• Faith: Latter-day Saint
• Career: Politician
• Birthday:  March 12, 1947

Mitt Romney is a businessman, politician, and lawyer who has served as the junior United States senator from Utah since 2019. He served as the 70th governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and was the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in the 2012 election, losing to Barack Obama.

By 1971, Romney had participated in both his parents’ political campaigns. That same year, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English from Brigham Young University and in 1975, he received a JD-MBA degree from Harvard. He became a management consultant and joined Bain & Company in Boston in 1977. As Bain’s CEO, Romney helped lead the company out of a financial crisis. In 1984, he co-founded and led the spin-off company Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm that became one of the largest of its kind in the nation.

After stepping down from Bain Capital, Romney was the Republican nominee in the 1994 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts. After losing to five-term incumbent Ted Kennedy, he resumed his position at Bain Capital. Years later, a successful stint as president and CEO of the then-struggling Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics led to a relaunch of Romney’s political career. In 2002, he was elected governor of Massachusetts and helped develop and later signed a health care reform law that provided near-universal health insurance access through state-level subsidies and individual mandates to purchase insurance. He also presided over the elimination of a projected $1.2-1.5 billion deficit through a combination of spending cuts, increased fees, and eliminating corporate tax loopholes.

He didn’t seek reelection in 2006 and decided to focus on his campaign for the Republican nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, ultimately losing the nomination to Senator John McCain. He ran for and won the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, becoming the first LDS Church member to be a major party’s nominee. He lost the election to President Obama. After reestablishing residency in Utah, Romney announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate seat held by the retiring Orrin Hatch in the 2018 election. He defeated state representative Mike Kennedy in the Republican primary and Democratic nominee Jenny Wilson in the general election. In doing so, Romney became only the third person ever to be elected governor of one state and U.S. senator for another state.

Generally considered a centrist or moderate Republican, in 2020, Romney was the lone Republican to vote to convict Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial, making him the first senator ever to have voted to remove a president of the same party from office. He also voted to convict in Trump’s second trial in 2021. In 2023, Romney announced he would not run for reelection in 2024 and would retire from the Senate when his term expires in 2025.

What religion is Mitt Romney?

Romney is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and has been active throughout his adult life. He served as bishop of his ward and later as a stake president for an area covering Boston and many of its suburbs. In this position, he formulated Sunday services and classes using LDS scriptures to guide the congregation. In 1966, Romney started a 30-month stint in France as an LDS missionary, a traditional rite of passage in his family.