Perhaps not since Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2001 will a freshman senator arrive on Capitol Hill with the profile and spotlight to make an immediate impact as Republican Mitt Romney in 2019.
Romney on Tuesday easily won the GOP nomination for Senate in Utah, defeating state legislator Mike Kennedy. The victory sets up a fall contest with Democrat Jenny Wilson, a mere formality on the road to Washington in overwhelmingly conservative Utah.
There are key differences between Clinton then and Romney now. For the New York Democrat, the Senate was a way station on the way to running for president. For the Utah Republican, the Senate is the capstone of a political career — after running for president.
But there are critical similarities. Clinton, for eight years first lady, entered the Senate with the ability to command media attention and impact public opinion. So does Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee who has managed to stay relevant in the age of President Trump.
“He will be fairly well regarded by his colleagues,” said a Republican operative with Senate ties. “He’s spent a lot of time raising money for them over the past six years and campaigning for them. Beyond his own presidential race, Romney is one of the few national figures consistently helpful to Republican Senate campaigns.”
Indeed, Romney has bragged about his close relationships in the Senate, cultivated over several years of prodigious fundraising and campaigning for Republican candidates and incumbents. It’s unusual, these days most politicians of both parties run against Washington, going out of their way to boast about how few friends they have there.
“I’ve actually campaigned for Mitch McConnell in Kentucky and raised money for him,” Romney said of the Senate majority leader, in a conversation with a Utah voter during the primary campaign. “I’ve campaigned with some 40 different Republican senators. I’ve campaigned for them — with them.”
Romney, 71, could find the Senate frustrating.
The venture capitalist transitioned from CEO, to governor of Massachusetts, to two-time presidential candidate, positions where he called most of the shots. Legislating is an arduous process, governed by policy committees and arcane parliamentary procedure that can delay and dilute results — and dominated by members whose power derives from seniority.
But Republicans who have followed his career, and worked with him, predict that Romney will adjust to his new environment, and make his mark.
“Ultimately, just like he did when he was governor, he’ll figure out a way to build coalitions and play the politics and media game in order to be effective,” a Republican strategist said.
Romney is going to have to navigate Trump. He became a voice of the Republican diaspora during the 2016 election when he delivered a forceful speech denouncing Trump, whose endorsement he had courted in 2012 when the president was still a real estate mogul and reality television star.
The two have since made amends. Trump endorsed Romney’s bid to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, and Romney in turn has praised the president’s tenure. Trump’s accomplishments, Romney has said, aren’t far off from what he would have done had he won the presidency six years ago.
But as Romney also has said, and reiterated in Sunday op-ed published in The Salt Lake Tribune, he plans to speak out and oppose Trump when he says or does something that he finds morally objectionable, or is not in the best interest of Utah or the country.
Given Trump’s Twitter habit and penchant for provocative rhetoric, Romney’s likely to face what one Republican insider termed “hydraulic pressure” to answer for Trump more often than he would like. How he navigates those daily challenges could come to define his image as a senator as much as the agenda he pursues.
That agenda, Romney said, will focus on deficit reduction and entitlement reform, issues he argues have been ignored and threaten to spark a fiscal crisis if not addressed. Romney also pledges to revive efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. On foreign policy, he could prove a bulwark against Trump, in the same vane as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who is away from the Senate indefinitely as he battles brain cancer.
But first, said one Republican who has advised Romney, expect him to “really put his head down and learn” about the Senate and how it works. “He will be focused on learning rather than doing.”
As it happens, that’s just the path Clinton chose.
