Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Mitt and Ann Romney will appear in a pre-taped interview on Fox News Sunday airing March 3, marking the first TV appearance by Mitt since the 2012 Republican presidential nominee conceded the election in the early morning hours of Nov. 7.
Among other things, anchor Chris Wallace asked the couple about their lives over the past four months after having been in the media spotlight since Mitt announced his intention to seek the GOP nod in June 2011.
Mitt tells Wallace, “We were on a roller coaster, exciting and thrilling, ups and downs. But the ride ends, and then you get off. And it’s not like, ‘Oh, can’t we be on a roller coaster the rest of our life?’ It’s like, 'no, the ride’s over.'”
Ann equated the experience to the couple’s work for the Mormon Church, having been in high positions of power and then “you’re released and you’re nobody…it was an amazing thing, and it was really quite a lot of energy and a lot of passion and a lot of -- a lot of people around us and all of a sudden, it was nothing.”
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- On Friday morning, Mitt Romney and his wife Ann drove themselves to campaign headquarters in Boston. Gone were the secret service detail and the motorcade that had trailed them in the final months of the campaign. Instead of the long lines of supporters waiting to see them, there was now a line of dozens of staffers outside Romney's office door; some waiting to shake his hand, others looking for a quiet moment with the Governor after a loss that stunned a confident campaign Tuesday night.
One Romney staffer said the line easily reached a hundred employees Friday as the former presidential candidate ate pizza out of the box in his office. Mrs. Romney wore jeans and a sweater. The Romneys came to headquarters every day after the election after telling staffers they would do anything they could to help them find their next job.
Their pledge to help came just hours after the loss Tuesday night. Romney called a staff meeting at headquarters the next morning. With emotions still raw from the night before, Romney and his wife arrived to deafening applause and chants of "Mitt, Mitt, Mitt." As workers wiped away their tears, one staffer said Romney was clearly moved and that Mrs. Romney cried as they stood before the team.
Campaign manager Matt Rhoades told the Governor and his wife, "We would rather lose with you than win with anyone else," sources said.
Romney's top advisers were convinced they had a solid shot at the presidency right until the end. Pointing to their internal data and their swelling crowds, Romney and his team believed the state polls were overestimating President Obama's standing given Romney's support among independents and what they believed was an enthusiasm gap favoring Republicans.
In the days after defeat, a source close to Mrs. Romney said she described the moment she walked onto that stage on election night as 'surreal.' The source added Mrs. Romney wondered to herself, 'Are we really conceding?' In fact, it was Mrs. Romney who remained most optimistic as returns started pouring in. She was playing with her grandchildren and received updates from others whose eyes were trained on the television screen.
In the hours after his concession speech, Mitt Romney offered praise for his top advisers and donors who gathered at breakfast. According to a source at the breakfast, there was a standing ovation for Rhoades and applause for Mitt's 'Body Man,' Garrett Jackson, who was by Romney's side throughout the campaign. Jackson often captured and tweeted images of the Governor during private moments that spread at lightning speed among Romney's supporters. Among the images was a smiling Romney backstage watching his wife address millions of Americans from the Republican National Convention.
Romney also thanked top strategists Stuart Stevens, Russ Schriefer, Eric Fehrnstrom, and Beth Myers who led the effort to select a vice-presidential candidate. Donor Sheldon Adelson was also cheered, as was Romney's National Finance Chairman Spencer Zwick.
When asked about the President's overture to Mitt Romney during his victory speech on election night, a source close to Romney was unsure if Romney would accept the President's invitation adding Romney is still 'tender,' and bruised by the Obama campaign's portrayal of him, particularly his tenure at Bain Capital.
Even many of those closest to Romney don't know what he'll do next. The Romneys are expected to travel to their San Diego home to spend time with family. Many expect Romney's focus to include board work and the Mormon Church.
On Saturday, Romney sent a note thanking campaign supporters, "This was more than just a campaign, this was a national movement," he wrote. Romney did not specifically reference his loss to President Obama. "We still believe that better days are ahead," Romney wrote.
JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images(BEDFORD, Mass.) -- Mitt and Ann Romney cast their ballots Tuesday morning in Bedford, Mass., where the candidate remarked that he's feeling "very good" about his chances on Tuesday.
They arrived at their polling station just before 9 a.m. As they left, Mitt Romney was asked who he voted for.
“I think you know,” he responded.
Mitt Romney will travel to Ohio and Pennsylvania on Tuesday for last-minute campaign stops, while Mrs. Romney hangs back in Boston.
When asked about his chances in the crucial Buckeye State, he said, "I feel great about Ohio.”
The Romneys, accompanied by their son Tagg, were greeted by chants of “Romney! Romney!” and a sign that read “Mitt and Ann Enjoy Your New White House.”
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(FAIRFAX, Va.) -- Ann Romney may already be daydreaming about life in the White House, asking a huge crowd in northern Virginia Monday if they thought she and her husband might be moving to neighboring Washington come January.
“Are we going to be neighbors soon?” Mrs. Romney asked a roaring crowd of 8,500.
“It’s so exciting to have walked into a room like this and get greeted like that,” she said. “But the thing you don’t know: There’s as many of you outside as inside right now. And that’s the momentum we have been feeling. It’s not just in Virginia. It’s all across this country. And that’s what leads me to believe that I am standing next to the next president of the United States!”
Mitt Romney also seemed taken aback to the enthusiasm of the crowd, comparing it to a welcome pop stars might receive.
“I’m looking around to see if we have the Beatles are here or something to have brought you, but looks like you came just for the campaign and I appreciate it,” he said.
“You know, if anyone wants to know where the energy is — if anyone out there that’s following American politics wants to know where the energy is just come right here in this room and you’ll see it,” he added.
ABC/Martin H. Simon(WALTHAM, Mass.) -- Ann Romney will visit the women of ABC’s The View solo on Thursday since her husband is no longer available to appear on the show he once referred to as “high risk.”
Co-host Barbara Walters announced on the show Monday morning that she was told over the weekend Mitt Romney could no longer make the appearance.
“Gov. Romney was supposed to be on with us this Thursday with Ann Romney,” Walters said. “We were looking forward to it. Over the weekend, his people have said that he had scheduling problems, and would not be coming on with us, nor did not feel that he could reschedule. We are happy to have Mrs. Romney on with us, and are sorry that we won’t have Gov. Romney, and that’s the situation.”
Walters left the door open for Romney to “change his mind,” adding that it would “be our pleasure to have him on the show.”
Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, said in a statement to ABC News that “it was no longer going to work in the campaign schedule but Mrs. Romney is very excited to join the ladies of The View.”
In September, leaked footage from a fundraiser showed Romney referring to the show as “high risk” because of what he called some of the “sharp-tongued” co-hosts. Following the leak, the campaign said at the time that Romney would be willing to appear on the show in October.
Elisabeth Hasselbeck, one of the co-hosts who is the known conservative of the five, said that she had reached out to the campaign after the remarks and they had confirmed that the Romneys would “love to once more join the sharp-tongued chatter in October.”
Co-host Sherri Shepherd said at the time that she wasn’t sure how Romney could be able to “handle the country” if he can’t “handle four sharp-tongued women.”
In the leaked video, Romney is heard saying that while The View is “fine,” it is “high risk because of the five women on it, only one is conservative and four are sharp-tongued and not conservative.”
President Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt tweeted a link to the news that Romney would not be appearing on the show with the comment, “View was apparently too “high risk” for @MittRomney.”
Larry Marano/WireImage/Kayana Szymczak/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Ann Romney’s popularity has jumped since April as her national exposure has increased, but Michelle Obama maintains a clear advantage in the battle of the spouses -- with both women rated more favorably than their campaign-scarred husbands.
Fifty-two percent of Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll see Ann Romney favorably, vs. 69 percent for Michelle Obama, a 17-point edge for the first lady. Still, favorable views of Mrs. Romney have gained 12 points since April, while views of Mrs. Obama are unchanged.
Twenty-six percent view Mrs. Obama unfavorably in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, with just 6 percent undecided -- both essentially unchanged since April.
The popularity of presidential candidates’ spouses does not drive vote preferences. But every advantage can count in a close race, and spouses can play a very public role in the campaigns.
Mrs. Obama’s popularity is roughly on par with two previous first ladies in data since 1992 -- Barbara Bush that year (73 percent saw her favorably) and Laura Bush in 2004 (66 percent favorable, among registered voters). Hillary Clinton was considerably less popular, with 47 percent of registered voters seeing her favorably in fall 1996.
Mrs. Romney, for her part, has a rating similar to those of several other challengers’ wives once they were reasonably well-known -- Cindy McCain (47 percent among registered voters), Tipper Gore (57 percent) and Elizabeth Dole (51 percent of registered voters).
Michelle Obama and Ann Romney are rated very similarly among registered voters as among all adults (67 and 56 percent favorable, respectively) and both do better than their spouses. As reported Tuesday, President Obama had a 55 percent popularity rating while Mitt Romney had a 47 percent rating among registered voters in this survey.
Like their husbands, each spouse appeals most to her party’s base. Ann Romney’s gains in popularity since April, while broadly based, have been best among Republicans (+19 points) and conservatives (+20 points). Michelle Obama, for her part, continues to be rated most favorably by African-Americans, Democrats and liberals.
Mrs. Obama has maintained some degree of bipartisan support -- she is seen favorably by 43 percent of Republicans and half of conservatives. Mrs. Romney does less well across the aisle; about one-third of Democrats and liberals view her favorably.
Mrs. Obama also fares better in the middle. Two-thirds of independents rate her favorably, while half say the same about Mrs. Romney. But Ann Romney has some room to improve in this group, with nearly two in 10 still to make up their minds.
Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy(WASHINGTON) -- The cookie bakers have spoken: Michelle Obama will not be relinquishing over her White House kitchen garden or her first lady status any time soon. And she has her White and Dark Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe to thank for it.
The current first lady was crowned the champion of Family Circle’s Presidential Cookie Bake-Off today after 4,844 bakers across the country gave her cookie recipe the seal of approval. Ann Romney’s M&M Cookies won the taste buds of 4,557 voters.
Family Circle’s cookie poll has accurately predicted who will be the next first lady in four out of the past five elections. The only time the poll was wrong was in 2008, when readers picked Cindy McCain’s Oatmeal Butterscotch cookies over Michelle Obama’s shortbread cookies months before Barack Obama’s victory at the polls.
Nine thousand readers voted in the cookie poll this year, with 51.5 percent picking Obama’s recipe and 48.5 percent choosing Romney’s. Only 287 votes separated the two women, the smallest margin in first lady cookie contest history.
JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images(BURBANK, Calif.) -- Ann Romney said the air scare she had last week happened so fast there wasn’t time to panic and recalled the details of the flight diversion, resulting in her plane making an emergency landing in Denver.
“I was just watching a movie and I could see out of the corner of my eye there were a lot of hustle and bustle going by me,” Ann Romney told Jay Leno on the Tonight Show, “and all of a sudden my movie goes off and I turn around and I look at everybody and I’m like ‘Oh, there’s smoke in the cockpit and there it was.’”
She explained her husband’s subsequent comment afterward at a fundraiser when he joked that he didn’t know why the windows on the plane don’t open.
“It’s his way of making light of how worried he is about me,” she said. “It’s his way of dealing with the panic of knowing how dangerous this was.”
Mrs. Romney appeared for the first time on the sofa of the late-night host and also revealed that after she -- amid criticism over her husband’s campaign last week -- said in an interview, “stop it. This is hard,” that she at first thought she might have gone a little too far.
“I stepped out of the interview and I was like, ‘Oh dear, was that a little strong?’” she recalled thinking. She said since though “everyone I’ve seen has given me high fives.”
Leno asked Mrs. Romney about the videotape of her husband's 47 percent comment made at a closed-door fundraiser. She called the aftermath “frustrating.”
“It’s a very frustrating thing because you try so hard to get your message out,” she said. ”You don’t like those things to get misinterpreted as to what, why we’re running and how strongly I believe and how important it is to what Mitt can bring to this country.”
She added, “we care about the 100 percent.”
Mrs. Romney said that four years ago she made a videotape and on the tape she looked into the camera and said, “Mitt, this is for you, sweetheart. I’m never doing this again.”
She showed her husband the clips and he quipped, “You know, Ann you say that after every pregnancy.”
JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images(WOODSTOCK, Vt.) -- While her husband dives into day three of debate prep, Ann Romney is busy keeping a campaign schedule of her own, sandwiching a high-dollar fundraiser at Oscar-winning actor Robert Duvall’s house in between swing state rallies.
Ann Romney will appear this evening at the Middleburg, Va., home of Luciana and Robert Duvall, the Academy Award winning-actor known best for his roles in To Kill a Mockingbird, The Godfather, and Apocalypse Now. The event will serve to benefit the Republican nominee’s Victory Fund.
According to the invitation obtained by The National Journal, guests will be asked to give $2,500 for a general reception, will have to raise or give $10,000 for a VIP photo reception, and $25,000 for the main dinner. Ann Romney is listed on the invite as the “special guest.”
While the candidate himself has kept a relatively low profile during the Democratic National Convention this week, venturing out of a hillside Vermont estate where he’s been holed up with advisers just once to pick up some pizza and sit for a few interviews, Ann Romney has hit the trail on his behalf.
She held a rally in Ohio Wednesday and has another one scheduled for Friday in Virginia, two states crucial to Romney’s White House chances.
In fact, since delivering her much-anticipated speech at the RNC last week, Ann Romney has enjoyed more of the spotlight than she has in a long while. She traveled with her husband to several rallies in Florida and Ohio in the days immediately after the RNC, and even ventured to the back of the campaign plane solo twice to chat with the press.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Thursday, September 6, 2012 at 12:57PMby jcPermalink
Robin poses with her sister and doctor. ABC/Fred Lee(NEW YORK) -- Ann Romney Friday morning sent a message of love and support to ABC's Good Morning America co-host Robin Roberts, whose mother, Lucimarian Tolliver Roberts, passed away Thursday night. The news came just hours after Robin Roberts began an extended medical leave in preparation for a bone marrow transplant.
“Our love is with her. She’s lost her mother. I don’t think there’s a harder thing we do in our lives than to lose our mothers so our thoughts and prayers, Robin, they’re with you,” said Romney, who tweeted a message of support to Robin Roberts earlier this week as well.
Speaking to ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America, Mrs. Romney said she spent the time after her husband’s speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., with her grandchildren, who she said couldn’t be prouder of their grandfather, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
“As you might imagine, with all the grandchildren again, all these little ones, I don’t think they had more fun in their life than that balloon drop and I don’t know if you know, George, but they were down in the stairs and some of them are pretty little and when the third, oh my gosh, balloons were flying. I was in my heels and I was diving down because I thought some of them, they were, they were buried in there,” Mrs. Romney said. ”We couldn’t even find them but they had such a great time. And then afterwards they all came up to the room. It was very late for them, as you might imagine, they were very little but it didn’t matter, they were screaming and jumping on their grandfather and were so proud of him.”
When Stephanopoulos asked her about how she envisioned her role as first lady should her husband win the election, Mrs. Romney said that the issue of at-risk youth was close to her heart.
“For a long time, many years, I’ve spent with at-risk youth and my concern is making sure that every child lives their fullest potential and we have so many people in this country right now that are not getting the proper education, that are not having perhaps the kind of family life that leads them to having the total support and my heart goes out to those kids,” she said. “They have such potential. We have such great kids in this country and some of them just aren’t able to reach their full potential so I would hope that I’d be able to work with at-risk youth.”
Stephanopoulos asked Mrs. Romney to weigh in on Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood’s speech Thursday night that left many scratching their heads. She said she had not given the speech much thought and was unaware he would be coming on stage at all.
“I, frankly, hadn’t given it much thought. I didn’t know he was even going to come on stage,” she said, adding that she was grateful for the support of Eastwood.
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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Mitt and Ann Romney will appear in a pre-taped interview on Fox News Sunday airing March 3, marking the first TV appearance by Mitt since the 2012 Republican presidential nominee conceded the election in the early morning hours of Nov. 7.
