Mitt Romney announces he's running for U.S. Senate in Utah

Former 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced Friday that he's running for Senate in Utah, saying that "I am ready to fight for this great state and advocate for solutions that improve the lives of Utahns."

Romney was widely expected to enter the race after Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said in January that he wouldn’t run for reelection.


“I am running for United States Senate because in these trying times there is no better moment to bring Utah’s values to Washington. Utah’s economic and political success is a model for our nation,” Romney said.

A statement emailed to reporters Friday morning by Romney’s campaign said the former Massachusetts governor plans to visit all of Utah’s 29 counties over the coming months and highlighted his experience heading the organizing committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Among his Massachusetts gubernatorial achievements, the statement listed Romney’s role in developing “a health insurance program that covered all citizens,” a program that served as a blueprint for Obamacare.

Romney’s campaign announcement also highlighted his role as a bishop and stake president in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which is headquartered in Salt Lake City.

“Utahns are known for hard work, innovation, and our can-do pioneering spirit,” Romney said in the statement. “Utah’s economic and political success is a model for our nation.”

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Romney’s Senate bid has drawn outsized national attention not only because of his status as a former GOP presidential nominee but also because he has been among the most vocal Republican critics of President Donald Trump. During the 2016 campaign, Romney urged Republican primary voters to cast ballots for anyone other than Trump and labeled him “a phony” and “a fraud.”

In that same speech, Romney said Trump’s “promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University” and that he was “playing the American public for suckers.” Trump characteristically punched back at Romney throughout the campaign, labeling him a “stiff” who begged for an endorsement in 2012 and “choked like a dog” in the election.

The relationship between the two men seemed to warm in the weeks and months after Trump’s 2016 election victory, when the president considered Romney among the finalists to be his secretary of state. Still, Romney has remained willing to criticize Trump, including last month over the president’s reported characterization of certain African and Caribbean nations as “shithole countries.”

Romney, in his campaign launch video, seemed to take a subtle jab at Trump’s hardline immigration policies and a White House budget that experts have said will balloon the federal deficit. “Utah has a lot to teach the politicians in Washington,” he said. “Utah has balanced its budgets. Washington is buried in debt… Utah welcomes legal immigrants from around the world. Washington sends immigrants a message of exclusion.”

Should Romney win the Senate seat in deep-red Utah, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1970, he would replace Hatch, the dean of the Senate and a staunch defender of the president. Eager to avoid replacing an ally with an antagonist, Trump launched a charm offensive against Hatch late last year in an ultimately futile effort to convince the 83-year-old senator to seek reelection this year.