Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) has announced that he will not run in the special election for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.
“Gov. Romney’s focus right now is on helping other Republicans run for office, and that is how he will be spending his time,” said Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom.
Not running is the right decision for Romney — and quite frankly, it seemed odd that anybody was floating this idea in the first place. After one term as governor, Romney was unpopular when he left office, and then spent the 2007/2008 Republican primary season routinely talking about how he was the conservative champion inside that dreaded, liberal state.
In fact, after a poll in late 2007 showed that Romney would have lost the state 2-1 against then-Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, his campaign spokesman Kevin Madden tacitly admitted that Romney would not contest the state in the general election.
“Massachusetts is a pretty blue state, and has gone to the Democrat candidate in national elections quite regularly in recent history,” Madden told us in an e-mail. “Our focus is on winning the Republican nomination and then taking the governor’s message of bringing change to Washington to the rest of the country.”
