Claim: Item presents information about the "real" Mitt Romney.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, June 2012]
The Real Mitt Romney!
After going to both Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School simultaneously, he passed the Michigan bar, but never worked as an attorney.
As a venture-capitalist, Romney's first major business deal involved investing in a start-up office supply company with one store in Massachusetts that sold office supplies. That company, called Staples, now has over 2,000 stores and employs over 90,000 people.
Romney or his company Bain Capital (using what became known as the "Bain Way") would go on to perform the same kinds of business miracles again and again, with companies like Domino's, Sealy, Brookstone, Weather Channel, Burger King, Warner Music Group, Dollarama, Home Depot Supply, and many others.
Got your calculators handy? Let's recap.
Volunteer campaign worker for his dad's gubernatorial campaign 1 year.
Unpaid intern in Governor's office 8 years.
Mormon missionary in Paris 2 years.
Unpaid bishop and stake president for his church
No salary as president of the Olympics 3 years.
No salary as MA governor 4 years.
That's a grand total of 28 years of unpaid service to his country, his community and his church. Why? Because that's the kind of man Mitt Romney is!
And in 2011 Mitt Romney gave over $4 million to charity, almost 19% of his income ... Obama gave 1% Joe Biden gave $300 or .0013% This is real character vs ... well you know what!
Origins: This item about former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney first hit our inbox in June 2012. Most of the information contained therein is verifiable, as described below:
After going to both Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School simultaneously, he passed the Michigan bar, but never worked as an attorney.
In the 1970s, Mitt Romney attended Harvard University and earned a degree from the school's then-new joint business and law degree program. According to a 2007 Boston Globe profile:
Harvard's joint MBA/JD program was relatively new at the time — it had been launched two years earlier — and was intensely rigorous. Typically, business school is completed in two years and law school in three; dual-degree students earn both degrees in four years, spending their first year at one of the schools, their second at the other, and their final two shuttling between both. Out of Romney's 800 business school classmates and Romney excelled at both schools, graduating with honors from the law school; becoming a Baker Scholar at the business school, a distinction reserved for the top
George Romney loomed large in his son's decision to earn business and law degrees simultaneously. Intent on following in the professional footsteps of his father, who had been chairman of American Motors Corp., Romney expressed an interest in business school. George Romney believed a law degree was a valuable commodity. So his son pursued both.
The biography The Real Romney notes that:
Romney was hedging his bets, though, not wholly confident that he would make it in the business world. He passed the Michigan bar exam in July 1975 and was admitted to practice law there the next year. He figured it would provide him a landing place if he didn't cut it in business. But the safety valve wouldn't be necessary.
Shortly after Romney left Harvard, he began working at BCG [Boston Consulting Group], a fitting first job for a freshly minted Ivy League graduate.
As a venture-capitalist, Romney's first major business deal involved investing in a start-up office supply company with one store in Massachusetts that sold office supplies. That company, called Staples, now has over 2,000 stores and employs over 90,000 people.
Romney or his company Bain Capital (using what became known as the "Bain Way") would go on to perform the same kinds of business miracles again and again, with companies like Domino's, Sealy, Brookstone, Weather Channel, Burger King, Warner Music Group, Dollarama, Home Depot Supply, and many others.
The long-term effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the so-called "Bain Way" remains a subject of debate. In January 2012, the Wall Street Journal published an analysis of the business investments made by Bain Capital during Mitt Romney's tenure there and reported the following:
Among the findings: 22% either filed for bankruptcy reorganization or closed their doors by the end of the eighth year after Bain first invested, sometimes with substantial job losses. An additional 8% ran into so much trouble that all of the money Bain invested was lost. Another finding was that Bain produced stellar returns for its investors — yet the bulk of these came from just a small number of its investments. Ten deals produced more than 70% of the dollar gains. Some of those companies, too, later ran into trouble. Of the
The Wall Street Journal, aiming for a comprehensive assessment, examined
(Full details of the Wall Street Journal's analysis can be viewed here.)
Volunteer campaign worker for his dad's gubernatorial campaign
A 2007 Time magazine article touched on a teenaged Mitt Romney's working for his father's Michigan gubernatorial campaign in 1962:
He was 15 when his father ran for Governor in a state in which no Republican had held the job in
Unpaid intern in Governor's office 8 years.
Mitt Romney did work as an intern in the Michigan governor's office while his father held that position, but not for anything close to eight years. George Romney served as Michigan's governor for only six years (January 1963 to January 1969), and for most of that time Mitt Romney was living outside of the state: first as a student at Stanford University in California from
Mormon missionary in Paris 2 years.
Mitt Romney served as a Mormon missionary in France for a thirty-month period from July 1966 to December 1968. In 2007 the
Missionary work is a rite of passage for Mormon men, who are encouraged to volunteer when they turn 19. Mitt Romney’s grandfather, father and older brother had all served in Britain, so his assignment to France “came as a surprise,” he recalled. The son of a car company chief executive who later became governor of Michigan, Mitt Romney called his mission an “instructive” first experience of deprivation. He lived on about $100 a month, sleeping on Mr. Romney quickly stood out. His father was perhaps the best known Mormon public official of his day, and Mitt’s three years of French at the exclusive Cranbrook school in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., had made him more fluent than his peers. Like most missionaries, he did not win many converts. After reading Mitt’s demoralized letters, his father sent back a favorite motto: “Despair not, but if you despair, work on in your despair.” Mr. Romney’s companions, though, recall only his zeal. In newsletters, he often led the lists recording contacts made or tracts distributed. He chafed at the door-to-door entreaties, pushing for new ways to market their creed, like an exhibition baseball game or staging an “American night” in a youth center.
France was a humbling experience for Mr. Romney, who recalled it as the only time in his life when “most of what I was trying to do was rejected.”
Unpaid bishop and stake president for his church
The authors of The Real Romney described Mitt's service as a bishop and stake president in his church:
Mormon congregations, typically groups of 400 to 500 people, are known as wards, and their boundaries are determined by geography. Wards, along with smaller congregations known as branches, are organized into stakes. Thus a stake, akin to a Catholic diocese, is a collection of wards and branches in a city or region. Unlike Protestants or Catholics, Mormons do not choose the congregations to which they belong. It depends entirely on where they live. In another departure from many other faiths, Mormons do not have paid
No salary as president of the Olympics 3 years.
Mitt Romney served as the president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games of 2002. According to his spokesman, Romney donated the salary and severance pay he received for that effort to charity:
When the organizing committee posted a surplus of nearly $100 million after the Games, Romney accepted $922,980 in total salary as well as the $476,000 severance package. [His spokesman, Eric] Fehrnstrom said Romney gave his salary as well as the severance pay to charity. Romney and his wife, Ann, also donated Asked what charities received the money, Fehrnstrom said Romney does not discuss publicly his charitable giving.
In Romney's case, he signed an offer letter in 1999 acknowledging he would be paid $280,000 annually for the Olympic job and receive up to one year in severance pay after the Games. Romney announced the day he started the job that he would not accept any wages unless the organizing committee completed the Games with a profit. He also told the Salt Lake Tribune one of his "absolutes" was that he would "not accept any severance pay when his three-year term is complete." He also cited his pledge to forgo any severance pay in his book, "Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games."
No salary as MA governor 4 years.
Just prior to his swearing-in as Massachusetts' governor in 2003, Mitt Romney's transition team announced that he and his lieutenant governor would not take salaries ($135,000 and $120,000 per year, respectively) while in office.
And in 2011 Mitt Romney gave over $4 million to charity, almost 19% of his income. Obama gave 1% Joe Biden gave $300 or .0013%
According to an in-process federal income tax return made available by the Romney campaign, in 2011 Mitt and Ann Romney declared a gross income of $20,908,880 and charitable contributions of $4,020,572, the latter figure comprising 19.2% of the former.
The additional information about the charitable donations of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden is incorrect, however. In 2011 the Obamas reported a
gross income of $844,585 and charitable contributions totaling $172,130, the latter figure comprising 20.4% of the former (a rate higher than the Romneys' 19.2%). The Bidens reported a gross income of $379,035 for 2011 and claimed $5,540 in charitable contributions, the latter figure comprising 1.5% of the former.
Last updated: 2 July 2012
 | Sources: |
Chessum, Jake. "What Romney Believes." Time. 9 March 2007. Erb, Kelly Phillips. "President Obama and Vice President Biden Release 2011 Tax Returns." Forbes. 13 April 2012. Hohler, Bob. "Romney's Olympic Ties Helped Him Reap Campaign Funds." The Boston Globe. 28 June 2007. Khan, Huma. "Mitt Romney Made Nearly $22 Million in 2010, Paid Less Than 14% in Taxes." ABCNews.com. 24 January 2012. Kirkpatrick, David D. "Romney, Searching and Earnest, Set His Path in ’60s." The New York Times. 15 November 2007. Kranish, Michael and Scott Helman. The Real Romney. New York: Harper, 2012. ISBN 0-062-12327-0. Maremont, Mark. "Romney at Bain: Big Gains, Some Busts." The Wall Street Journal. 9 January 2012. Pfeiffer, Sacha. "Romney's Harvard Classmates Recall His Quick Mind, Positive Attitude." The Boston Globe. 26 June 2007. Rubin, Jennifer. "Romney Paid 42 Percent of 2011 Income in Taxes and Charity." The Washington Post. 24 January 2012. Boston Business Journal. "Romney Passes Up $135K Governor Salary." 31 December 2002.
