Romney’s wife says woman being eyed for ticket

STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

WOLFEBORO, N.H. — Mitt Romney’s wife has con­firmed a tid­bit about the vice pres­i­den­tial search process her hus­band largely has been keep­ing secret: He’s con­sid­er­ing choos­ing a woman.

“We’ve been look­ing at that, and I love that option as well,” Ann Rom­ney told CBS News in a joint inter­view with her hus­band that was broad­cast Thurs­day. She added: “There’s a lot of peo­ple that Mitt is con­sid­er­ing right now.”

The dis­clo­sure came as the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, vaca­tion­ing with his fam­ily at their lake­side estate in Wolfeboro, faced mount­ing crit­i­cism from inside the party about the state of his campaign.

Offi­cially, the cam­paign says Rom­ney is doing what he’s done for the past decade — enjoy­ing fam­ily time dur­ing a week­long hol­i­day in New Hamp­shire. It’s also a break from the cam­paign trail and a chance to relax before the pre-convention push. But unof­fi­cially, the bit of down time is a chance for the con­tem­pla­tive Rom­ney to con­sider who to tap for the No. 2 slot, how the cam­paign is going and whether to adjust strat­egy in a con­test that polls show is close.

Rom­ney declined in the inter­view to describe the sta­tus of the vice pres­i­den­tial search, say­ing: “That’s some­thing I’m keep­ing close with my team.” He also didn’t respond to grow­ing calls within Repub­li­can cir­cles for him to shake up his staff after a series of mis­steps. Among them: his campaign’s ini­tial refusal to side with Repub­li­cans who agree with the Supreme Court that the penalty included in Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care man­date amounts to a tax. Rom­ney even­tu­ally agreed with that assess­ment and, in doing so, broke with a key spokesman.

All that has con­ser­v­a­tive opin­ion lead­ers, includ­ing media titan Rupert Mur­doch, call­ing for Rom­ney to shake up his top staff. GOP offi­cials in key states also are increas­ingly call­ing on Rom­ney to talk about issues beyond his key mes­sage — that the econ­omy remains weak under Obama — and to be more spe­cific about what he would do as president.

William Kris­tol, edi­tor of the con­ser­v­a­tive Weekly Stan­dard, wrote Thurs­day that Romney’s strat­egy “strikes me as a path to (nar­row) defeat.” The Wall Street Jour­nal edi­to­r­ial page also crit­i­cized the campaign’s “insu­lar staff and strat­egy that are slowly squan­der­ing an his­toric opportunity.”

“Mr. Obama is being hurt by an eco­nomic recov­ery that is weak­en­ing for the third time in three years. But Mr. Rom­ney hasn’t been able to take advan­tage, and if any­thing he is los­ing ground,” the news­pa­per wrote, call­ing for “a larger eco­nomic nar­ra­tive and vision than Mr. Rom­ney has so far provided.”

Ann Rom­ney, for her part, took issue with the Obama team’s strat­egy, telling her inter­viewer that Democ­rats will “do every­thing they can to destroy Mitt.”

“Early on we heard what their strat­egy was. It was ‘kill Rom­ney,’” she said, adding a mes­sage to Obama: “Not when I’m next to him you bet­ter not.”

She also sketched out her own require­ments for what she’d like to see in a run­ning mate, say­ing the per­son should be “some­one that obvi­ously can do the job but will be able to carry through with some of the other respon­si­bil­i­ties.” She said the per­son should be some­one who will have her husband’s back and who he will enjoy being around and have “the same per­son­al­ity type.” She added: “Com­pe­tent, capa­ble and will­ing to serve this coun­try. I think there’s lots of good peo­ple out there that fill that bill right now.”

Inside Repub­li­can cir­cles, spec­u­la­tion also is high about who Rom­ney will choose, with his search well under way and his self-imposed dead­line for pick­ing some­one “before the con­ven­tion” loom­ing large. It’s the biggest deci­sion he will make between now and when he accepts the GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion in late August.

Talk among GOP insid­ers has focused on men as likely top prospects, includ­ing Ohio Sen. Rob Port­man, for­mer Min­nesota Gov. Tim Paw­lenty, Wis­con­sin Rep. Paul Ryan, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jer­sey Gov. Chris Christie and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

But no less than a half-dozen other names also have popped up, includ­ing New Hamp­shire Repub­li­can Sen. Kelly Ayotte — who walked in a July Fourth parade with Rom­ney on Wednes­day — as well as South Car­olina Gov. Nikki Haley, New Mex­ico Gov. Susana Mar­tinez and for­mer eBay CEO Meg Whitman.

The only time Rom­ney has said any­thing sub­stan­tive about the run­ning mate search was last month when he said his advis­ers were “thor­oughly vet­ting” Rubio. Rom­ney com­mented after news reports sur­faced cit­ing unnamed advis­ers who said the Florida sen­a­tor was not being considered.

It’s been four years since John McCain chose then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a rock-ribbed con­ser­v­a­tive who was little-known out­side of her home state, to be the first female on a Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial ticket as he sought a way to both fire up the GOP’s core sup­port­ers while nar­row­ing Obama’s advan­tage among women.

It wasn’t long before ques­tions about Palin’s readi­ness to be pres­i­dent — and crit­i­cism of an inad­e­quate vet­ting process — became a major prob­lem for McCain. Crit­ics used the pick to pum­mel him on his decision-making.

This year, Rom­ney has used that expe­ri­ence as a guide. He’s said pre­pared­ness to be pres­i­dent is his No. 1 require­ment for a vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. Unlike four years ago, Repub­li­can base vot­ers are ener­gized largely by a desire to beat Obama.

But polls show that Rom­ney still badly trails Obama among women, and putting one on the ticket — or even just rais­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of a female run­ning mate — could help carve into that support.

Rom­ney and his wife hud­dled for at least 45 min­utes Tues­day with cam­paign man­ager Matt Rhoades, senior adviser Beth Myers and top strate­gist Stu­art Stevens on the deck that over­looks the lawn behind his home.

Fur­ther fuel­ing the running-mate talk: Port­man was head­lin­ing a fundraiser in Con­cord, N.H., this week­end; he also wrote an opin­ion piece pub­lished in an Ohio news­pa­per Thurs­day to counter Obama’s cam­paign appear­ances in the state Thurs­day and Fri­day. Paw­lenty and Jin­dal both were in Ohio for the same rea­son, to cam­paign for Rom­ney near Obama’s events.

Posted by AP News on Jul 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.