A voice vote (or ''viva voce'', from the Latin, "live voice") is a voting method used by deliberative assemblies (such as legislatures) in which a vote is taken on a topic or motion by responding verbally.

Typically the presiding officer or chair of the assembly will put the question to the assembly, making it clear that the members understand the effect of an "aye" vote and a "no" vote, and will then ask first for all those in favor of the motion to indicate so verbally, and then ask second all those opposed to the motion to indicate so verbally.

United States

''Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised'' (10th edition) provides that: :A vote by voice is the regular method of voting on any motion that does not require more than a majority vote for its adoption. In taking a voice vote, the chair puts the question by saying, "The question is on the adoption of the motion to [or "that"] ... [repeating or clearly identifying the motion]. Those in favor of the motion, say ''aye''. [Pausing for response,] Those opposed, say ''no''." (Alternative forms are: "All those in favor..."; "All in favor..."; or the wording formerly prescribed by Congress, "As many as are in favor...") In the case of a resolution, the question may be put as follows: "The question is on the adoption of the following resolution: [reading it]. Those in favor of adopting the resolution that was just read, say ''aye''...Those opposed, say ''no''." If the question has been read very recently and there appears no desire to have it read again, the chair may use this form: "The question is on the adoption of the resolution last read. "Those in favor of adopting the resolution, say ''aye''...Those opposed, say ''no''."

The decision as to the result of the vote is then decided by the chair, although it can be challenged. In such a case, if a certain proportion of the assembly agrees, a recorded vote or division vote takes place.)

As a result—when the voice vote procedure is used—no names or numbers on who voted for what are recorded due to its impracticality, and the record will often stand as something to the effect of "unanimously approved by Voice Vote." The voice vote is generally used when the matter in question is either without controversy or paradoxically when the matter at hand is quite controversial and participants wish to enjoy "political cover."

United Kingdom

A voice vote is held to decide if a bill can progress through to the next stage.

The Speaker will then propose the question by saying, for example (second reading): "The Question is, that the Bill be now read a second time". The Speaker then invites supporters of the bill to say "aye" and then opponents say "no": "All members of that opinion say 'aye' [supporters say 'aye'], contrary 'no' [opponents say 'no']. In what is known as ''collecting the voices'' the Speaker makes a judgement as to the loudest cry. A clear majority either way will prompt the response "I think the Ayes/Noes have it" (this can be forced to a division by continued cries either way). If the result is at all in doubt a division will be called and the speaker will say "Division. Clear the Lobby".

See also

Division (vote)

References

External links

U.S. Senate

U.S. House of Representatives

Category:Parliamentary procedure

sv:Acklamation

African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes) are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa. Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States. However, some immigrants from African, Caribbean, Central American or South American nations, or their descendants, may be identified or self-identify with the term.

African Americans make up the single largest racial minority in the United States.

African-American history starts in the 16th century with African slaves who quickly rose up against the Spanish explorer Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón and progresses to the present day, with Barack Obama as the 44th and current President of the United States. Between those landmarks there have been events and issues, both resolved and ongoing, including slavery, racism, reconstruction, development of the African-American community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement.

History

Slavery era

The first African slaves arrived in the present-day United States as part of the San Miguel de Gualdape colony (most likely located in the Winyah Bay area of present-day South Carolina), founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón in 1526. The ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic and the colony was abandoned, leaving the escaped slaves behind on North American soil.

In 1565, the colony of Saint Augustine in Florida, founded by Pedro Menendez de Aviles, became the first permanent European settlement in North America. It included an unknown number of free and enslaved Africans that were part of this colonial expedition.

The first recorded Africans in British North America (including most of the future United States) arrived in 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia. As English settlers died from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. The Africans were likely treated as indentured servants, similar in legal position to poor English indenturees, who traded several years labor in exchange for passage to America. Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom. They raised families, marrying other Africans and sometimes intermarrying with Native Americans or English settlers. By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards.

The popular conception of a race-based slave system did not fully develop until the 18th century. The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven black slaves into New Amsterdam (present-day New York City). All the colony's slaves, however, were freed upon its surrender to the British. Massachusetts was the first British colony to legally recognize slavery in 1641. It was not until 1662 that Virginia ruled that a slave mother's children would remain slaves.

The first black congregations and churches were organized before 1800 in both northern and southern cities following the Great Awakening. By 1775, Africans made up 20% of the population in the American colonies, which made them the second largest ethnic group after the English. During the 1770s, Africans, both enslaved and free, helped rebellious English colonists secure American Independence by defeating the British in the American Revolution. Africans and Englishmen fought side by side and were fully integrated. James Armistead, an African American, played a large part in making possible the 1781 Yorktown victory, which established the United States as an independent nation. Other prominent African Americans were Prince Whipple and Oliver Cromwell, who are both depicted in the front of the boat in George Washington's famous ''1776 Crossing the Delaware'' portrait.

By 1860, there were 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the United States due to the Atlantic slave trade, and another 500,000 African Americans lived free across the country. In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared that all slaves in states which had seceded from the Union were free. Advancing Union troops enforced the proclamation with Texas being the last state to be emancipated in 1865.

Reconstruction and Jim Crow

[[File:Jesse Owens1.jpg|thumb|right|Jesse Owens shook racial stereotypes both with Nazis and segregationists in the USA at the 1936 Berlin olympics.]] African Americans quickly set up congregations for themselves, as well as schools, community and civic associations, to have space away from white control or oversight. While the post-war reconstruction era was initially a time of progress for African Americans, in the late 1890s, Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Most African Americans followed the Jim Crow laws, using a mask of compliance to prevent becoming victims of racially motivated violence. To maintain self-esteem and dignity, African Americans such as Anthony Overton and Mary McLeod Bethune continued to build their own schools, churches, banks, social clubs, and other businesses.

In the last decade of the 19th century, racially discriminatory laws and racial violence aimed at African Americans began to mushroom in the United States. These discriminatory acts included racial segregation—upheld by the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896—which was legally mandated by southern states and nationwide at the local level of government, voter suppression or disenfranchisement in the southern states, denial of economic opportunity or resources nationwide, and private acts of violence and mass racial violence aimed at African Americans unhindered or encouraged by government authorities.

Great Migration and Civil Rights Movement

The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South that sparked the Great Migration of the early 20th century, combined with a growing African American community in the Northern United States, led to a movement to fight violence and discrimination against African Americans that, like abolitionism before it, crossed racial lines. The Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1968 was directed at abolishing racial discrimination against African Americans, particularly in the Southern United States. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the conditions which brought it into being are credited with putting pressure on President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Johnson put his support behind passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions, and the Voting Rights Act (1965), which expanded federal authority over states to ensure black political participation through protection of voter registration and elections. By 1966, the emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from 1966 to 1975, expanded upon the aims of the Civil Rights Movement to include economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from white authority.

Post-Civil Rights era

Politically and economically, blacks have made substantial strides during the post-civil rights era. In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African-American elected governor in U.S. history. There is currently one black governor; governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. Clarence Thomas became the second African-American Supreme Court Justice. In 1992 Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. There were 8,936 black officeholders in the United States in 2000, showing a net increase of 7,467 since 1970. In 2001 there were 484 black mayors.

On November 4, 2008, Democratic Senator Barack Obama defeated Republican Senator John McCain to become the first African American to be elected President. At least 95 percent of African-American voters voted for Obama. He also received overwhelming support from young and educated whites, a majority of Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans picking up a number of new states in the Democratic electoral column. Obama lost the overall white vote, although he won a larger proportion of white votes than any previous nonincumbent Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter. The following year Michael S. Steele was elected the first African-American chairman of the national Republican Party.

Demographics

In 1790, when the first U.S. Census was taken, Africans (including slaves and free people) numbered about 760,000—about 19.3% of the population. In 1860, at the start of the Civil War, the African American population had increased to 4.4 million, but the percentage rate dropped to 14% of the overall population of the country. The vast majority were slaves, with only 488,000 counted as "freemen". By 1900, the black population had doubled and reached 8.8 million. In 1910, about 90% of African Americans lived in the South, but large numbers began migrating north looking for better job opportunities and living conditions, and to escape Jim Crow laws and racial violence. The Great Migration, as it was called, spanned the 1890s to the 1970s. From 1916 through the 1960s, more than 6 million black people moved north. But in the 1970s and 1980s, that trend reversed, with more African Americans moving south to the Sun Belt than leaving it.

The following table of the African American population in the United States over time shows that the African American population, as a percentage of the total population, declined until 1930 and has been rising since then. {|class="wikitable" style="float:left; font-size:85%;" African Americans in the United States ! Year || Number || % of totalpopulation || % Change(10 yr) || Slaves || % in slavery |- | 1790 || 757,208 || 19.3% (highest) || – || 697,681 || 92% |- | 1800 || 1,002,037 || 18.9% || 32.3% || 893,602 || 89% |- | 1810 || 1,377,808 || 19.0% || 37.5% || 1,191,362 || 86% |- | 1820 || 1,771,656 || 18.4% || 28.6% || 1,538,022 || 87% |- | 1830 || 2,328,642 || 18.1% || 31.4% || 2,009,043 || 86% |- | 1840 || 2,873,648 || 16.8% || 23.4% || 2,487,355 || 87% |- | 1850 || 3,638,808 || 15.7% || 26.6% || 3,204,287 || 88% |- | 1860 || 4,441,830 || 14.1% || 22.1% || 3,953,731 || 89% |- | 1870 || 4,880,009 || 12.7% || 9.9% || – || – |- | 1880 || 6,580,793 || 13.1% || 34.9% || – || – |- | 1890 || 7,488,788 || 11.9% || 13.8% || – || – |- | 1900 || 8,833,994 || 11.6% || 18.0% || – || – |- | 1910 || 9,827,763 || 10.7% || 11.2% || – || – |- | 1920 || 10.5 million || 9.9% || 6.8% || – || – |- | 1930 || 11.9 million || 9.7% (lowest) || 13% || – || – |- | 1940 || 12.9 million || 9.8% || 8.4% || – || – |- | 1950 || 15.0 million || 10.0% || 16% || – || – |- | 1960 || 18.9 million || 10.5% || 26% || – || – |- | 1970 || 22.6 million || 11.1% || 20% || – || – |- | 1980 || 26.5 million || 11.7% || 17% || – || – |- | 1990 || 30.0 million || 12.1% || 13% || – || – |- | 2000 || 34.6 million || 12.3% || 15% || – || – |- | 2010 || 38.9 million || 12.6% || 12% || – || – |- |}

By 1990, the African American population reached about 30 million and represented 12% of the U.S. population, roughly the same proportion as in 1900. In current demographics, according to 2005 U.S. Census figures, some 39.9 million African Americans live in the United States, comprising 13.8% of the total population. The World Factbook gives a 2006 figure of 12.9% Controversy has surrounded the "accurate" population count of African Americans for decades. The NAACP believed it was under counted intentionally to minimize the significance of the black population in order to reduce their political power base.

At the time of the 2000 Census, 54.8% of African Americans lived in the South. In that year, 17.6% of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7% in the Midwest, while only 8.9% lived in the western states. The west does have a sizable black population in certain areas, however. California, the nation's most populous state, has the fifth largest African American population, only behind New York, Texas, Georgia, and Florida. According to the 2000 Census, approximately 2.05% of African Americans identified as Hispanic or Latino in origin, many of whom may be of Brazilian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Haitian, or other Latin American descent. The only self-reported ''ancestral'' groups larger than African Americans are the Irish and Germans. Because many African Americans trace their ancestry to colonial American origins, some simply self-identify as "American".

U.S. cities

Almost 58% of African Americans lived in metropolitan areas in 2000. With over 2 million black residents, New York City had the largest black urban population in the United States in 2000, overall the city has a 28% black population. Chicago has the second largest black population, with almost 1.6 million African Americans in its metropolitan area, representing about 18 percent of the total metropolitan population.

Among cities of 100,000 or more, Detroit, Michigan had the highest percentage of black residents of any U.S. city in 2010, with 82%. Other large cities with African American majorities include New Orleans, Louisiana (60%), Baltimore, Maryland (63%) Atlanta, Georgia (54%), Memphis, Tennessee (61%), and Washington, D.C. (50.7%).

The nation's most affluent county with an African American majority is Prince George's County, Maryland, with a median income of $62,467. Within that county, among the wealthiest communities are Glenn Dale, Maryland and Fort Washington, Maryland. Other affluent predominantly African American counties include Dekalb County in Georgia, and Charles City County in Virginia. Queens County, New York is the only county with a population of 65,000 or more where African Americans have a higher median household income than White Americans.

Religion

The majority of African Americans are Protestant of whom many follow the historically black churches. Black church refers to churches which minister predominantly African American congregations. Black congregations were first established by freed slaves at the end of the 17th century, and later when slavery was abolished more African Americans were allowed to create a unique form of Christianity that was culturally influenced by African spiritual traditions.

According to a 2007 survey, more than half of the African American population are part of the historically black churches. The largest Protestant denomination among African Americans are the Baptists, distributed in four denominations, the largest being the National Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention of America. The second largest are the Methodists, the largest sects are the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Pentecostals are mainly part of the Church of God in Christ. About 16% of African American Christians are members of white Protestant communions, these denominations (which include the United Church of Christ) mostly have a 2 to 3% African American membership. There are also large numbers of Roman Catholics, constituting 5% of the African American population. Of the total number of Jehovah's Witnesses, 22% are black.

Some African Americans follow Islam. Historically, between 15 to 30% of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were Muslims, but most of these Africans were converted to Christianity during the era of American slavery. However during the 20th century, some African Americans converted to Islam, mainly through the influence of black nationalist groups that preached with distinctive Islamic practices; these include the Moorish Science Temple of America, though the largest organization was the Nation of Islam, founded during the 1930s, which attracted at least 20,000 people as of 1963, prominent members included activist Malcolm X and boxer Muhammad Ali.

Malcolm X is considered the first person to start the movement among African Americans towards mainstream Islam, after he left the Nation and made the pilgrimage to Mecca. In 1975, Warith Deen Mohammed, the son of Elijah Muhammad who took control of the Nation after his death, guided majority of its members to orthodox Islam. However, few members rejected these changes, in particular Louis Farrakhan, who revived the Nation of Islam in 1978 based on its original teachings.

African American Muslims constitute 20% of the total U.S. Muslim population, the majority are Sunni or orthodox Muslims, some of these identify under the community of W. Deen Mohammed. The Nation of Islam led by Louis Farrakhan has a membership from 20,000—50,000 members.

There are relatively few African American Jews; estimates of their number range from 20,000 to 200,000. Most of these Jews are part of mainstream groups such as the Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox branches of Judaism; although there are significant numbers of people who are part of non-mainstream Jewish groups, largely the Black Hebrew Israelites, whose beliefs include the claim that African Americans are descended from the Biblical Israelites.

Contemporary issues

African Americans have improved their social and economic standing significantly since the Civil Rights Movement and recent decades have witnessed the expansion of a robust, African American middle class across the United States. Unprecedented access to higher education and employment in addition to representation in the highest levels of American government has been gained by African Americans in the post-civil rights era.

Nevertheless, due in part to the legacy of slavery, racism and discrimination, African Americans as a group remain at a pronounced economic, educational and social disadvantage in many areas relative to European Americans. Persistent social, economic and political issues for many African Americans include inadequate health care access and delivery; institutional racism and discrimination in housing, education, policing, criminal justice and employment; crime, poverty and substance abuse.

One of the most serious and long standing issues within African American communities is poverty. Poverty itself is a hardship as it is related to marital stress and dissolution, health problems, low educational attainment, deficits in psychological functioning, and crime. In 2004, 24.7% of African American families lived below the poverty level. In 2007, the average African American income was $33,916, compared with $54,920 for whites.

Politics and social issues

Collectively, African Americans are more involved in the American political process than other minority groups in the United States, indicated by the highest level of voter registration and participation in elections among these groups in 2004. African Americans collectively attain higher levels of education than immigrants to the United States. African Americans also have the highest level of Congressional representation of any minority group in the U.S.

The large majority of African Americans support the Democratic Party. In the 2004 Presidential Election, Democrat John Kerry received 88% of the African American vote compared to 11% for Republican George W. Bush. Although there is an African-American lobby in foreign policy, it has not had the impact that African American organizations have had in domestic policy.

Historically, African Americans were supporters of the Republican Party because it was Republican President Abraham Lincoln who helped in granting freedom to American slaves; at the time, the Republicans and Democrats represented the sectional interests of the North and South, respectively, rather than any specific ideology, and both right and left were represented equally in both parties.

The African American trend of voting for Democrats can be traced back to the 1930s during the Great Depression, when Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program provided economic relief to African Americans; Roosevelt's New Deal coalition turned the Democratic Party into an organization of the working class and their liberal allies, regardless of region. The African American vote became even more solidly Democratic when Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson pushed for civil rights legislation during the 1960s.

After over 50 years, marriage rates for ''all'' Americans began to decline while divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births have climbed. These changes have been greatest among African Americans. After more than 70 years of racial parity black marriage rates began to fall behind whites. Single-parent households have become common, and according to US census figures released in January 2010, only 38 percent of black children live with both their parents. Despite that and heavy Democratic leanings, African Americans favor "traditional American values" about family and marriage.

While 52% of Democrats support same-sex marriage, only 30% of black Democrats do. In 2008, though Democrats overwhelmingly voted (64%) against the California ballot proposition banning gay marriage, blacks overwhelmingly approved (70% in favor) it, more than any other racial group. The high-profile candidacy of Barack Obama is credited with increasing black turnout on the bill which has been seen as the crucial difference in its passing.

Blacks also hold far more conservative opinions on abortion, extramarital sex, and raising children out of wedlock than Democrats as a whole. On financial issues, however, African Americans are very much in line with Democrats, generally supporting a more progressive tax structure to provide more services and reduce injustice and as well as more government spending on social services.

News media and coverage

Some activists and academics contend that news media coverage of African American news concerns or dilemmas is inadequate or the news media present distorted images of African Americans. To combat this, Robert L. Johnson founded Black Entertainment Television, a network that targets young African Americans and urban audiences in the United States. Most programming on the network consists of rap and R&B; music videos and urban-oriented movies and series. The channel also shows syndicated television series, original programs, and some public affairs programs. On Sunday mornings, BET broadcasts a lineup of network-produced Christian programming; other, non-affiliated Christian programs are also shown during the early morning hours daily. BET is now a global network that reaches 85 million viewers in the Caribbean, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

In addition to BET there is Centric, which is a spin-off cable television channel of BET, created originally as ''BET on Jazz'' to showcase jazz music-related programming, especially that of black jazz musicians. Programming has been expanded to include a block of urban programs as well as some R&B;, neo soul, and alternative hip hop, with the focus on jazz reduced to low-profile hours.

TV One is another African American-oriented network and a direct competitor to BET, targeting African American adults with a broad range of programming. The network airs original lifestyle and entertainment-oriented shows, movies, fashion and music programming, as well as classic series such as 227, Good Times, Martin, Boston Public and It's Showtime at the Apollo. The network primarily owned by Radio One. Founded and controlled by Catherine Hughes, it is one of the nation's largest radio broadcasting companies and the largest African American-owned radio broadcasting company in the United States.

Other African American networks scheduled to launch in 2009 are the Black Television News Channel founded by former Congressman J. C. Watts and Better Black Television founded by Percy Miller. In June 2009, NBC News launched a new website named The Grio in partnership with the production team that created the black documentary film, Meeting David Wilson. It is the first African American video news site which focuses on underrepresented stories in existing national news. The Grio consists of a broad spectrum of original video packages, news articles, and contributor blogs on topics including breaking news, politics, health, business, entertainment and Black History.

Education

By 2000, African Americans had advanced greatly. They still lagged overall in education attainment compared to white or Asian Americans, with 14 percent with four year and 5 percent with advanced degrees, though it was higher than for other minorities. African Americans attend college at about half the rate of whites, but at a greater rate than Americans of Hispanic origin. More African American women attend and complete college than men. Black schools for kindergarten through twelfth grade students were common throughout the U.S., and a pattern towards re-segregation is currently occurring across the country.

Historically black colleges and universities remain today which were originally set up when segregated colleges did not admit African Americans. As late as 1947, about one third of African Americans over 65 were considered to lack the literacy to read and write their own names. By 1969, illiteracy as it had been traditionally defined, had been largely eradicated among younger African Americans.

US Census surveys showed that by 1998, 89 percent of African Americans aged 25 to 29 had completed high school, less than whites or Asians, but more than Hispanics. On many college entrance, standardized tests and grades, African Americans have historically lagged behind whites, but some studies suggest that the achievement gap has been closing. Many policy makers have proposed that this gap can and will be eliminated through policies such as affirmative action, desegregation, and multiculturalism.

In Chicago, Marva Collins, an African American educator, created a low cost private school specifically for the purpose of teaching low-income African American children whom the public school system had labeled as being "learning disabled". One article about Marva Collins' school stated,

Working with students having the worst of backgrounds, those who were working far below grade level, and even those who had been labeled as 'unteachable,' Marva was able to overcome the obstacles. News of third grade students reading at ninth grade level, four-year-olds learning to read in only a few months, outstanding test scores, disappearance of behavioral problems, second-graders studying Shakespeare, and other incredible reports, astounded the public.

During the 2006–2007 school year, Collins' school charged $5,500 for tuition, and parents said that the school did a much better job than the Chicago public school system. Meanwhile, during the 2007–2008 year, Chicago public school officials claimed that their budget of $11,300 per student was not enough.

Economic status

Economically, African Americans have benefited from the advances made during the Civil Rights era, particularly among the educated, but not without the lingering effects of historical marginalization when considered as a whole. The racial disparity in poverty rates has narrowed. The black middle class has grown substantially. In 2000, 47% of African Americans owned their homes. The poverty rate among African Americans has decreased from 26.5% in 1998 to 24.7% in 2004. African Americans are the second largest consumer group in America with a combined buying power of over $892 billion currently and likely over $1.1 trillion by 2012. In 2002 African American-owned businesses accounted for 1.2 million of the US's 23 million businesses. As of 2011 African American-owned business account for approximately 2 million US businesses. Black-owned businesses experienced the largest growth in number of businesses among minorities from 2002 to 2011.

In 2004, African American workers had the second-highest median earnings of American minority groups after Asian Americans, and African Americans had the highest level of male-female income parity of all ethnic groups in the United States. Also, among American minority groups, only Asian Americans were more likely to hold white-collar occupations (management, professional, and related fields), and African Americans were no more or less likely than European Americans to work in the service industry. In 2001, over half of African American households of married couples earned $50,000 or more. Although in the same year African Americans were over-represented among the nation's poor, this was directly related to the disproportionate percentage of African American families headed by single women; such families are collectively poorer, regardless of ethnicity.

By 2006, gender continued to be the primary factor in income level, with the median earnings of African American men more than those black and non-black American women overall and in all educational levels. At the same time, among American men, income disparities were significant; the median income of African American men was approximately 76 cents for every dollar of their European American counterparts, although the gap narrowed somewhat with a rise in educational level.

Overall, the median earnings of African American men were 72 cents for every dollar earned of their Asian American counterparts, and $1.17 for every dollar earned by Hispanic men. On the other hand by 2006, among American women with post-secondary education, African American women have made significant advances; the median income of African American women was more than those of their Asian-, European- and Hispanic American counterparts with at least some college education.

African Americans are still underrepresented in government and employment. In 1999, the median income of African American families was $33,255 compared to $53,356 of European Americans. In times of economic hardship for the nation, African Americans suffer disproportionately from job loss and underemployment, with the black underclass being hardest hit. The phrase "last hired and first fired" is reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures. Nationwide, the October 2008 unemployment rate for African Americans was 11.1%, while the nationwide rate was 6.5%.

The income gap between black and white families is also significant. In 2005, employed blacks earned only 65% of the wages of whites, down from 82% in 1975. ''The New York Times'' reported in 2006 that in Queens, New York, the median income among African American families exceeded that of white families, which the newspaper attributed to the growth in the number of two-parent black families. It noted that Queens was the only county with more than 65,000 residents where that was true.

In 1999, the rate of births to unwed African American mothers was estimated by economist Walter E. Williams of George Mason University to be 70%. The poverty rate among single-parent black families was 39.5% in 2005, according to Williams, while it was 9.9% among married-couple black families. Among white families, the comparable rates were 26.4% and 6%.

According to ''Forbes'' magazine's "wealthiest American" lists, a 2000 net worth of $800 million dollars made Oprah Winfrey the richest African American of the 20th century; by contrast, the net worth of the 20th century's richest American, Bill Gates, who is of European descent, briefly hit $100 billion in 1999. In Forbes' 2007 list, Gates' net worth decreased to $59 billion while Winfrey's increased to $2.5 billion, making her the world's richest black person. Winfrey is also the first African American to make Business Week's annual list of America's 50 greatest philanthropists. BET founder Bob Johnson was also listed as a billionaire prior to an expensive divorce and as of 2009, had an estimated net worth of $550 million. Winfrey remains the only African American wealthy enough to rank among the country's 400 richest people. Some black entrepreneurs use their wealth to create new avenues for both African Americans and new opportunities for American business in general. Examples such as Tyler Perry who created new filming studios in Atlanta, Georgia which makes it possible to film movies and television shows outside of California.

Cultural influence in the United States

From their earliest presence in North America, African Americans have contributed literature, art, agricultural skills, foods, clothing styles, music, language, social and technological innovation to American culture. The cultivation and use of many agricultural products in the U.S., such as yams, peanuts, rice, okra, sorghum, grits, watermelon, indigo dyes, and cotton, can be traced to African and African American influences. Notable examples include George Washington Carver, who created 300 products from peanuts, 118 products from sweet potatoes, and 75 from pecans; and George Crum, who invented the potato chip in 1853.

African American music is one of the most pervasive African American cultural influences in the United States today and is among the most dominant in mainstream popular music. Hip hop, R&B;, funk, rock and roll, soul, blues, and other contemporary American musical forms originated in black communities and evolved from other black forms of music, including blues, doo-wop, barbershop, ragtime, bluegrass, jazz, and gospel music.

African American-derived musical forms have also influenced and been incorporated into virtually every other popular musical genre in the world, including country and techno. African American genres are the most important ethnic vernacular tradition in America, as they have developed independent of African traditions from which they arise more so than any other immigrant groups, including Europeans; make up the broadest and longest lasting range of styles in America; and have, historically, been more influential, interculturally, geographically, and economically, than other American vernacular traditions.

African Americans have also had an important role in American dance. Bill T. Jones, a prominent modern choreographer and dancer, has included historical African American themes in his work, particularly in the piece "Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land". Likewise, Alvin Ailey's artistic work, including his "Revelations" based on his experience growing up as an African American in the South during the 1930s, has had a significant influence on modern dance. Another form of dance, Stepping, is an African American tradition whose performance and competition has been formalized through the traditionally black fraternities and sororities at universities.

Many African American authors have written stories, poems, and essays influenced by their experiences as African Americans. African-American literature is a major genre in American literature. Famous examples include Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou.

African American inventors have created many widely used devices in the world and have contributed to international innovation. Norbert Rillieux created the technique for converting sugar cane juice into white sugar crystals. Moreover, Rillieux left Louisiana in 1854 and went to France, where he spent ten years working with the Champollions deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics from the Rosetta Stone. Most slave inventors were nameless, such as the slave owned by the Confederate President Jefferson Davis who designed the ship propeller used by the Confederate navy.

By 1913 over 1,000 inventions were patented by black Americans. Among the most notable inventors were Jan Matzeliger, who developed the first machine to mass-produce shoes, and Elijah McCoy, who invented automatic lubrication devices for steam engines. Granville Woods had 35 patents to improve electric railway systems, including the first system to allow moving trains to communicate. Garrett A. Morgan developed the first automatic traffic signal and gas mask.

Lewis Howard Latimer invented an improvement for the incandescent light bulb. More recent inventors include Frederick McKinley Jones, who invented the movable refrigeration unit for food transport in trucks and trains. Lloyd Quarterman worked with six other black scientists on the creation of the atomic bomb (code named the Manhattan Project.) Quarterman also helped develop the first nuclear reactor, which was used in the atomically powered submarine called the Nautilus.

A few other notable examples include the first successful open heart surgery, performed by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, and the air conditioner, patented by Frederick McKinley Jones. Dr. Mark Dean holds three of the original nine patents on the computer on which all PCs are based. More current contributors include Otis Boykin, whose inventions included several novel methods for manufacturing electrical components that found use in applications such as guided missile systems and computers, and Colonel Frederick Gregory, who was not only the first black astronaut pilot but the person who redesigned the cockpits for the last three space shuttles. Gregory was also on the team that pioneered the microwave instrumentation landing system.

Political legacy

African Americans have fought in every war in the history of the United States.

The gains made by African Americans in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements not only obtained certain rights for African Americans, but changed American society in far-reaching and fundamentally important ways. Prior to the 1950s, Black Americans in the South were subject to de jure discrimination, or Jim Crow. They would often be the victims of extreme cruelty and violence, sometimes resulting in deaths: by the post WWII era, African Americans became increasingly discontented with their long-standing inequality. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., African Americans and their supporters challenged the nation to "rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed that all men are created equal ..."

The Civil Rights Movement marked a sea-change in American social, political, economic and civic life. It brought with it boycotts, sit-ins, demonstrations, court battles, bombings and other violence; prompted worldwide media coverage and intense public debate; forged enduring civic, economic and religious alliances; and disrupted and realigned the nation's two major political parties.

Over time, it has changed in fundamental ways the manner in which blacks and whites interact with and relate to one another. The movement resulted in the removal of codified, ''de jure'' racial segregation and discrimination from American life and law, and heavily influenced other groups and movements in struggles for civil rights and social equality within American society, including the Free Speech Movement, the disabled, women, Native Americans, and migrant workers.

The term "African American"

Political overtones

The term African American carries important political overtones. Earlier terms used to identify Americans of African ancestry were conferred upon the group by colonists and Americans of European ancestry. The terms were included in the wording of various laws and legal decisions which some thought were being used as tools of white supremacy and oppression. There developed among blacks in America a growing desire for a term of self-identification of their own choosing.

With the political consciousness that emerged from the political and social ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, blacks no longer approved of the term Negro. They believed it had suggestions of a moderate, accommodationist, even "Uncle Tom" connotation. In this period, a growing number of blacks in the United States, particularly African American youth, celebrated their blackness and their historical and cultural ties with the African continent. The Black Power movement defiantly embraced ''Black'' as a group identifier. It was a term social leaders themselves had repudiated only two decades earlier, but they proclaimed, "Black is beautiful".

In this same period, a smaller number of people favored ''Afro-American'', a common shortening (as is 'Anglo-American'). However, after the decline in popularity of the 'Afro' hairstyle in the late 1970s, the term fell out of use.

In the 1980s the term ''African American'' was advanced on the model of, for example, German-American or Irish-American to give descendents of American slaves and other American blacks who lived through the slavery-era a heritage and a cultural base. The term was popularized in black communities around the country via word of mouth and ultimately received mainstream use after Jesse Jackson publicly used the term in front of a national audience. Subsequently, major media outlets adopted its use.

Some such as Maulana Karenga and Owen Alik Shahadah argue African-American is more appropriate because it accurately articulates geography and historical origin. Thus linking a people to a continent as oppose to an abstract color. Others believe the term black is inaccurate because African Americans have a variety of skin tones. Surveys show that the majority of Black Americans have no preference for "African American" or "Black," although they have a slight preference for "Black" in personal settings and "African American" in more formal settings. Many African-Americans expressed a preference for the term, as it was formed in the same way as names for others of the many ethnic groups in the nation. Some argued further that, because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement and systematic attempts to de-Africanize blacks in the United States under chattel slavery, most African Americans are unable to trace their ancestry to a specific African nation; hence, the entire continent serves as a geographic marker.

For many, African American is more than a name expressive of cultural and historical roots. The term expresses pride in Africa and a sense of kinship and solidarity with others of the African diaspora—an embrace of pan-Africanism as earlier enunciated by prominent African thinkers such as Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois and George Padmore.

Who is African American?

Since 1977, in an attempt to keep up with changing social opinion, the United States government has officially classified black people (revised to ''black'' or ''African American'' in 1997) as "having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa." Other federal offices, such as the United States Census Bureau, adhere to the OMB standards on race in its data collection and tabulations efforts. In preparation for the United States 2010 Census, a marketing and outreach plan, called ''2010 Census Integrated Communications Campaign Plan'' (ICC) recognized and defined African Americans as black people born in the United States. From the ICC perspective, African Americans are one of three groups of black people in the United States

The ICC plan was to reach the three groups by acknowledging that each group has its own sense of community that is based on geography and ethnicity. The best way to market the census process toward any of the three groups is to reach them through their own unique communication channels and not treat the entire black population of the U.S. as though they are all African Americans with a single ethnic and geographical background. The U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation categorizes black or African American people as "A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa" through racial categories used in the UCR Program adopted from the Statistical Policy Handbook (1978) and published by the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce, derived from the 1977 OMB classification.

The African-American experience

In her book ''The End of Blackness'', as well as in an essay on the liberal website Salon, author Debra Dickerson has argued that the term "black" should refer strictly to the descendents of Africans brought to America as slaves, and not the sons and daughters of black immigrants who lack that ancestry. In her opinion, President Barack Obama, who is the son of a Kenyan immigrant, although technically African-American, is not black. She makes the argument that grouping all people of African descent together regardless of their unique ancestral circumstances would inevitably deny the lingering effects of slavery within the American community of slave descendents, in addition to denying black immigrants recognition of their own unique ancestral backgrounds. "Lumping us all together", Dickerson wrote, "erases the significance of slavery and continuing racism while giving the appearance of progress".

Similar viewpoints have been expressed by Stanley Crouch in a New York Daily News piece, Charles Kenzie Steele, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and African-American columnist David Ehrenstein of the LA Times who accused white liberals of flocking to blacks who were "Magic Negros", a term that refers to a black person with no past who simply appears to assist the mainstream white (as cultural protagonists/drivers) agenda. Ehrenstein went on to say "He's there to assuage white 'guilt' they feel over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history." said "descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that." She has also rejected an immigrant designation for African-Americans and instead prefers the term "black" or "white" to denote the African and European U.S. founding populations.

Terms no longer in common use

The terms mulatto and colored were widely used until the second quarter of the 20th century, when they were considered outmoded and generally gave way to the use of ''negro''. By the 1940s, the term commonly was capitalized, but by the mid 1960s, it had acquired negative connotations. Today, in the culture of the United States, the term is considered inappropriate and is now rarely used and perceived as a pejorative.

The term Negro is largely out of use among the younger black generation, but is still used by a substantial block of older black Americans, particularly in the southern U.S. In Latin America, ''negro'', which translates as ''black'' is the term generally used to refer and describe black people and, similarly to ''mulatto'', it is not considered offensive at all in these regions. However, it is pronounced differently, with the ''e'' (a mid front unrounded vowel in American Spanish: , and a close-mid front unrounded vowel in Brazilian Portuguese: ) being closer to a sound that it is intermediate between phonemes found in English words such as pay and egg (in Spanish) or day, city and item (in Portuguese).

See also

Affirmative action

African-American art

African-American history

African-American literature

African-American music

African American Muslims

African American National Biography Project

African American Vernacular English

African American Women, 1960's

American Black Upper Class

American Civil War

Black church

Black feminism

Black Loyalist

Black nationalism

Military history of African Americans

Slavery in the United States

Diaspora:

African Americans in France

African diaspora

African immigrants to the United States

Afro-Latin American

American Black Indians

Americans of Igbo ancestry

Americo-Liberian

Black Hispanic and Latino Americans

Black Nova Scotians

Black people

Foreign-born Afro Americans

Sierra Leone Creole people

Lists:

Lists of African Americans

List of African-American-related topics

List of topics related to Black and African people

Terminology: Colored, Creole peoples, Negro, Nigger, Nigga

Notes

References

Further reading

Jack Salzman, ed., ''Encyclopedia of Afro-American culture and history'', New York, New York : Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1996.

''African American Lives'', edited by Henry L. Gates, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Oxford University Press, 2004—more than 600 biographies.

''From Slavery to Freedom. A History of African Americans'', by John Hope Franklin, Alfred Moss, McGraw-Hill Education 2001, standard work, first edition in 1947.

''Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia'', Darlene Clark Hine (Editor), Rosalyn Terborg-Penn (Editor), Elsa Barkley Brown (Editor), Paperback Edition, Indiana University Press 2005.

External links

Richard Thompson Ford Name Games, ''Slate'', September 16, 2004. Article discussing the problems of defining ''African American''

"Of Arms & the Law: Don Kates on Afro-American Homicide Rates"

''Scientific American'' Magazine (June 2006) Trace Elements Reconnecting African-Americans to an ancestral past

"The Definition of Political Absurdity", ''San Francisco Chronicle'', March 2, 2007

African American archaeology in Sacramento, California pdf

African American archaeology in Oakland, California —See Part III, Chap 10

Black History related original documents and photos

President Obama's Speech to the NAACP on July 16, 2009—full video by ''MSNBC''

Black or African American?, Frank Newport. Gallup, September 28, 2007

The Long Journey of Black Americans - slideshow by ''The First Post''

Category:African American history Category:Ethnic groups in the United States Category:History of civil rights in the United States Category:Peoples of the African diaspora

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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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name	Ian Somerhalder
birth date	December 08, 1978
birth place	Covington, Louisiana, U.S.
birthname	Ian Joseph Somerhalder
occupation	Actor, model, producer
yearsactive	1997–present }}

Ian Joseph Somerhalder (born December 8, 1978) is an American model, actor and producer, best known for playing Boone Carlyle in the TV drama ''Lost'' and Damon Salvatore in the TV drama ''The Vampire Diaries''.

Early life

Somerhalder was born and raised in Covington, Louisiana, the son of Edna, a massage therapist, and Robert Somerhalder, an independent building contractor. He was raised a Catholic and attended St. Paul's, a private Catholic school in Covington. He embarked on a modeling career from age 10 to 13, and by the age of 17 he decided to go into acting.

Career

In the summer of 2000, Somerhalder starred in the short-lived WB series ''Young Americans'', a spin-off of ''Dawson's Creek''. He played Hamilton Fleming, the son of the dean of a prestigious boarding school. In 2002, Somerhalder played bisexual character Paul Denton in Roger Avary's adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' novel, ''The Rules of Attraction'', alongside James Van Der Beek, Shannyn Sossamon, and Jessica Biel.

In 2004, Somerhalder scored his breakthrough role when he played Boone Carlyle in the hit TV show ''Lost''. Despite his character's death in the twentieth episode of the first season, Somerhalder returned to the role of Boone for seven more episodes, between 2005 and 2010, including the series finale. In an ironic twist, Somerhalder was the first actor to be cast in a role for the series, but he was also the first character to die. He has stated that he was going to buy a house in Hawaii, where filming took place, until he learned his character was being killed off.

In May 2006, Somerhalder was named one of DNA Models' Top 10 Male Models.

In September 2009, Somerhalder appeared in the movie ''The Tournament'' where he played the role of an assassin participating in a lethal competition with other assassins. On 10 October 2009, it was announced that he will star in the Gothic movie ''Cradlewood'', which is to be directed by Harry Weinmann. The movie is set to be released in 2013.

Somerhalder appears in the limited-edition coffee table book ''About Face'' by celebrity photographer John Russo and Press Worldwide publishers.

Somerhalder currently stars in the CW television drama ''The Vampire Diaries'' as Damon Salvatore, portraying a dangerous, maniacal, witty, whole-hearted vampire in love with his brother's human girlfriend, Elena Gilbert, who is the doppleganger of the Salvatore brothers past love.

Philanthropy

Somerhalder was the first actor/celebrity to become actively involved in the cleanup after the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling disaster on April 22, 2010. His efforts included cleaning of oiled wildlife and taping public service announcements to let the public know how they could help. Numerous Youtube videos are of him speaking of the horrific environmental impacts the oil has done and how others can help. Somerhalder also supports the St. Tammany Humane Society, an organization for animal shelter and welfare. On November 13, 2010, he hosted a Bash on the Bayou charity fundraiser for the St. Tammany Humane Society. During the event, Somerhalder was presented with a donation of $11,100 by ''The Vampire Diaries'' fandom for his birthday project.

Together with his ''The Vampire Diaries'' co-star Candice Accola, Somerhalder is also one of many supporters of the It Gets Better Project, a project that has made it a goal to prevent suicide among LGBT youth, associated with The Trevor Project.

Somerhalder announced, via Twitter, and in various interviews that he is in the process of setting up The Ian Somerhalder Foundation, which he hopes will educate people on the importance of protecting the environment and animals. Somerhalder has stated:

}}

He hopes that donations will be used to provide proper medical services to stray animals and he established the foundation on December 8, 2010, his 32nd birthday.

Filmography

+ Film
! Year	! Title	! Role	Notes
1998		Unconfirmed	Uncredited
2001	''Life as a House''	Josh
2002	''Changing Hearts''	Jason Kelly
2002		Paul Denton
2004		U.S.S. Swordfish Danny Miller
2004	''The Old Man and the Studio''	Matt	Short Film
2006	''National Lampoon's TV: The Movie''	Unconfirmed	Uncredited
2006		Dexter
2006	''The Sensation of Sight''	Drifter
2008	''The Lost Samaritan''	William Archer
2008	''Lost City Raiders''	Jack Kubiak
2009		Tyler
2009		Miles Slade
2010	''How to Make Love to a Woman''	Daniel Meltzer
2012	''Cradlewood''	Josh	Pre-production

+ Television
! Year	! Title	! Role	Notes
1997		I.Q.	1 episode: "The Black Bag"
1999	''Now and Again''	Brian	1 episode: "A Girl's Life"
2000		Hamilton Fleming	8 episodes
2001	''Anatomy of a Hate Crime''	Russell Henderson	TV Film
2002	''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation''	Tony Del Nagro	1 episode: "Revenge Is Best Served Cold"
2003	''Law & Order: Special Victims Unit''	Charlie Baker	1 episode: "Dominance"
2003	''CSI: Miami''	Ricky Murdoch	1 episode: "The Best Defense"
2004		Jordan Gracie	TV Film
2004	''Smallville''	Adam Knight	7 episodes
2007		Marco Polo	TV Film
2007	''Tell Me You Love Me''	Nick	6 episodes
2008	''Lost City Raiders''	Jack Kubiak	TV Film
2009	''Fireball''	Lee Cooper	TV Film
2004–2010		Boone Carlyle	27 episodes
2009–present	''The Vampire Diaries''	Damon Salvatore	Lead role

Awards

!Year	!Category	!Shared with	!Recipient	!Result
2002	Exciting New Face – Male	N/A	N/A	Winner
2005	Choice TV Breakout Performance – Male	N/A		Nominated
2006	Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series			Winner
	Choice TV Villain			Winner
Choice Male Hottie	Nominated
	Choice TV Actor Fantasy/Sci-Fi	Winner
Choice Vampire
Choice Male Hottie
2011	Favourite TV Drama Actor	N/A	''The Vampire Diaries'' (2009)	Nominated

References

External links

Category:1978 births Category:Actors from Louisiana Category:American film actors Category:American male models Category:American television actors Category:American Roman Catholics Category:Living people Category:Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:People from Covington, Louisiana Category:People from New Orleans, Louisiana

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name	Robert Pattinson
birth name	Robert Douglas Thomas Pattinson
birth date	May 13, 1986
birth place	London, England, UK
other names	Rob, R-Pattz, Spunk Ransom (nicknames)
occupation	Actor, model, musician, producer
yearsactive	2004–present
relatives	Lizzy Pattinson (sister)
signature	Robert Pattinson signature.svg }}

Robert Douglas Thomas Pattinson (born 13 May 1986) is an English actor, model, musician, and producer. Born and raised in London, Pattinson started out his career by playing the role of Cedric Diggory in ''Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire''. Later, he landed the leading role of Edward Cullen in the film adaptations of the ''Twilight'' novels by Stephenie Meyer, and came to worldwide fame. Pattinson was ranked as one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood based on 2009 earnings. In 2010, Pattinson was named one of ''TIME'' magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World, and also in the same year ''Forbes'' ranked him as one of the most powerful celebrities in the world in the Forbes Celebrity 100.

Early life

Pattinson was born in London. His mother, Clare, worked for a modelling agency, and his father, Richard, imported vintage cars from the U.S. Pattinson has two elder sisters, singer Lizzy Pattinson, and Victoria Pattinson. Growing up in the Barnes suburb of London, he attended Tower House School until he was 12, and then The Harrodian School. He became involved in amateur theatre at the Barnes Theatre Company. He auditioned and was cast in a small role in ''Guys and Dolls''. He next auditioned for Thornton Wilder's ''Our Town'' and was cast as George Gibbs. He also played in ''Anything Goes'' and ''Macbeth''. He caught the attention of an acting agent in a production of ''Tess of the d'Urbervilles'' and began looking for professional roles.

Career

Modelling

Pattinson began modelling when he was twelve years old, but the number of jobs began to decrease only four years later. In December 2008 he blamed the lack of work as a model on his masculine appearance: "When I first started I was quite tall and looked like a girl, so I got lots of jobs, because it was during that period where the androgynous look was cool. Then, I guess, I became too much of a guy, so I never got any more jobs. I had the most unsuccessful modelling career." Pattinson appeared in the advertising campaign for Hackett's autumn 2007 collection.

Acting

Pattinson had supporting roles in the made for television film ''Ring of the Nibelungs'' in 2004 and in director Mira Nair’s ''Vanity Fair'', although his scenes in the latter were deleted and only appear on the DVD version. In May 2005, he was slated to appear in the UK premiere of ''The Woman Before'' at the Royal Court Theatre, but was fired shortly before the opening night and was replaced by Tom Riley. Later that year he played Cedric Diggory in ''Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire''. For this role he was named that year's ''British Star of Tomorrow'' by ''The Times''. He has more than once been touted as the next Jude Law.

Pattinson played Edward Cullen in the film ''Twilight'', based on Stephenie Meyer's best-selling novel of the same name, which was released on 21 November 2008 in North America. According to ''TV Guide'', Pattinson was initially apprehensive about auditioning for the role of Edward Cullen, fearful that he would not be able to live up to the "perfection" expected from the character. He reprised his role as Edward Cullen in the ''Twilight'' sequels ''The Twilight Saga: New Moon'' and ''The Twilight Saga: Eclipse'', which was released 30 June 2010.

Pattinson had lead roles in the feature films ''Little Ashes'' (in which he plays Salvador Dalí), ''How to Be'' (a British comedy), and the short film ''The Summer House''.

In 2009, Pattinson presented at the 81st Academy Awards. On 10 November, Revolver Entertainment released the DVD ''Robsessed'', a documentary which details Pattinson's life and popularity.

In 2010, Pattinson executively produced and starred in the film ''Remember Me'', which was released on 12 March 2010. On 13 May 2010, Pattinson appeared on ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' for ''The Twilight Saga: Eclipse'' and also made an appearance on ''The Ellen DeGeneres Show'' on 18 May, which aired the following day. Pattinson attended the official worldwide red carpet premiere for ''The Twilight Saga: Eclipse'' on 24 June 2010 at the Los Angeles Nokia Theatre.

In 2011, he starred in ''Water for Elephants'', a film adaptation of the Sara Gruen novel of the same name, with Christoph Waltz and Reese Witherspoon.

He will play Georges Duroy in a film adaptation of the 1885 novel ''Bel Ami'', with Uma Thurman, which will be released in 2011. He will also appear in a theatre production for producer David Pugh.

Music

Pattinson plays guitar and piano, and composes his own music. He also appears as the singer of two songs on the ''Twilight'' soundtrack: "Never Think", which he co-wrote with Sam Bradley, and "Let Me Sign", which was written by Marcus Foster and Bobby Long. The songs were included in the film after director Catherine Hardwicke added Pattinson's recordings into an early cut without his knowledge, and he agreed that "one of them specifically, it really made the scene better. It was like it was supposed to be there." The soundtrack for the film ''How to Be'' features three original songs performed by Pattinson and written by composer Joe Hastings.

Aside from recording for the soundtracks, Pattinson has said, "I've never really recorded anything – I just played in pubs and stuff", and when asked about a professional music career, he said, "Music is my back-up plan if acting fails." In 2010, Pattinson was awarded the 'Hollywood's Most Influential Top Unexpected Musicians' award.

In the media

Pattinson was named one of the "Sexiest Men Alive" in 2008 and 2009 by ''People'' magazine. In 2009, he was also named the "Sexiest Man Alive" by ''Glamour''. ''Ask Men'' named Pattinson as one of the top 49 most influential men of 2009. In 2009, ''Vanity Fair'' named Pattinson "the most handsome man in the world" along with Angelina Jolie as the most beautiful woman in the world.

He was named one of ''Vanity Fair'''s "Top Hollywood Earners of 2009" with estimated earnings of $18 million in 2009.

In December 2009, Pattinson autographed a guitar to be auctioned off for charity. He also volunteered for the ''Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief'' in January 2010.

''GQ'' and ''Glamour'' both named him the "Best Dressed Man" of 2010, with ''GQ'' stating, "Extremely elegant and inspiring, the true essence of a contemporary man." In 2010, ''People'' also listed Pattinson in their "World's Most Beautiful" issue.

In 2010, Britain's ''The Sunday Times'' "Rich List" put him on its "list of young millionaires" in the UK, worth £13 million. ''Time'' magazine named him as one of 2010's 100 Most Influential People in The World. In June 2010, Pattinson was named by Forbes magazine the No.50 most powerful celebrity in the world with earnings $17 million. Due to Pattinson's rising fame, a wax statue of him was added to the Madame Tussauds collection in London and New York City. On 14 November 2010, Pattinson received two BBC Radio 1 Teen Awards, Best Dressed and Best Actor.

In 2011, Pattinson was No. 15 on ''Vanity Fair'''s "Hollywood Top 40" with earnings of $27.5 million in 2010.

Filmography

! Year	! Title	! Role	Notes
2004		Rawdy Crawley	Only seen on DVD release
2004		Giselher	Television film
2005		Cedric Diggory
2006	''''	Toby Jugg	Television film
2007	''''	Daniel Gale	Television film
2007		Cedric Diggory	Cameo
2008	''How to Be''	Art
2008		Edward Cullen	Hollywood Film Award for New HollywoodMTV Movie Award for Breakthrough Performance MaleMTV Movie Award for Best Kiss MTV Movie Award for Best Fight People's Choice Award for Favourite On-Screen-Team Scream Award for Best Fantasy ActorTeen Choice Award for Choice HottieTeen Choice Award for Choice Movie Actor DramaTeen Choice Award for Movie Liplock Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Rumble Nominated—Empire Award for Best NewcomerNominated—People's Choice Award for Favourite Movie ActorNominated—Scream Award for Best Ensemble Cast
2009	''Little Ashes''	Salvador Dalí
2009	''''	Edward Cullen	Russia's Georges Award for Best Foreign ActorNational Movie Award for Best PerformanceMTV Movie Award for Best Male PerformanceMTV Movie Award for Global SuperstarMTV Movie Award for Best Kiss Teen Choice Award for Movie Liplock Teen Choice Award for Movie chemistry Nominated—Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Actor FantasyNominated—Teen Choice Award for Choice HottieNominated—Empire Award for Best ActorNominated—Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards for Cutest Couple Nominated—Razzie Award for Worst Supporting ActorNominated—Razzie Award for Worst Screen Couple (with Kristen Stewart)
2010		Tyler Hawkins
2010	''''	Edward Cullen	Teen Choice Award for Choice Summer Movie Star – MaleBrazilian Kids' Choice Award for Couple of the Year Scream Award for Best Fantasy ActorPeople's Choice Award for Favourite On-Screen-Team MTV Movie Award for Best Male PerformanceMTV Movie Award for Best Kiss MTV Movie Award for Best Fight Teen Choice Award for Choice VampireNominated—Nickelodeon Australian Kids' Choice Award for Fave Kiss Nominated—People's Choice Award for Favorite Movie ActorNominated—People's Choice Award for Favorite Movie Star Under 25Nominated—Razzie Award for Worst Actor
2011		Jacob Jankowski
2011		Edward Cullen
2012		Georges Duroy	Awaiting release
2012		Edward Cullen	Post-production
2012		Eric Packer	Post-production

References

External links

Category:1986 births Category:Actors from London Category:English child actors Category:English film actors Category:English guitarists Category:English male models Category:English singer-songwriters Category:English stage actors Category:English television actors Category:Living people Category:Old Harrodians Category:People educated at Tower House School Category:People from Barnes, London

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