Mitt Romney’s announcement Friday that he will not run for president took even some of his closest allies by surprise.
Romney had appeared in recent weeks to be moving in the direction of a third presidential campaign: sketching out its themes, and gauging interest among top donors and supporters.
A watershed moment in Romney’s decision-making process occurred seven days ago, when his closest aides gathered in Boston and by phone for a meeting to examine exactly what his 2016 campaign would look like, operatives he would hire and polling data detailing his prospects, according to sources present for the meeting and others briefed on the gathering.
At that point, a third campaign looked likely, because the polling still showed Romney with a lead in the primary states. But the numbers also reinforced that the nominating fight would not be easy, and in the days following the meeting the momentum for a Romney three-peat tangibly slowed. Possibly telling: Iowa Republican operative David Kochel participated in the meeting by phone, and less than a week later, he signed on with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s political operation.
“It was a full and frank discussion of the governor’s options and where he stood in the early states and where he stood in the organizational process,” said a Republican source who was in Boston for the meeting. “The truth is, he was in a good spot. He had a pretty good hand dealt to him. …It would have been a competitive primary, but had he run I think he would have been our nominee.”
