Ann Romney

Ann Lois Romney ( Davies; born April 16, 1949) is an American author and philanthropist. She is married to politician and businessman Mitt Romney and was First Lady of Massachusetts during her husband's tenure as governor of that state.

Davies was born in Detroit and raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where she attended the private Kingswood School. After converting to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in 1966, Davies attended Brigham Young University (BYU). She married Mitt Romney in 1969 and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in French in 1975.

As First Lady of Massachusetts, Romney served as the governor's liaison for federal faith-based initiatives. She was involved in a number of children's charities, including Operation Kids. Later, she was an active participant in her husband's U.S. presidential campaigns in 2008 and in 2012.

Romney was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998. She has credited a mixture of mainstream and alternative treatments with giving her a lifestyle mostly without limitations, and has said that equestrianism has helped her maintain her health. Romney has received recognition in dressage as an adult amateur at the national level and has competed professionally in Grand Prix as well. In 2014, she opened the Ann Romney Center for Neurological Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston; the Center performs intersectional research regarding multiple sclerosis and several other brain diseases.

Early life Born Ann Lois Davies in Detroit on April 16, 1949, she was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, She has two brothers. was a self-made businessman who in 1946 co-founded Jered Industries, a maker of heavy machinery for marine use located in Troy, Michigan. He had also held the part-time position of Mayor of Bloomfield Hills. although on her request the family very occasionally attended church, and she nominally identified as an Episcopalian. At times, she helped out at her father's plant.

Ann Davies knew of Mitt Romney since elementary school. which was the sister school to the all-boys Cranbrook School that he attended. He talked of the marriage taking place in the near future, but she insisted that he go on Mormon missionary duty on the grounds that he would regret it later if he did not. In the conversion process she accepted the guidance of Mitt's father George Romney, the Governor of Michigan. She spent the second semester of her freshman year abroad, at the University of Grenoble in France, and was there during the 1968 Winter Olympics and met athletes such as skiing star Jean-Claude Killy. Mitt sent letters back imploring her to wait for him. It was presided over by Edwin B. Jones, Among the 250–300 guests were U.S. House Minority Leader Gerald Ford and automotive executives such as Semon Knudsen and Edward Cole, and President Richard Nixon sent congratulations. (Both her brothers converted to Mormonism within a year of her doing so; while both were undergraduates at BYU (Mitt had transferred from Stanford to BYU at Ann's request). After Mitt graduated, the couple moved to Belmont, Massachusetts, so that he could attend Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School. She faced criticism from her parents over her decision to marry and start a large family so young. She wanted to go on for a master's degree, perhaps in art history, but first taking care of her children, and later her health issues, forestalled that. With a friend, she held local cooking classes for a brief period.

It was partly due to her urging that her husband entered politics and ran in the 1994 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts against incumbent Democrat Ted Kennedy. She was seen as superficial and too deferential to him Her statement in it that she and her husband had never had a serious argument during their married years Boston University political science professor later said, "She definitely hurt him in that race." She later termed the experience "a real education". She then dropped them and other medications due to counterproductive side effects. and for her continued ability to deal with the disease. and 2005 Silver Medal at the Grand Prix level from the United States Dressage Federation. who schools her and her horses in dressage and works with her importing new stock from Europe. The pair qualified for the Pan-Am games in 2004.

By 2011, the horses she owned and kept at Ebeling's Moorpark, California, stables, which she is a partner in, were valued at more than $250,000. The Romneys helped fund Ebeling's aspirations for equestrian competition at the 2012 Summer Olympics, At the London games in August 2012, she watched the pair place 28th in the competition.

Charitable work Ann Romney has been involved in a number of children's charities, including having been a director of the inner city-oriented Best Friends, which seeks to assist inner-city adolescent girls. She was a volunteer instructor of middle-school girls at the multicultural Mother Caroline Academy in Boston. She began volunteering for the United Way of Massachusetts Bay soon after that, Earlier, by 1996, she was a member of the Massachusetts Advisory Board of Stand for Children.

During the 2002 Winter Olympics effort, she co-chaired the Olympic Aid charity, which provides athletic activities and programs for children in war-torn regions.

In January 2003, following his election, Romney became First Lady of Massachusetts, a position she held through January 2007. In that role, she generally kept a low public profile, Romney was president of the Doric Docents, the volunteer tour directors who inform visitors to the State House about its architecture and history and the Massachusetts legislative process.

While Massachusetts First Lady, she was active in teenage pregnancy prevention efforts. In 2004, she said she was in favor of stem cell research as long as it was done "morally and ethically".

In 2005, the governor appointed his wife as head of a new special office whose purpose was to help the state's faith-based groups gain more federal monies in association with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. This came after the state had seen its share of faith-based grants decline over the preceding three years. In this unpaid Governor's Liaison position, Her health was still a primary factor in family decisions about her husband's career, and Mitt said in 2005 that if her multiple sclerosis flared up, "I wouldn't be involved in politics anymore; that would be over."

Role in 2008 presidential campaign

Ann Romney was an active participant in her husband's 2008 presidential campaign. One past issue that arose involving her was disclosure of her donation of $150 to Planned Parenthood in 1994, when her husband was a pro-choice candidate for the U.S. Senate. She said she did not remember the contribution; her own public stance on abortion has evolved in a similar manner to his, and by this time she was co-chair of the capital campaign for Massachusetts Citizens for Life. By late 2007, she had become an integral part of his campaign, and was doing more trips and appearances on her own, despite the risk that added stress would aggravate her condition.

Her political message was often mixed with discussions of her family, her recipes, or managing her condition. and by the close of 2007, she was the most visible of all the Republican candidates' wives in campaigning. she subsequently underwent radiation therapy. President-elect Barack Obama was among the well-wishers who called her. She has been cancer-free since.

In June 2009, due to her husband's request, Ann Romney became the first spouse to be included in the official Massachusetts State House gubernatorial portrait.

For many years the couple's primary residence was a house in Belmont, Massachusetts, Both locations were near some of the Romneys' grandchildren They also bought a smaller condominium in Belmont during 2010.

Role in 2012 presidential campaign Regarding another possible run for office by her husband in the 2012 presidential election, Romney said in March 2010 that this time the process would hold no surprises, and that if he decided in favor of doing it, "I'm up to saying, go storm the castle, sweetie." Although still not liking the political process, which she referred to as "a very difficult game", she urged her husband to run again As part of trying to lighten her husband's image, she sometimes participated in comic setup routines with him. Romney said that if she became First Lady of the United States, she would seek to work with at-risk youths and on behalf of those with multiple sclerosis. She expressed admiration for three former first ladies, Mamie Eisenhower, Nancy Reagan, and Barbara Bush. Her emphasis on their 42 years of marriage and his steadfastness following the onset of her disease offered an implicit but clear contrast with Gingrich's own personal history. Regarding the couple's net worth, she alluded to her health problems and said, "Look, I don't even consider myself wealthy, which is an interesting thing, it can be here today and gone tomorrow. And how I measure riches is by the friends I have and the loved ones that I have and the people that I care about in my life."

In April 2012, Ann Romney was spotlighted when Democratic commentator Hilary Rosen declared Romney to be unfit to address women's economic issues because as a stay-at-home mother, she had "never worked a day in her life". Rosen apologized the following day. Like all presidential candidates' wives, her fashion choices came under scrutiny, with some critics praising her for a contemporary look that avoided standard campaign appearance clichés, while others said she lacked consistency and did not seem to be using the services of a stylist. On August 28, Romney delivered a prime-time speech before the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, in which she stressed her own background and her family experiences, in an appeal to women voters. By early October, she and son Tagg had convinced the campaign to spend more time emphasizing her husband's personal nature and character, rather than simply present issue and record arguments against Obama.

In the November 6, 2012, general election, Mitt Romney lost as President Obama was re-elected. The couple, along with the senior campaign staff, had thought they were going to win up until polls closed that evening and returns started coming in. Ann cried as her husband concluded their chances were over, then appeared stricken as she went on stage with him following his concession speech. She still mourned the election loss, perhaps more than her husband did. In October 2013, she published, and made promotional appearances for, The Romney Family Table: Sharing Home-Cooked Recipes & Favorite Traditions, a cookbook that made the New York Times Best Seller list.

Most of the couple's time was spent seeing their grandchildren, They purchased a house in the Deer Valley area of Park City, Utah, in a return to that state, The Romneys also gained long-sought permission to replace their La Jolla home with a much bigger one. including switching voter registration.

In 2014, the Ann Romney Center for Neurological Diseases was opened at the Brigham and Women's Hospital (a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School) in Boston. With a fundraising goal of $50 million, the center was created to focus on research into Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, and brain tumors. Overall, she sees the center as helping to connect researchers working in different areas and to provide monies for experimental approaches and treatments that are too new or unproven for the National Institute of Health to fund. Ann Romney's reaction was to say it would not happen: "Done. Completely. Not only Mitt and I are done, but the kids are done. Done. Done. Done." and by January 2015 was reported by Romney advisors to be supporting the possibility as he seriously considered a third presidential bid. In any event, he soon decided against making a run.

Romney at a book signing in December 2015 in Gilbert, Arizona. In March 2015, her book Whatever You Choose to Be: 8 Tips for the Road Ahead was published, based upon a commencement address she gave the year before at Southern Utah University. This was followed in September 2015 when her memoir In This Together: My Story was published. In it she discussed her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, the different treatments she found beneficial, and the important role her family played. The book became popular among those affected by the disease. Though highly critical of her husband after he spoke negatively of the Trump candidacy in March 2016, Trump praised Ann Romney as "a lovely woman". Ann Romney earned at least one vote for president when her husband cast a write-in vote for her in November 2016, later saying he voted for "a person who I admire deeply, who I think would be an excellent president".

Spouse of Senator from Utah

Two years later Romney hit the campaign trail again, this time to support her husband in the 2018 United States Senate election in Utah. It was a run that she encouraged him to make, saying "This is a time when you're needed. You have deep roots in this state. Your family heritage is in this state. And when people are needed you gotta step up." In this case, as in the past, he relied strongly on her advice.

His campaign was successful and he took office in January 2019. Living in Washington, however, had little appeal to her, and she rarely joined her husband at the townhouse they bought there. In April 2019, the couple's self-help volume Simple Truths for an Abundant Life: From One Generation to Another was published. In it they described how their own life experiences illustrated ways for principles for handling different aspects and stages of life.

During the attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, travel to Palm Beach, Florida, where some of her horses were kept but where MAGA followers were quite upset by her husband's vote on the first presidential impeachment, highlighted the vitriolic level of ongoing American political discourse. They continued to host an annual family get-together at their expanded summer compound on Lake Winnipesaukee, an event that by this point brought forty people to it. In 2006, she received the MS Society Inspiration Award from the Central New England Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society In May 2008, she shared with her husband the Canterbury Medal from The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, for "refus[ing] to compromise their principles and faith" during that year's presidential campaign. In 2014, Romney received an honorary degree in public service from Southern Utah University, for "her contributions of time, funding and support on behalf of children and families." In 2019, she received the Public Leadership in Neurology Award from the American Brain Foundation for her work in multiple sclerosis research and awareness.