No shocker in store: Romney VP search under way

KASIE HUNT

STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

BOSTON — Don’t look for a vice pres­i­den­tial shocker from Mitt Rom­ney. His choice of a running-mate — a search he announced Mon­day he has begun — will be guided by both his method­i­cal, risk-averse cor­po­rate train­ing and the lessons his party learned from Sarah Palin’s selection.

Pre­pared­ness to serve and loy­alty to Rom­ney are likely to trump other cre­den­tials as the all-but-sure Repub­li­can nom­i­nee looks to avoid the blow­back John McCain faced four years ago with his sur­prise choice of the little-known, first-term Alaska gov­er­nor for the GOP ticket. Ques­tions about Palin’s readi­ness to serve, McCain’s decision-making and his advis­ers’ vet­ting came to define the Ari­zona senator’s flawed campaign.

Mind­ful of that, Rom­ney will put expe­ri­ence at the top of his list of qual­i­ties as he chooses a No. 2, accord­ing to senior advis­ers and GOP oper­a­tives famil­iar with his think­ing. They spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymity because they were not autho­rized to speak can­didly about a process Rom­ney him­self is try­ing to keep as pri­vate as pos­si­ble as he works to nar­row a field that may begin with as many as a dozen prospec­tive candidates.

“The hall­mark for Gov­er­nor Romney’s can­di­dacy, and how he would be as pres­i­dent, is that he approaches these deci­sions in a well-thought-out method­i­cal way,” said Steve Duprey, a for­mer McCain adviser and cur­rent New Hampshire-based mem­ber of the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee. “It won’t be like the McCain cam­paign where there was a big sur­prise and effort to cre­ate a game changer.”

For all the secrecy sur­round­ing the process, the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor did give a few hints about his plans Mon­day, dis­clos­ing that he had cho­sen his for­mer chief of staff and 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign man­ager, Beth Myers, to lead the vet­ting and analy­sis of prospec­tive run­ning mates. Sev­eral other mem­bers of the tight-knit cadre that has sur­rounded Rom­ney for years also are likely to be involved.

Rom­ney was largely tight-lipped beyond the staffing announce­ment. He said the selec­tion would cer­tainly hap­pen before the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion in late August. But he wouldn’t pro­vide any more guid­ance on any inter­nal dead­line his team has set. And when asked about poten­tial choices — and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, specif­i­cally — Rom­ney hedged, as he has con­sis­tently in recent months.

“Well I think he’s one of the ter­rific lead­ers in our party, but I think it’s way too early to begin nar­row­ing down who the poten­tial vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nees might be,” Rom­ney said in an inter­view with Diane Sawyer of ABC News out­side Fen­way Park in Boston. “But we’re begin­ning that process, we’ll talk about a lot of folks, and then go through he kind of vet­ting and review process that you have to go through to make sure who­ever you select will pass the eval­u­a­tion that’s required by the Amer­i­can people.”

In addi­tion to his run­ning mate being pre­pared to assume the pres­i­dency, Rom­ney has laid out only one other pub­lic cri­te­rion: that he or she oppose abor­tion rights. The con­di­tion could help reas­sure social con­ser­v­a­tives that Rom­ney is seri­ous about his oppo­si­tion to abor­tion — a sore point because he sup­ported abor­tion rights when he ran for the Sen­ate in 1994.

Sev­eral Repub­li­cans famil­iar with Romney’s think­ing down­play the impor­tance of choos­ing a run­ning mate from a par­tic­u­lar bat­tle­ground state or an impor­tant vot­ing demographic.

Rom­ney also is expected to avoid a can­di­date with the kind of star power that might dis­tract too much atten­tion from the party’s main cam­paign themes — Repub­li­cans are work­ing to make the elec­tion a ref­er­en­dum on Pres­i­dent Barack Obama — or over­shadow the GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee himself.

Rubio, 40, is one such celebrity can­di­date. And the junior Florida sen­a­tor also has lit­tle expe­ri­ence, in the midst of only his sec­ond year on Capi­tol Hill. Still, Rubio is both a con­ser­v­a­tive favorite and poten­tial bridge to the grow­ing His­panic vot­ing bloc, which typ­i­cally favors Democ­rats. He’s a ris­ing star within the Repub­li­can Party.

Ohio Sen. Rob Port­man also is near the top of many spec­u­la­tive lists of poten­tial run­ning mates. Port­man endorsed Rom­ney early and cam­paigned hard for him in his home state. Rom­ney, who won Ohio by a slim mar­gin, knows Port­man and is said to respect him. The Ohio sen­a­tor also is unlikely to spring any sur­prises on the Rom­ney cam­paign. He’s been con­firmed to two Cab­i­net posts — he served as U.S. trade rep­re­sen­ta­tive under Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush and then as Bush’s direc­tor of the Office of Man­age­ment and Budget.

Rom­ney also is likely to con­sider con­ser­v­a­tive favorites talked about often, such as New Jer­sey Gov. Chris Christie, South Car­olina Gov. Nikki Haley and Vir­ginia Gov. Bob McDon­nell. Still, if he’s look­ing for expe­ri­ence, that group has just five years of guber­na­to­r­ial expe­ri­ence among the three.

More expe­ri­enced Repub­li­cans also are likely to be in the mix, and they could help Rom­ney mit­i­gate some polit­i­cal lia­bil­i­ties. Chief among those vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties is his wealth of as much as $250 mil­lion and his strug­gle to con­nect with working-class voters.

For­mer two-term Min­nesota Gov. Tim Paw­lenty comes from a working-class back­ground that could help. He’s been aggres­sively cam­paign­ing on Romney’s behalf since sus­pend­ing his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign last year.

GOP bud­get guru Paul Ryan, R-Wis., also came from hum­ble begin­nings. Ryan cam­paigned at Romney’s side for sev­eral days ahead of Wisconsin’s recent Repub­li­can pri­mary, a vic­tory that helped push Rick San­to­rum out of the race. It’s unclear whether Ryan’s role as face of the Con­gres­sional Repub­li­can bud­get plan, which includes a fun­da­men­tal trans­for­ma­tion of Medicare, would present too much polit­i­cal risk.

Over the com­ing months, the only thing that’s cer­tain in an oth­er­wise uncer­tain process is that Palin’s shadow — and the trou­bles of 2008 — will be loom­ing large.

“There’s one thing the peo­ple in the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment agree on: There was clearly not a thor­ough thought process or vet­ting that went into the vet­ting of Sarah Palin. They didn’t ask the fun­da­men­tal ques­tions or spend enough time with her,” said Sara Fagen, a for­mer polit­i­cal direc­tor for Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. “I don’t think they’re going to make the same mistake.”

Posted by AP News on Apr 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.