Weekly Roundup- Week Ending July 15, 2005
Romney at the Crossroads; Healey Goes Left
By Craig Sandler of the State House News Service
       The gap between Mitt Romney’s two personas grew perceptibly wider this week. Mitt Romney, Governor, found himself facing a possible conflict with his lieutenant governor should Mitt Romney, Presidential Hopeful, decide to please the red states by opposing an emergency contraception measure social conservatives find objectionable.
       Mitt Romney, Governor, took center stage at the State House to laud his “gold standard” death penalty bill, which relies on technology and judicial fail safes to promise foolproof capital punishment. The next day, Mitt Romney, Presidential Hopeful, figured to be the center of attention as he discussed the future of secondary education at the 97th annual meeting of the National Governor’s Association - in Iowa, a state the governor could well be frequenting soon. Just to remove any doubt as to how divided Romney’s attention has to be these days, he began the week with a trip to Washington D.C., talking health care with GOP heavy hitter John Engler, now head of the National Manufacturers Association, and speaking to the House Conservative Fund, a staunchly right-wing group of US representatives devoted not just to defeating Democrats, but moderate Republicans so long as they’re not already serving in the US House.
       Such is Romney’s life nowadays – and of course, because his life is that way, the political community and media have a two-track mentality as well. Just as Mike Dukakis had to deal with intimations that his stance on, oh, motorcycle helmets for example, carried national connotations, everything Romney takes up is now viewed with a presidential prism.
       For this week, the focus was on the contraception bill, mostly because the governor’s 2002 running mate, Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, took pains to make clear she favors the bill and would urge the governor to sign it. Actually, Healey may get the chance to do so herself, should the House and Senate come to agreement on the bill and send it to the Executive branch while Romney is out of state on vacation. In any event, senators and representatives need to resolve whether Catholic hospitals should be exempt from the law before it moves on to the governor’s desk, whoever is sitting behind it at the time. Conservatives feel that access to contraception on an “after the fact” basis constitutes a form of abortion.
       In discussing the matter with reporters, Healey told the News Service and Boston Globe about a dozen times that she is firmly pro-choice. That’s p-r-o c-h-o-i-c-e; you got it? Healy’s emphasis of this point was another manifestation of the role Romney’s ruminations now play. She knows who’s the front-runner for the GOP here if he goes national, and she wanted to stress that Romney may be “in a different place,” as he puts it, than he used to be on abortion, but she’s in the same place as the majority of Massachusetts voters.
       All in all, the contraception bill represents an enormous test of the governor’s thinking about his future. Romney is not going to win re-election by making vetoes that please conservatives. They will be voting for him anyway if he runs for re-election. What he needs to do is hold on to the moderates who secured his election in the first place, and a veto of the contraception bill is a conservative act, not a moderate one, in this state at least. A veto will be interpreted as sending the signal that he’s not tremendously interested in preserving his re-election options.
       It is entirely possible that Romney will yet decide he wants to stay here and risk losing re-election. He may still opt for another attempt at increasing his base in the Legislature, after his last sally left him with zero victories and more dependent than ever on Sal and Bobby to give him a victory. He may in the end choose to continue alternating between criticizing Democrats for their liberal ways and vowing to work with them, while suspicions deepen daily that he won’t finish his second term.
       If those sound like unappealing options, that’s why he’ll surprise so many people if he does choose to stay – and this week provided more evidence that his decision is the most important political story in Massachusetts.