Romney is ‘Master of the Turnaround’

In few election years have Republicans enjoyed the diverse and impressive selection of presidential candidates they do in 2008. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney stands out among these elite talents as a proven administrator, the candidate with the best understanding of the U.S. economy, and the contender most likely to stem illegal immigration. The Sacramento Union therefore endorses Willard Mitt Romney as Republican nominee for the U.S. presidency. Romney possesses perhaps the strongest managerial resume and record of anyone who has ever sought the U.S. presidency. He holds joint JD/MBA degrees from Harvard Law School, where he graduated ### laude, and Harvard Business School, where he made the top 5 percent of his class. No other candidate, Republican or Democratic, has Romney’s ground-level experience and success in the U.S. economy. He began his business career as a vice president for Bain & Company, a Boston management consulting firm, before founding and heading Bain Capital, a spin-off, private investment company. Under Romney’s 14-year leadership, Bain Capital’s internal rate of return on realized investments was 113 percent. In 1990, he returned to Bain & Company, then near bankruptcy. Within a year, he rescued the company from the red without lay-offs, and today, it employs more than 2,000 people in 25 offices around the world.

Romney later became CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games, where he again demonstrated the kind of managerial talents the White House demands. When Romney took the helm, the event was foundering, $379 million short of its revenue benchmarks. The games were plagued, too, by allegations of bribery against Romney’s predecessors. Romney staunched the event’s deficit spending, increased fundraising, organized 23,000 volunteers, and ended the games with a $100 million profit despite spending $224.5 million to ensure security following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In 2002 Romney showed his ability to appeal to a broad crosssection of voters when he was elected, as a conservative, to the governorship of notoriously leftleaning, high-tax Massachusetts. There, he inherited a $1.2 billion state budget deficit but orchestrated a magnificent turnaround. He balanced the state budget every year of his administration without raising taxes and recorded a $700 million surplus in 2006. During his last year, Romney tried to control costs by vetoing 250 items in the state budget, all of which were overturned by the free-spending state legislature. This more than suggests that Romney has the fortitude to fight the pork barrel expenditures he will inevitably encounter in Washington, D.C.

With the U.S. either on the cusp of an economic recession or already in its throes, Romney is best equipped among the GOP presidential contestants to achieve yet another turnaround by reviving the nation’s capacity to generate jobs and business. When he became governor, Massachusetts was shedding thousands of jobs per month. But at the close of his administration, the state had attracted hundreds of new companies and added 60,000 new jobs.

Romney is a Reagan-style supply-sider. He knows that lower taxes invigorate the economy by increasing investment in new plants and jobs. Unlike other candidates, he has taken the no-tax pledge advanced by Americans for Tax Reform. He supported the 2003 Bush tax cuts and will work to make them permanent. What is more, he would eliminate capital gains taxes on middle-class taxpayers and do away with the “death tax” (inheritance tax) for all taxpayers.

We also believe that Romney will do what is necessary to preserve America’s sovereignty and security in the face of 12 to 20 million illegal aliens residing in the U.S. He opposed last year’s McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill, favors implementation of “a mandatory biometrically-enabled and tamper-proof documentation and employment-verification system,” supports development of “a wall or fence or electronic surveillance” along America’s porous borders, and has pushed for broader enforcement of U.S. immigration laws by state and local police. Gov. Romney signed an agreement in 2006 to allow Massachusetts state troopers to enforce federal immigration laws. He also vetoed in-state tuition for illegals, fought efforts to weaken the state’s English language immersion law, and opposed legislation to grant driver’s licenses to illegals.

He is right on the immigration issue as he is on most others. But the issue that will count most this election year is the economy. With polls showing that voters are increasingly worried about the housing and debt meltdown, Romney appears to be the right man at the right time. While other candidates have been hard pressed to offer quick fixes to these economic woes, Romney alone boasts a record of financial crisis management. No other candidate possesses his grasp of marketplace dynamics. And none have resuscitated a budget the size of Massachusetts’. He is a proven turnaround specialist, just what is needed if the country is to achieve four more years of economic prosperity.