. Until his 1994 U.S. Senate campaign, he was registered as an Independent. In the 1992 Democratic Party presidential primaries, he had voted for the Democratic former senator from the state, Paul Tsongas.

In the 1994 Senate race, Romney explicitly aligned himself with Republican Massachusetts Governor William Weld, who believed in fiscal conservatism and supported abortion rights and gay rights, saying "I think Bill Weld's fiscal conservatism, his focus on creating jobs and employment and his efforts to fight discrimination and assure civil rights for all is a model that I identify with and aspire to."

As a gubernatorial candidate, and then as the newly elected Governor of Massachusetts, Romney again generally operated in the mold established by Weld and followed by Weld's two other Republican successors, Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift: restrain spending and taxing, be tolerant or permissive on social issues, protect the environment, be tough on crime, try to appear post-partisan.

Romney has been consistent in many of his political positions. However, Romney's position or choice of emphasis on certain social issues, including abortion, some aspects of gay rights,|group="nb"}} some aspects of stem cell research,|group="nb"}} and some aspects of abstinence-only sex education,|group="nb"}} evolved into a more conservative stance during his time as governor. The change in 2005 on abortion drew particular attention and was the result of what Romney described as an epiphany experienced while investigating stem cell research issues. He later said, "Changing my position was in line with an ongoing struggle that anyone has that is opposed to abortion personally, vehemently opposed to it, and yet says, 'Well, I'll let other people make that decision.' And you say to yourself, but if you believe that you're taking innocent life, it's hard to justify letting other people make that decision."

This increased alignment with traditional conservatives on social issues coincided with Romney's becoming a candidate for the 2008 Republican nomination for President, and also included a new-found admiration for the National Rifle Association paired with ineptly attempting to portray himself as a lifelong hunter, rarely mentioning his Massachusetts health care law, being a convert on signing an anti-tax pledge, and displaying bluster or boldness on foreign policy matters (such as wanting to double the number of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp). In response, many skeptics, including a number of Republicans, charged Romney with opportunism and having a lack of core principles. The fervor with which Romney adopted his new stances and attitudes contributed to the perception of inauthenticity which hampered that campaign. Romney generally responds to criticisms of ideological pandering with remarks like, "The older I get, the smarter Ronald Reagan gets."

While there have been many biographical parallels between the lives of George Romney and his son Mitt, There are also obvious differences in their paths, including that George had a hardscrabble upbringing while Mitt's was affluent, and that Mitt far exceeded George's accomplishments in formal education.|group="nb"}} one particular difference is that while George was willing to defy political trends, Mitt has been much more willing to adapt to them. Mitt Romney has said that learning from experience and changing views accordingly is a virtue, and that, "If you're looking for someone who's never changed any positions on any policies, then I'm not your guy." Journalist and author Daniel Gross sees Romney as approaching politics in the same terms as a business competing in markets, in that successful executives do not hold firm to public stances over long periods of time, but rather constantly devise new strategies and plans to deal with new geographical regions and ever-changing market conditions. Political profiler Ryan Lizza sees the same question regarding whether Romney's business skills can be adapted to politics, saying that "while giving customers exactly what they want may be normal in the corporate world, it can be costly in politics". Writer Robert Draper holds a somewhat similar perspective: "The Romney curse was this: His strength lay in his adaptability. In governance, this was a virtue; in a political race, it was an invitation to be called a phony."

Immediately following the March 2010 passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Romney attacked the landmark legislation as "an unconscionable abuse of power" and said the act should be repealed. The hostile attention it held among Republicans created a potential problem for the former governor, since the new federal law was in many ways similar to the Massachusetts health care reform passed during Romney's term; as one Associated Press article stated, "Obamacare ... looks a lot like Romneycare." While acknowledging that his plan was not perfect and still was a work in progress, Romney did not back away from it, and has consistently defended the state-level health insurance mandate that underpins it. He has focused on its having had bipartisan support in the state legislature, while the Obama plan received no Republican support at all in Congress, and upon it being the right answer to Massachusetts' specific problems at the time. A Romney spokesperson has stated: "Mitt Romney has been very clear in all his public statements that he is opposed to a national individual mandate. He believes those decisions should be left to the states." While Romney has not explicitly argued for a federally-imposed mandate, during his 1994 Senate campaign he indicated he would vote for an overall health insurance proposal that contained one, and he suggested during his time as governor and during his 2008 presidential campaign that the Massachusetts plan was a model for the nation and that over time mandate plans might be adopted by most or all of the nation.

Throughout his business, Olympics, and political career, Romney's instinct has been to apply the "Bain way" towards problems. Romney has said, "There were two key things I learned at Bain. One was a series of concepts for approaching tough problems and a problem-solving methodology; the other was an enormous respect for data, analysis, and debate." He has written, "There are answers in numbers – gold in numbers. Pile the budgets on my desk and let me wallow." Romney believes the Bain approach is not only effective in the business realm but also in running for office and, once there, in solving political conundrums such as proper Pentagon spending levels and the future of Social Security. Former Bain and Olympics colleague Fraser Bullock has said of Romney, "He's not an ideologue. He makes decisions based on researching data more deeply than anyone I know." Romney's technocratic instincts have thus always been with him; in his public appearances during the 2002 gubernatorial campaign he sometimes gave PowerPoint presentations rather than conventional speeches. Upon taking office he became, in the words of ''The Boston Globe'', "the state's first self-styled CEO governor". During his 2008 presidential campaign he was constantly asking for data, analysis, and opposing arguments, and has been viewed as a potential "CEO president" should he get that far.

Religious aspects of public image

Romney is a sixth-generation member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church, colloquially known as the Mormon church). He has avoided speaking publicly about specific church doctrines, and pointed out that the U.S. Constitution prohibits religious tests for public office. Polls in 2007 and 2011 indicated that about a quarter of Republican voters, and a quarter of voters overall, said they were less likely to vote for a candidate who was a Mormon. Romney's "Faith in America" speech, delivered in December 2007, addressed the matter. In it, Romney said he should neither be elected nor rejected based upon his religion, and echoed Senator John F. Kennedy's famous speech during his 1960 presidential campaign in saying "I will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law." Instead of discussing the specific tenets of his faith, he said that he would be informed by it and that, "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

One academic study, based upon research conducted throughout the 2008 primaries, showed that a negative perception of Mormonism was widespread during the election, and that perception was often resistant to factual information that would correct mistaken notions about the religion or Romney's relationship to it. The authors concluded that, "For Romney ... religion ''is'' the central story." Another study, analyzing a survey conducted during January 2008 (when an African American, a woman, and a Mormon all had realistic chances of becoming the first president from that group), found that voters had internally accepted the notion of black equality, paving the way for Barack Obama's election; had partially established but not fully internalized the notion of gender equality, making Hillary Rodham Clinton's task somewhat more difficult; but had only selectively internalized the notion of religious equality, and in particular not extended it to Mormons, thus making Romney's run significantly more difficult. Those authors concluded that, "for a Mormon candidate, the road to the presidency remains very rough ... The bias against a Mormon candidate is substantial."

The June 13, 2011, issue of ''Newsweek'' magazine featured a Romney-themed cover based on the popular ''Book of Mormon'' Broadway musical, and dubbed the summer of 2011 "The Mormon Moment". Analysts expect Romney's Mormonism to become an issue again in the 2012 campaign.

Electoral history

Awards and honors

Romney has received four honorary doctorates: an Honorary Doctor of Business from the University of Utah in 1999, an Honorary Doctor of Law from Bentley College in 2002, an Honorary Doctor of Public Administration from Suffolk University Law School in 2004, and an Honorary Doctor of Public Service from Hillsdale College in 2007.

''People'' magazine included Romney in its 50 Most Beautiful People list for 2002. In 2004, Romney received the inaugural Truce Ideal Award for his role in the 2002 Winter Olympics. In 2008, he shared with his wife Ann the Canterbury Medal from The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, for "refus[ing] to compromise their principles and faith" during the presidential campaign.

See also

'' Presidents and Prophets: the Story of America’s Presidents and the LDS Church''

List of JD/MBAs

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

;Official

Romney official campaign website

;Other

Campaign Contributions made by Mitt Romney at NewsMeat

Press releases as Governor of Massachusetts 2003–2007

The Making of Mitt Romney, ''Boston Globe'', 2007, 7-part series

Romney and health care: In the thick of history, ''Boston Globe'', 2011, first of a series

Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century Mormon missionaries Category:American chief executives Category:American Latter Day Saints Category:American investors Category:American management consultants Category:American Mormon missionaries Category:American political writers Category:Bain Capital Category:Bishops of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Category:Boston Consulting Group people Category:Businesspeople from Massachusetts Category:Brigham Young University alumni Category:Cranbrook Educational Community alumni Category:Governors of Massachusetts Category:Harvard Business School alumni Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Massachusetts Republicans Category:Michigan Republicans Category:Mormon missionaries in France Category:People from Belmont, Massachusetts Category:People from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan Category:People from Detroit, Michigan Category:Pratt–Romney family Category:Private equity and venture capital investors Category:Stake presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Category:Stanford University alumni Category:United States presidential candidates, 2008 Category:United States presidential candidates, 2012 Category:Writers from Massachusetts Category:Businesspeople from Michigan

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birthname	Richard John Santorum
jr/sr	United States Senator
state	Pennsylvania
party	Republican
term	January 3, 1995 – January 3, 2007
preceded	Harris Wofford
succeeded	Bob Casey, Jr.
state2	Pennsylvania
district2	18th
term2	January 3, 1991 – January 3, 1995
preceded2	Doug Walgren
succeeded2	Mike Doyle
birth date	May 10, 1958
birth place	Winchester, Virginia
dead	alive
occupation	Attorney, politician
residence	Penn Hills, Pennsylvania
law school	Dickinson School of Law, 1986
spouse	Karen Garver Santorum
alma mater	Pennsylvania State University University of Pittsburgh Dickinson School of Law
religion	Christian (Roman Catholic)
footnotes	}}

Richard John "Rick" Santorum (born May 10, 1958) is a lawyer and a former United States Senator from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Santorum is a member of the Republican Party and was the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.

Santorum is considered both a social and fiscal conservative. He is known for his stances on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Social Security, intelligent design, homosexuality, and the Terri Schiavo case.

In March 2007, Santorum joined the law firm Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC. He was to primarily practice law in the firm’s Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., offices, where he was to provide business and strategic counseling services to the firm's clients. In addition to his work with the firm, Santorum also serves as a Senior Fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and was a contributor to Fox News Channel.

Santorum is a candidate for president of the United States in the 2012 election. He formed a presidential exploratory committee on April 13, 2011, and formally announced his candidacy on June 6.

Early life, education, and legal career

Santorum was born in Winchester, Virginia, and raised in Berkeley County, West Virginia, and Butler County, Pennsylvania. He is the son of Aldo Santorum (born 1923) and Catherine Keane (née Dughi; born 1918). His father was an Italian immigrant, and his mother was of half Italian and half Irish descent.

Both of Santorum's parents worked at the Veterans’ Administration (VA) Hospital in Butler, and the family lived on the VA hospital post. His father became licensed as a psychologist in August 1974. He attended schools in the Butler Area School District, where he gained the nickname “Rooster”, allegedly because he "always had a few errant hairs on the back of his head that refused to stay down", and he was "noisy, showy, dogged and determined like a rooster and never backed down".

Santorum graduated from Carmel High School in Mundelein, Illinois, in 1976, where his father transferred within the VA hospital system. He lists his residency as Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, and maintains a home in Leesburg, Virginia, for his work in Washington, D.C.

Santorum earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, having majored in Political Science, from The Pennsylvania State University in 1980, and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1981. He is a member of Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity.

In 1986, Santorum earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the Dickinson School of Law, was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar, and began practicing law in Pittsburgh. While working at the law firm of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, he represented the World Wrestling Federation, arguing that professional wrestling should be exempt from federal anabolic steroid regulations because it was not a sport. Santorum left private practice after first being elected to the House in November 1990.

Family

Santorum and his wife, Karen Garver Santorum, have seven children: Elizabeth Anne (born 1991); Richard John ("Johnny"), Jr. (born 1993); Daniel James (born 1995); Sarah Maria (born 1998); Peter Kenneth (born 1999); Patrick Francis (born 2001); and Isabella "Bella" Maria (born 2008). Bella was subsequently diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a serious genetic disorder which is fatal before birth in 90 per cent of cases. In 1996, their son Gabriel Michael was born prematurely and lived for only two hours (a sonogram taken before Gabriel was born revealed that his posterior urethral valve was closed and that the prognosis for his survival was therefore poor). While pregnant, Karen Santorum developed a life-threatening intrauterine infection and a fever that reached nearly 105 degrees. She went into labor when she was 20 weeks pregnant and allowed doctors to give her Oxytocin to speed the birth.

Karen Santorum wrote a book about the experience: ''Letters to Gabriel: The True Story of Gabriel Michael Santorum''. In it, she writes that the couple brought the deceased infant home from the hospital and introduced the dead child to their living children as "your brother Gabriel" and slept with the body overnight before returning it to the hospital. The anecdote was also written about by Michael Sokolove in a 2005 ''New York Times Magazine'' story on Santorum. Karen is also the author of a book on etiquette for children.

Santorum and his family usually attend Latin Mass at Saint Catherine of Siena Church, near Washington, D.C. On November 12, 2004, Santorum and his wife were invested as Knight and Dame of Magistral Grace of the Knights of Malta in a ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York.

Political career

Santorum first became actively involved in politics through volunteering for the late Senator John Heinz.

After earning his Juris Doctor, Santorum became an administrative assistant to Republican State Senator Doyle Corman (until 1986). He was director of the Pennsylvanian Senate's local government committee from 1981 to 1984, then director of the Pennsylvanian Senate's Transportation Committee until 1986.

In 1990, at age 32, Santorum was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 18th District, located in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. He scored a significant upset, defeating a seven-term Democratic incumbent, Doug Walgren. Although the 18th was heavily Democratic, Santorum attacked Walgren for living outside the district for most of the year. He was re-elected in 1992, in part because the district lost its share of Pittsburgh as a result of redistricting. In Congress, as a member of the Gang of Seven, Santorum worked to expose congressional corruption by naming the guilty parties in the House banking scandal.

In 1994, at the age of 36, Santorum was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating the incumbent Democrat, Harris Wofford, who was 32 years older. The theme of Santorum's 1994 campaign signs was "Join the Fight!" Santorum was re-elected in 2000 defeating Congressman Ron Klink by a 52.4% to 45.5% margin.

In 1996 he endorsed Arlen Specter for president.

In a 2002 PoliticsPA feature story designating politicians with yearbook superlatives, he was named the "Most Ambitious".

As chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, Santorum directed the communications operations of Senate Republicans and was a frequent party spokesperson. He was the youngest member of the Senate leadership and the first Pennsylvanian to hold such a prominent position since Senator Hugh Scott was Republican leader in the 1970s. In addition, Santorum served on the Senate Agriculture Committee; the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; the Senate Special Committee on Aging; and the Senate Finance Committee, of which he was the chairman of the Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy.

In January 2005, Santorum announced his intention to run for United States Senate Republican Whip, the second-highest post in the Republican caucus after the 2006 election. The move came because it was presumed the incumbent whip, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, was viewed as having the inside track to succeeding Bill Frist of Tennessee as Senate Republican leader.

During the lame-duck session of the 109th Congress, Santorum was one of only two senators who voted against Robert Gates to become Secretary of Defense. He opposed Gates' advocacy of engaging Iran and Syria to solve the problem, saying that talking to "radical Islam" would be an error.

During his third term re-election campaign for his Senate seat against Bob Casey, Jr., Santorum introduced the term "Islamic fascism", while questioning "his opponent's ability to make the right decisions on national security at a time when 'our enemies are fully committed to our destruction.'"

Santorum sat at the Senate's candy desk for ten years and kept it stocked with Hershey’s chocolates, Peanut Chews and Hot Tamales.

Santorum was defeated 59% to 41% in the 2006 U.S. Senate election by Democratic candidate Bob Casey, Jr. This was the largest margin of defeat for an incumbent Senator since 1980.

Political ideology

He is known for his “confrontational, partisan, ‘in your face’ style of politics and government.”

In September 2005, Santorum gave a speech that outlined the successes and failures—but more centrally the future—of conservatism, at the Heritage Foundation's First International Conservative Conference on Social Justice. In November 2005, he adapted his speech into an op-ed piece for the political website Townhall.com outlining his vision for "Compassionate Conservatism".

The Associated Press reported that on July 20, 2006, Santorum stated that "Islamic fascism rooted in Iran is behind much of the world's conflict, but he is opposed to military action against the country", in a speech where he "also defended the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay." The senator indicated that "effective action against Iran" would require America's fighting "for a strong Lebanon, a strong Israel, and a strong Iraq."

On September 7, 2006, Santorum outlined his views on foreign policy in an op-ed piece for the ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' and discussed Islamic fascism, closing with a rally cry:

Santorum has referred to his grandfather's historical encounter with Italian fascism as an inspiration for his 2012 presidential campaign.

Legislation and issues

Santorum has attracted support and criticism because of his socially conservative and strong views, including his views on same-sex marriage, homosexuality, and abortion. His views are presented in his 2005 book, ''It Takes a Family'', published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute of Wilmington, Delaware.

Santorum has been active in addressing the issues of welfare reform and government accountability. He is a self-described conservative who favors restricting or prohibiting abortion. Santorum has said he is personally against abortion and has expressed disapproval of homosexuality, issues that he believes should be decided by elected officials rather than the Supreme Court: “what I’d like to do is have these kinds of incredibly important moral issues be decided by the American public, not by nine unelected, unaccountable judges.”

Illegal immigration

In 2006, Santorum opposed the Senate immigration reform proposal. Instead, Santorum stated that the U.S. should act to enforce currently existing laws. He has openly stated his strong opposition to amnesty for undocumented immigrants. He supports the construction of a barrier along the U.S.–Mexican border, an increase in the number of border patrol agents on the border, and the stationing of National Guard troops along the border. He also believes that undocumented immigrants should be deported immediately when they commit crimes, and that undocumented immigrants should not receive benefits from the government. Finally, the former senator believes that English should be established as the national language in the United States.

Intelligent design

In 2001, Santorum tried unsuccessfully to insert language which came to be known as the "Santorum Amendment" into the No Child Left Behind bill that sought to promote the teaching of intelligent design while questioning the academic standing of evolution in public schools. The amendment, crafted with the assistance of the Discovery Institute, would have required schools to discuss possible controversies surrounding scientific topics, and gave the theory of evolution as an example, opening the door for intelligent design as an opposing theory to be presented in science classrooms. A federal court in Santorum's own state, along with the majority of scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, say the Institute has manufactured the controversy they want to teach by promoting a false perception that evolution is "a theory in crisis", portraying it as being the subject of wide controversy and debate within the scientific community.

Though not included in the final version of the Act made law, the language from the amendment was included in a report attached to the Act known as the Conference Report. The Discovery Institute and many intelligent design proponents, including two Ohio Congressmen, have repeatedly invoked this to suggest that intelligent design should be included in public school science standards as an alternative to evolution.

In a 2002 ''Washington Times'' op-ed article Santorum wrote that intelligent design "is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes." By 2005 Santorum had adopted the Discovery Institute's Teach the Controversy approach, stating in an interview with National Public Radio "I'm not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom. What we should be teaching are the problems and holes, and I think there are legitimate problems and holes in the theory of evolution", a statement which mirrors the Teach the Controversy strategy, the most recent iteration of the intelligent design movement. The day after the ''Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District'' decision that intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature came down, Santorum announced that he was resigning from the advisory board of the Thomas More Law Center which had defended the Dover school board. Most recently Santorum wrote the foreword for the March 2006 book, ''Darwin's Nemesis: Phillip Johnson And the Intelligent Design Movement'' a collection of essays largely by Discovery Institute fellows honoring the "father" of the intelligent design movement, Phillip E. Johnson.

Workplace Religious Freedom Act

Santorum and U.S. Senator John Kerry, (D-MA), were the lead sponsors of the Workplace Religious Freedom Act (WRFA), which would require employers to accommodate the religious observances of their employees as long as such accommodations would not impose an "undue hardship" on the employer. Thus, employers would be required to afford employees flexible work shifts so that they could observe religious holidays and to permit employees to wear religiously required clothing at work. Versions of the WRFA have been introduced in 1997, 2000, and 2003, but have failed to be enacted.

National Weather Service

On April 14, 2005, Santorum introduced the National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005 to "clarify the duties and responsibilities of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service (NWS), and for other purposes". This legislation, if enacted, would prohibit the NWS from publishing weather data to the public when private-sector entities, such as AccuWeather, a company based in Santorum's home state, perform the same function commercially. Accuweather employees have contributed at least $5500 to Santorum since 1999, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Opponents of this bill contend that weather data is collected at taxpayer expense, and therefore it should be made freely available to the public, and not provided solely to private corporations that will charge fees for access. They also claim that the vague language in the bill is an attempt to prevent the NWS from issuing free forecasts because such functions are currently provided by the private sector and would be considered competition.

The bill was never enacted or voted upon, dying in committee.

Statements regarding homosexuality

A controversy arose following Santorum's statements about homosexuality in an interview with the Associated Press that was published on April 20, 2003. In response to a question about how to prevent sexual abuse of children by priests, Santorum said the priests were engaged in "a basic homosexual relationship", and went on to say that he had "[...] no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts"; that the right to privacy, as detailed in ''Griswold v. Connecticut,'' "doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution"; that, "whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, whether it's sodomy, all of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family"; and that sodomy laws properly exist to prevent acts that "undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family". When the Associated Press reporter asked whether homosexuals should not then engage in homosexual acts, Santorum replied, "Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality".

When questioned for his remarks, Santorum stated that they were intended not to equate homosexuality with incest and pedophilia, but rather as a critique of the specific legal position that the right to privacy prevents the government from regulating consensual acts among adults (such as bigamy, incest, etc.).

In protest of the remarks, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched a contest among his readers in May 2003 to coin a new word "santorum" with an unflattering sexual definition, and followed this with a Google bombing campaign to spread the new term. Since 2004, Savage's Google bomb has regularly been the top search result for Santorum's surname, leading to what commentators have dubbed "Santorum's Google problem". Santorum has characterized the campaign as a "type of vulgarity" common on the Internet.

During the presidential debate held August 11, 2011, in Ames, Iowa, Santorum stated that the Iranian regime "tramples the rights of gays", suggesting that he opposes bias against gays as part of his general support for past U.S.-backed intervention in domestic Iranian politics.

Comments about the Boston Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal

In 2005, a controversy developed over comments about Boston, Massachusetts, that Santorum made in a 2002 article about the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. Santorum wrote: }}

These comments came to wider attention through an opinion column in the ''Philadelphia Daily News'' on June 24, 2005. Columnist John Baer cited Santorum's article, stating, "I'd remind you this is the same Senate leader who recently likened Democrats fighting to save the filibuster to Nazis."

Santorum's remarks were criticized, especially in Massachusetts. On July 12, 2005, ''Boston Globe'' columnist Brian McGrory called on Santorum to explain his statement, and reported that Robert Traynham, Santorum's Director of Communications, told him "It's an open secret that you have Harvard University and MIT that tend to tilt to the left in terms of academic biases. I think that's what the senator was speaking to." Julie Teer, a spokeswoman for Governor of Massachusetts, Republican Mitt Romney, said "What happened with the church sex abuse scandal was a tragedy, but it had nothing to do with geography or the culture of Boston."

Later that day, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) delivered a personal rebuke to Santorum on the Senate floor, saying "The people of Boston are to blame for the clergy sexual abuse? That is an irresponsible, insensitive and inexcusable thing to say." Santorum has stood by his 2002 article and has not apologized.

On July 21, 2005, Rush Limbaugh interviewed Santorum about Kennedy's speech. Santorum said that he was being targeted by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which, he said, coordinated with the media to publicize Kennedy's speech. He argued that his statement about Boston was taken out of context from an article he had written three years earlier. Santorum agreed with Limbaugh's summary that it was "no surprise that the center of the Catholic Church abuse took place in very liberal, or perhaps the nation's most liberal area, Boston." Santorum reiterated his broader theme of a cultural connection, saying that it is "no surprise that the culture affects people's behavior. [...] the liberal culture—the idea that [...] sexual inhibitions should be put aside and people should be able to do whatever they want to do, has an impact on people and how they behave." When asked why Boston specifically was mentioned, Santorum pointed out that, in July 2002, the outrage of American Catholics, as well as his own, was focused on the Archdiocese of Boston.

Hurricane Katrina

On September 4, 2005, Santorum spoke to a Pittsburgh television station, WTAE, about the evacuation warnings given for Hurricane Katrina:

The campaign of Bob Casey, Jr., his Democratic opponent for the Senate, criticized Santorum's remarks.

On September 6, in a follow-up interview with WTAE, Santorum said,

On September 8, during an interview with public-radio station WITF-FM, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Santorum said

Santorum was the sponsor of legislation proposed to ''prevent'' the National Weather Service from issuing those warnings, thus competing with private-sector weather services, as discussed above.

Santorum added a synthetic-fuel tax-credit amendment to a larger bill introduced in the Senate by Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who headed the Senate Finance Committee. ''Time Magazine'' called this tax-credit scheme "a multibillion-dollar scam." The amendment was inserted in the Tax Relief Act of 2006, which provides aid for Hurricane Katrina victims and sets new policies for tax-exempt groups.

Pennsylvania residency and tuition fee

In November 2004, a controversy developed over education costs for Santorum's children. Santorum's legal address is a three-bedroom house in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, which he purchased for $87,800 in 1997 and is located next to the home of his wife's parents. But since 2001, he has spent most of the year in Leesburg, Virginia, a town about one hour's drive west of Washington, D.C., and about 90 minutes' drive south of the Pennsylvania border, in a house he purchased for $643,000. The ''Penn Hills Progress'', a local paper, reported that Santorum and his wife paid about $2,000 per year in property taxes on their Pennsylvania home ($487.20 per year to Allegheny County, 2006 through 2008, based on a 2007 value of $106,000, plus Penn Hills School District tax). The paper also found that another couple—possibly renters—were registered voters at the same address.

At the time the issue arose, Santorum's five older children attended the Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, with 80 percent of tuition costs paid by the Penn Hills School District. At a meeting in November 2004, the Penn Hills School District announced that it did not believe Santorum met the qualifications for residency status, because he and his family spent most of the year in Virginia. They demanded repayment of tuition costs totaling $67,000.

When news reports showed Sen. Santorum was renting his Penn Hills home, Santorum withdrew his five children from the cyber education program that Penn Hills School District paid for. That saved Penn Hills taxpayers about $38,000 a year. Although Santorum said he would make other arrangements for his children's education, he insisted that he did not owe the school board any back tuition. Once the controversy surfaced, the children were withdrawn from the cyber school and were then home schooled.

On July 8, 2005, a Pennsylvania state hearing officer had ruled that the Penn Hills School District had not filed objections to Santorum's residency in a timely manner and dismissed the complaint. Santorum hailed the ruling as a victory against what he termed "baseless and politically motivated charges". Santorum told reporters that "[n]o one's children—and especially not small, school-age children—should be used as pawns in the 'politics of personal destruction.'" In the 2006 senate campaign, Santorum ran television commercials with Santorum's son saying "My dad's opponents have criticized him for moving us to Washington so we could be with him more."

In September 2006, the Pennsylvania Department of Education agreed to pay the district $55,000 to settle the dispute over money withheld from the district to pay for the children of U.S. Senator Rick Santorum to attend a cyber charter school.

The matter rose again in May 2006. Santorum has said that his family stays during holidays and at times on weekends at the Penn Hills house. But the ''Progress'' reported in May that the house appeared unoccupied, and Casey's campaign noted that in a press release. Santorum then accused Casey's campaign of supporting trespassing on his property, saying of Casey "Now that he is a nominee, it is time for him to start acting like a candidate instead of a thug." Casey, in a statement, called the charges "false and malicious." His campaign, in a news release, described Santorum's actions as "weirdness".

In September 2006, Santorum formally asked that the county remove the homestead tax exemption from his Penn Hills residence. He said that he had made similar requests to county officials in conversations in 2005 and earlier in 2006, but to no avail. In his letter, Santorum insisted that he was entitled to the exemption, which is worth about $70 annually, but chose not to take advantage of it because of the political dispute. While homeowners in the county are eligible for a tax savings averaging $70 a year on their primary residences, the county council president noted that Santorum had "said during a televised debate that he spends about 30 days in his Penn Hills house each year.".

Allegheny County Election Office records indicate that, while a registered voter in the county, Santorum had since 1995 voted absentee.

The only way for Santorum to not pay for his children's private education was to enroll them in the Penn Hills School District. Virginia state law only requires local school districts to pay for private school tuition fee when a student has disabilities and enrolls in a school that can satisfy his or her needs, according to Charles Pyle, Virginia Department of Education spokesman. Otherwise, children in Virginia must attend their local public schools.

Santorum's supporters have said that the controversy is politically motivated because the school board is controlled by Democrats (Erin Vecchio, the school board member who first publicly raised the issue, is the chair of the local Democratic Party). They also have said that since Santorum votes in Penn Hills and pays property and school taxes there, he is entitled to the same privileges as any other Penn Hills resident and should not be deprived of these privileges as a result of his service in the U.S. Senate. Non-residency issues have raised questions of hypocrisy, in that Santorum had previously castigated Representative Doug Walgren for moving away from his district.

Declaration regarding WMDs in Iraq

In June 2006, Santorum declared that weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) had been found in Iraq. The specific weapons he referred to were chemical munitions dating back to the Iran–Iraq War that were buried in the early 1990s. The report stated that while agents had degraded to an unknown degree, they remained dangerous and possibly lethal. Officials of the Department of Defense, CIA intelligence analysts, and the White House have all explicitly stated that these expired casings are not part of the WMDs threat that Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched to contain.

Santorum's declaration was based, in part, on declassified portions of a classified report from the National Ground Intelligence Center of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. Portions were declassified in a summary that made six key points:

Since 2003, Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded or vacant mustard or sarin nerve agent casings.

Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre–Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled warheads are believed to still exist. They have no viable military capability, however.

Pre–Gulf War chemical munitions could be sold on the black market. Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups could have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq.

The most likely munitions remaining are sarin- and mustard-filled projectile casings.

The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, the residue could be hazardous upon dermal contact.

It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.

Animal rights

In 2005 a coalition of animal rights groups, spearheaded by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the Doris Day Animal League (DDAL) mounted a failed effort to push the ''Pet Animal Welfare Statute of 2005'' (PAWS) through Congress. The bill was proposed by Senator Santorum and sponsored by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (then-R-PA). PAWS would have reclassified most small and hobby breeders as commercial breeders subjecting them to USDA regulations, allowed home inspections and placed fees and compliance expenses on pet breeders. Fellow Congressmen were told that PAWS was "the puppy mill bill". This was Santorum's third failed attempt at pet-related legislation.

ACLU suit

In 2005, four teenagers were ejected from a bookstore in Wilmington, Delaware, where Santorum was scheduled for a book signing, after they were overheard expressing critical opinions of the senator. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit, which was settled in 2007. As a result of the settlement, the Delaware State Police were required to pay legal fees for the plaintiffs and provide training to officers on free speech rights. The Santorum staff members who requested the ejection were required to apologize and to relinquish their salaries for the event—$2,500.00—to plaintiffs in damages.

Other

As a key member of the Gang of Seven (a group of seven freshmen Republican Congressmen), Santorum helped expose a scandal at the House Bank. The Gang of Seven's reform-minded agenda is often cited as a foundation of the 1994 Republican takeover of the House of Representatives.

In 1996, as a U.S. senator, Santorum served as Chairman of the Republican Party Task Force on Welfare Reform.. The legislation that became the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 written by Florida congressman E. Clay Shaw, Jr., passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

Though not a named author of the special Schiavo legislation, Santorum played a key role in shepherding the bill through the Senate to a vote on March 20, 2005. Santorum has frequently stated that he does not believe a "right to privacy" exists under the Constitution, even within marriage; he has been especially critical of the Supreme Court decision in ''Griswold v. Connecticut'' (1965), which held that the Constitution guaranteed the aforementioned right, and on that basis, overturned a law prohibiting the sale and use of contraceptives.

Santorum is also a supporter of partial privatization of Social Security. Since the 2004 presidential election, Santorum has held forums across Pennsylvania on the topic.

In 2005, Santorum sponsored the Iran Freedom and Support Act, which appropriated $10 million aimed at regime change in Iran. The Act passed with overwhelming support. However, Santorum nevertheless voted against the Lautenberg amendment which would have closed the loophole which allows companies like Halliburton to do business with Iran through their foreign affiliates.

In reference to the Iraq war in 2006, Santorum drew an analogy with ''The Lord of the Rings'' in one of his addresses:

Santorum informed senator John Ensign that Ensign's affair with a staff member was about to become publicly known.

2006 campaign

In 2006, Santorum sought re-election to a third term in the U.S. Senate. His Democratic opponent was State Treasurer Bob Casey, Jr., the son of popular former governor Robert Casey, Sr.(D) Santorum's seat was a prime target of Democratic efforts to gain Senate seats in the 2006 elections. Casey's candidacy was bolstered by his opposition to abortion, negating one of Santorum's key issues.

Republican strategists took as a bad omen Santorum's primary result in 2006, in which he ran unopposed for the Republican nomination. Republican gubernatorial nominee Lynn Swann, also unopposed, garnered 22,000 more votes statewide than Santorum in the primary, meaning thousands of Republican voters abstained from endorsing Santorum for another Senate term. This may have been partly due to Santorum's support for Arlen Specter, over Congressman Pat Toomey in the 2004 Republican primary for the U.S. Senate. Even though Santorum is only slightly less conservative than Toomey, he joined virtually all of the state and national Republican establishment in supporting the moderate Specter. This led many socially and fiscally conservative Republicans to consider Santorum's support of Specter to be a betrayal of their cause.

On May 22, 2006, the polling firm Rasmussen Reports declared that Santorum was the "most vulnerable incumbent" among the Senators running for re-election. However, in August 2006, polling showed Santorum with his highest approval rating in months, 48 percent, a twelve-point jump between July and August. Nearly as many Pennsylvanians, 45 percent, said they had an unfavorable view of the Senator.

For most of the campaign, Santorum was behind by 15 points or more. Most polls during the summer of 2006 showed the race between Casey and Santorum becoming increasingly competitive, but a poll released by Quinnipiac University on September 26 showed Casey's margin ballooning back to a double-digit lead.

One day before the Quinnipiac poll was released, a Pennsylvania state judge ruled against a potential third-party candidate, Carl Romanelli of the Green Party. Romanelli fell about 8,900 petition signatures shy of the threshold needed to be placed on the statewide ballot in November. On October 4, 2006, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court also rejected Romanelli's legal challenge. This was a potential blow to the Santorum campaign, as Romanelli was expected to siphon off some Casey voters.

There is also some question as to whether Romanelli and Pennsylvania's Green Party violated federal election laws when they accepted tens of thousands of dollars in donations from people also backing Santorum's campaign.

Santorum found himself mired in controversy over his residency. For many years, he has maintained a modest home in Penn Hills, a suburb of Pittsburgh, which he claims as his official residence. However, his family lived in the Virginia suburbs of Washington when the Senate was in session. Since this meant Santorum spent most of the year away from Pennsylvania, critics argued it was not unlike the living arrangements he denounced in his 1990 House race against Walgren. Santorum accused Walgren of being out of touch with his Pittsburgh-area district, symbolized by his home in the Virginia suburbs. On NBC's Meet the Press on September 3, 2006, Santorum admitted that he only spends "maybe a month a year, something like that" at his Pennsylvania residence.

Santorum also drew criticism for enrolling five of his six children in an online "cyber school" in Pennsylvania's Allegheny County (home to Pittsburgh and most of its suburbs), despite the fact the children lived in Virginia. The Penn Hills School District was billed $73,000 in tuition for the cyber classes.

At least one of Santorum's television ads called into question his campaign's use of the facts regarding Casey and persons who have donated money to the Casey campaign. According to the ad, some of the persons who have given Casey money are or have been under investigation for various crimes. An editorial in Casey's hometown newspaper, ''The Scranton Times-Tribune'', points out that all but one of the contributions "[was] made to Casey campaigns when he was running for other offices, at which time none of the contributors were known to be under investigation for anything." In fact, two of the persons cited in the Santorum campaign ad had actually given contributions to Mr. Santorum's 2006 Senate campaign. Another died in 2004. However, the Santorum campaign pointed out that the money the Santorum campaign received from those donors was not kept by the campaign, but rather donated to educational institutions.

A heated debate between the candidates occurred on October 11, 2006. There, according to coverage by ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', the candidates appeared "less statesmanlike than either Gov. Ed Rendell or challenger Lynn Swann, who had debated each other in Pittsburgh the [previous] week".

In late October, during the Lebanon County Republican Committee’s annual dinner at the Lantern Lodge, Santorum said "If we are not successful here and things don’t go right in the election, there’s a good chance that the course of our country could change." "We are in the equivalent of the late 1930s, and this election will decide whether we are going to continue to appease or whether we will stand and fight while we have a chance to win without devastating consequences."

Santorum on August 28 gave a speech to Pennsylvania media at the Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon in Harrisburg (which he earlier gave to the National Club) claiming that terrorist attacks on America by "radical Islamists" were part of a more than three-century-old plot to restore Shia clerics to power and bring "the 12th Imam" out of hiding. He said, according to the online news service, Capitolwire: “They believe, as all Shias do, in the Hidden Imam, the 12th Imam," the 12th descendant in a straight line from Mohammed the Prophet, who disappeared in 874, at the age of 5. “The Shia believe that he is the Messiah and he is in hiding and that he will return. … They believe … he will return with radical Islam, when Shia dominates the world. Well, for over 1,000 years, ... the East and West fought, up until 1683 ... In 1683, not that long ago, the Islamists had surrounded the gates of Vienna and were on the verge of toppling it after a siege; ... but the West united, and led by the Poles, [King] John Sobieski and the Polish Hussars defeated [the Arab forces] in a one-day battle on the plains outside Vienna. “What was the high-water mark of this 1,000-year war? It was the day before. What was the date the day before? Sept. 11, 1683.”

This speech eventually led to Santorum launching a tour called "The Gathering Storm," comparing himself to the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who alerted his nation and the world to the Nazi menace in the 1930s, and then fought with America, Russia and others to defeat the Germans, Italians and Japan in World War II in the 1940s. The Associated Press' Jennifer Yates wrote on Oct. 27 that Santorum said: "This is a moment, a critical crossroads in American history," as she noted that "Santorum, who invoked Winston Churchill's memoir – "The Gathering Storm" – about the causes of World War II" then told her and audiences: "The parallel is so profound."

Days before, Yates reported, Santorum said: Casey's election and that of other Democrats trying to take over the U.S. House and Senate would be "a disaster for the future of the world."

On the Sunday before the election, Casey responded to the comment, telling Capitolwire: "Who runs a campaign like that? No one believes terrorists are going to be more likely to attack us, because I defeat Rick Santorum. Does even he believe that?"

Santorum wrote that many women have disclosed to him that it is more "socially affirming to work outside the home than to give up their careers to take care of their children.... What happened in America so that mothers and fathers who leave their children in the care of someone else – or worse yet, home alone after school between three and six in the afternoon – find themselves more affirmed by society? Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism." Polls showed many female voters resented this description of why they worked, especially Republican and independent women whose abandonment of Santorum doomed his campaign, reported the online news service Capitolwire, based in Harrisburg. In a question-and-answer session on Aug. 28 at the Pennsylvania speech, Santorum tried again to address the issue and said his problem was that federal taxes now consumed 27 percent of family wages, and the second wage earner in most families made only 25 percent of the first's wages.

“First, I would say, read the book and I think if you read the book, you can answer the question yourself. Because anyone who has read the book instead of the comments pulled out by the Democratic National Committee about the book, which was four sentences, by the way, in a 430-page book, … would tell you I am supportive of families in a variety of different ways. ... What does the average second-earner in the family make? Twenty five percent of the first earner. ... Because of our tax code, we make it virtually impossible to maintain a standard of living and at the same time, be home with your children. ... Number two, look, I believe that women should have choices when it comes to the workforce. And they should be real choices. "And look, I came from a family where my mother worked, all her life, made more money than my dad (N.B.: his mother and father were a registered nurse and psychiatrist, respectively). I have more people working in my office who are women, in senior policy positions, than men. So I don’t have a hang-up with women working. I do have a hang-up with the government and others in society not nurturing, supporting and encouraging parents to be home with their kids when they need to be home. And I think we need to do more as a society to help them.”

In the November election, Santorum lost, with 41% of the vote to Casey's 59%, the largest margin of defeat ever for an incumbent Republican Senator in Pennsylvania.

Post-Senate career

Before failing to win re-election in 2006, Santorum had frequently been mentioned as a possible 2008 presidential candidate. Such speculation faded when, during the course of the campaign and in light of unimpressive poll numbers, he declared that, if re-elected, he would serve a full term. After he lost, Santorum once again ruled out a presidential run.

In March 2007 Santorum joined Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC, where he primarily practiced law in the firm's Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. offices providing business and strategic counseling services to the firm's clients. He also joined the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a D.C.-based conservative think tank. Santorum was also a contributor on the Fox News Channel. Santorum also writes an Op/Ed piece titled "The Elephant in the Room" for the Commentary Page of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Santorum told the ''Pittsburgh Tribune-Review'' that he would address many geopolitical issues, and then joked, "I don't do Anna Nicole Smith, that's all." After leaving the Senate, Santorum joined the Board of Directors of Universal Health Services, a hospital management company based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

On February 1, 2008, Santorum said he would vote for Mitt Romney in the 2008 Presidential Republican primary race, stating: "If you're a Republican, if you're a Republican in the broadest sense, there is only one place to go right now and that's Mitt Romney.". He has criticized John McCain, questioning his pro-life voting record and whether Sen. McCain holds true conservative values. In September 2008, Santorum expressed support for McCain, citing Sarah Palin as a step in the right direction: "Knowing McCain, he's choosing someone in whom he sees a lot of himself...He tries to find people who have a similar head as he does, and if he sees him in [Palin]...that gives me a better feel for him and a little more confidence in him." In 2011 he said McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war, did not understand how the "enhanced interrogation" process works.

On April 12, 2007, political action committee America's Foundation, Highmark and a former Highmark vice president were fined by the Federal Election Committee for sponsoring Santorum with corporate money. The problem had been reported by Highmark, which uncovered the matter during an internal review.

Santorum was mentioned as a candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania in 2010. At one point, he was said to have "quietly but efficiently put his fingerprints on a wide-array of conservative causes in the state." However, Santorum declined to seek the gubernatorial nomination and instead endorsed eventual winner Tom Corbett.

2012 presidential campaign

In the fall of 2009, Santorum hinted that he was considering a run for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 2012 presidential election. On September 11, 2009, Santorum spoke to a group of Catholic leaders in Orlando, Florida and told them, "I hate to be calculating, but I see that 2012 is not just throwing somebody out to be eaten, but it's a real opportunity for success." He scheduled various appearances with political non-profit organizations that took place in Iowa.

Santorum repeated his consideration of a 2012 run in an e-mail and letter sent on January 15, 2010 to supporters of his political action committee, saying, "After talking it over with my wife Karen and our kids – I am considering putting my name in for the 2012 presidential race. I'm convinced that conservatives need a candidate who will not only stand up for our views, but who can articulate a conservative vision for our country's future," he wrote. "And right now, I just don't see anyone stepping up to the plate. I have no great burning desire to be president, but I have a burning desire to have a different president of the United States". He formed a presidential exploratory committee on April 13, 2011.

Santorum formally announced his run for the Republican presidential nomination on ABC's ''Good Morning America'' on June 6, 2011, saying he's "in it to win."

Works

References

External links

Rick Santorum ''official campaign site''

Column archives at ''Townhall.com''

;Articles

Excerpt from Santorum interview ''USA Today'', April 23, 2003

Lawsuit Abuse Critic Explains Suit ''ABC Primetime'', November 10, 2005

Editorial: Charities on the Hill ''Washington Post'', March 7, 2006

Santorum Against the World, Michael Dougherty, ''The American Conservative'', July 30, 2007

{{U.S. Senator box | before=Harris Wofford | state=Pennsylvania | class=1 | years=1995–2007 | alongside=Arlen Specter | after=Bob Casey, Jr.}}

Category:1958 births Category:American political writers Category:American people of Italian descent Category:American Traditionalist Catholics Category:American writers of Italian descent Category:Animal rights advocates Category:College Republicans Category:Dickinson School of Law alumni Category:Intelligent design advocates Category:Knights of Malta Category:Living people Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania Category:Pennsylvania State University alumni Category:Pennsylvania lawyers Category:Pennsylvania Republicans Category:People from Winchester, Virginia Category:The Philadelphia Inquirer people Category:Politicians from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:Republican Party United States Senators Category:Traditionalist Catholic writers Category:United States Senators from Pennsylvania Category:United States presidential candidates, 2012 Category:University of Pittsburgh alumni Category:Writers from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:Writers from Virginia

de:Rick Santorum es:Rick Santorum fr:Rick Santorum it:Rick Santorum la:Ricardus Iohannes Santorum nl:Rick Santorum ja:リック・サントラム pl:Rick Santorum ru:Санторум, Рик fi:Rick Santorum sv:Rick Santorum zh:里克·桑托勒姆

Vermin Supreme is a performance artist and activist who is known for his being a satirical candidate in the United States in various local, State, and national elections. Supreme is known for wearing a boot shaped hat and carrying a large toothbrush. He claims that if elected President of the United States he will pass a law requiring people to brush their teeth. Supreme claims to mock the political system.

Background

Elections

References

External links

Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:American performance artists