Governorship of Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney was sworn in as the 70th Governor of Massachusetts on January 2, 2003, along with Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey. Romney's term ended on January 4, 2007; he chose not to run for re-election.

Romney's swearing in as governor used the same Bible that his father George Romney had used when he was sworn in as the Governor of Michigan. In his 15-minute inauguration speech in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, he avoided policy specifics, but said that he intended to bring about a "lighter, more agile bureaucracy." The overall inauguration festivities took place over three days and emphasized themes around common citizens.

Upon taking office, Romney faced a state legislature in which Democrats held 85 percent of the seats. Indeed, the state Republican Party had fielded no candidate for 62 percent of the seats during the 2002 state elections.

From the outset Romney sought to show himself as the state's first 'CEO governor'. His choices for the executive cabinet included well-known figures such as Democrat Robert Pozen, former vice chairman of Fidelity Investments, and Douglas Foy, who had served as president of the Conservation Law Foundation. They and other cabinet members and advisors were picked more on managerial abilities rather than on party affiliation. Romney gave them broad authority over new what he called "super-secretariats".

Romney and Healey both pledged to forgo their official salaries for the length of their terms.

During the campaign for the governorship in 2002, Romney proposed a plan that he said would balance the Massachusetts budget without raising taxes. He campaigned that he would be able to save $1 billion (out of a $23 billion budget) by reducing waste, fraud, and mismanagement in the state government, and he railed against the large tax increase that the legislature were negotiating in an attempt to close a looming $2 billion budget deficit. He promised that if elected he would repeal that tax increase within four years without cutting core government services. Surveys suggested that many residents agreed with his antitax stance. Though less than a majority, some 40 percent of the voters voted in favor of abolishing the income tax in a referendum held during the election that carried Romney into office; and in an April 2003 poll of Massachusetts residents, 57 percent said Romney should not consider raising taxes as part of his plan to balance the budget.

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