Is the Ainge family still pining for a Mitt Romney presidency?
They're reportedly not the only ones who want the former Massachusetts governor to use his expected Senate run in Utah as a launching pad for 2020.
Mitt Romney made another rare public appearance at a Utah tech conference last Friday, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Deflecting questions about his widely expected Senate run, the former Massachusetts governor was reportedly interrupted during an onstage interview by yells from people in the crowd.
“Mitt for president,”one of them shouted, reported the Tribune.
“I tried that once, thanks,” Romney reportedly replied (technically, he tried it twice, in 2008 and 2012).
It wasn’t immediately clear who in the crowd thought the third time would be the charm for the former Republican presidential nominee. However, the source of the shout quickly took ownership.
“I could not resist yelling Mitt for President during the interview,” tweeted Tanner Ainge, a former Utah congressional candidate and son of Celtics general manager Danny Ainge.
“He would be such an upgrade,” Ainge added.
https://twitter.com/tannerainge/status/954391638188613632
The exchange seemed like an unremarkable one-off until Monday, when New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin retweeted Ainge, suggesting that the 33-year-old wasn’t the only Utah Republican who saw 2020 as the endgame of Romney’s potential 2018 campaign.
If ya had any doubts about Utah Rs seeing Mitt for Senate as first step toward him supplanting Trump >>https://t.co/K40C4sG5iX
— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) January 22, 2018
In turn, Ainge asserted that while Romney would win next year’s Senate election in Utah, “nobody is as good, experienced, thoughtful, intelligent, [and] prepared” for president as the 70-year-old former governor and venture capitalist.
https://twitter.com/tannerainge/status/955456969376083969
Tanner wasn’t the only one in the Ainge family seemingly suggesting another Romney presidential bid. His father, the former Celtics player-turned-executive, retweeted a photo of Romney with another participant at Friday’s conference, commenting “new VP candidate.” A fellow observant Mormon, Ainge donated $2,500 and $2,300 to Romney’s 2012 and 2008 presidential campaigns, respectively, while his son donated a combined $950 in 2012.
Tanner Ainge and Martin’s back-and-forth on Twitter (which digressed into Romney’s basketball aptitude) also coincided Monday morning with a report from Business Insider on the speculation that Romney’s “likely Senate run is the start of something much bigger.” Several Republicans, including Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, told BI that, if elected, Romney could replace Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“[Romney] will have a lot of cache, national exposure, he’s a personality in politics, he’s a leader in the Republican Party, and so he won’t be just your typical freshman senator,” Herbert said. “I expect that the leadership in the Senate will understand that and appreciate they have an opportunity to bring somebody into the leadership roles in the Senate that can help them get their agenda done.”
Meanwhile, Roger Stone, an infamous Republican operative and close friend of President Donald Trump, told BI that his sources in the Utah Republican Party and the Mormon church think Romney could use the Senate seat as a launching pad to challenge the sitting Republican president if he is politically “vulnerable” in 2020. That said, given Stone’s notorious record, his words should, perhaps, be taken with a grain of salt.
“I believe and my contacts in Utah are absolutely insistent that he will use the Senate seat as a launchpad for a challenge to Donald Trump,” Stone said, adding that he didn’t think Romney would win, “but that’s a different question.”
Romney’s representatives did not respond to questions this week about the speculation and a number of other Republican consultants, speaking to BI, threw cold water on the idea, saying that they only could foresee Romney running if Trump decided not to seek re-election.
In the weeks before the 2016 election, Romney did express mild regret about not then entering the race.
“I get asked on a regular basis, ‘Boy, why aren’t you running this year?’,” he said at a event in October 2016. “I ask myself that a lot too. But I did that once.”
He did it twice.
