“It was very irritating to lawmakers,” acknowledged John O’Keefe, Mr. Romney’s former director of legislative affairs. “It was hard to explain.”

Mr. Romney’s struggle to tamp down resurgent opponents and secure the Republican presidential nomination, highlighted by his uneven performance on Super Tuesday, is bringing renewed focus to his sometimes awkward style and aloof manner, which have hampered his ability to connect with some voters. A review of his time as governor shows that those traits affected his relationship with another crucial constituency: the Massachusetts lawmakers he needed to pass legislation.

For officials used to the glad-handing and alcohol-lubricated culture of local politics, Mr. Romney was an unfamiliar breed: a data-driven chief executive used to delivering unquestioned orders, a political newcomer who cast the legislature as a foe, a delegator who preferred working with just the leadership and an emotionally remote figure who tended not to socialize — and because of his Mormon religion did not drink.

Even though he worked just a few hundred feet from them for four years, Mr. Romney displayed little interest in getting to know lawmakers and never developed real relationships with most members of the Democratic-dominated body, according to interviews with two dozen current and former lawmakers of both parties and members of the governor’s staff. His approach could offer hints of how a President Romney might deal with Congress, where many members, particularly Republicans, complain that the man he is seeking to oust, President Obama, has been distant and disdainful.

“Romney just didn’t want to deal with legislators,” said Robert A. Antonioni, a Democratic state senator and a chairman of the Education Committee during the Romney years. “Typically, the governor wants to have a productive relationship with the legislature. That is not something that happened with him.”