Ann Romney ‘Would Hesitate’ to Recommend Her Sons Enter Politics
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JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Seven months after her husband’s loss in the 2012 presidential race, Ann Romney said she “would hesitate” to recommend a political career to any of her five sons.
“I think it is a very tough thing to do,” Mrs. Romney said in an interview with CNN’s Gloria Borger. “I think it’s a huge sacrifice and I think it is very hurtful many times for the spouse to have to watch the kind of abuse that you know you have to go through, so I’d really have to measure that and think about it and think about the individual circumstance.”
When asked about speculation that her eldest son, Tagg, 43, considered running for a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts, Mrs. Romney said her advice would have been simple: “I would say, ‘don’t do it’ to Tagg.” Incidentally, Tagg Romney announced in February that the timing was “not right” for him to jump into the race to fill John Kerry’s Senate seat.
Mrs. Romney’s reluctance to see her children enter politics echoes the advice the matriarch of the Bush family gave her son, Jeb, when asked whether she thought he should run for president in 2016. “There are other people out there that are very qualified and we’ve had enough Bushes,” Barbara Bush said in an interview with NBC in April.
In the same interview, Mitt Romney acknowledged that the timing of Superstorm Sandy was unhelpful to his presidential hopes.
“I wish the hurricane hadn’t have happened when it did because it gave the president a chance to be presidential and to be out showing sympathy for folks,” Romney said without making reference to the victims or destruction caused by the storm.
Romney also noted that during the campaign, “there were a number of times that I said things that — that didn’t come out right.”
Borger’s interview with Mitt and Ann Romney took place in Utah where Romney is hosting a conference this week called “Experts and Enthusiasts,” which includes influential political players from both parties as well as big-money donors. Attendees include Romney’s vice presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, and former Obama strategist David Axelrod.
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