Mr. Fix-It

When Mitt Romney took over the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics three years ago, the outlook was grim. The Games were embroiled in a bribery scandal. Cost overruns were in the hundreds of millions. Sponsors were steering clear. And volunteer spirit in Salt Lake and Utah was--to be kind--low. Some wondered quietly whether the Games could be held at all.

Romney moved swiftly, relying on the skills and hands-on tactics that made him one of the nation’s most successful venture capitalists. He balanced the $1.3-billion budgets by slashing all nonessentials--including a popular youth camp and his salary. He telephoned sponsors and coaxed them back. He spoke at pancake breakfasts and chicken dinners in a bid to revitalize Olympic spirit, and attracted more than 68,000 volunteers--for 26,000 slots.

“We owe him a great deal,” said Francois Carrard, director general for the International Olympic Committee.

The biggest challenge facing Romney, 54, still lies ahead as the Winter Games get underway tonight amid terrorism fears and unprecedented security.

But if all goes according to plan--lots of red, white and blue and without incident--the man who enjoys close ties to President George W. Bush and once threatened to unseat Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) stands poised to become the next big thing on the nation’s political scene.

“This will be a guy who made some tough decisions, saved some businesses and then came in and made some tough decisions and saved the Olympic Games,” said Washington political consultant Charles E. Cross, sketching out a potential political campaign. “There’s a theme there--making tough decisions and pulling it through.”

In many ways, Romney is a strategist’s dream candidate. His father was a longtime governor of Michigan. He is smart, affable, and telegenic. A devout member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints--his ancestors were Mormon pioneers--he doesn’t drink or smoke. Close aides say they’ve never heard him swear. He married his high school sweetheart, Ann. Together they raised five sons and are now grandparents to two girls and two boys. And together they are fighting Ann’s bout with multiple sclerosis.

But if Romney the Boy Scout seems too good to be true, longtime friend Gordon Bowen, a veteran of the cutthroat advertising business, says he isn’t: “Mitt is the real deal.”

Critics, though, question the aura that seems to surround Romney, allowing him to emerge unscathed, whether it’s from a bruising senate campaign, risky business ventures or the worst crisis in the history of the Olympics.

Perhaps the most persistent critic has been Ken Bullock, a member of the Utah League of Cities & Towns who also sits on the Olympic organizing committee board. He says Romney has failed to make the Games accessible to ordinary Utah citizens and has accused him of allowing the Games to become overly commercialized.

Romney, who said he learned long ago that his success would depend largely on ignoring the naysayers, shrugs off such remarks: “We will never avoid having critics. The pioneers used to say, ‘Let the dogs bark. The caravan moves on.’ ”

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From the very beginning, big things were expected of Willard Mitt Romney.

The first name comes from close family friend J. Willard Marriott--of the hotel Marriotts. The middle name came from his father’s cousin, Mitt, who played in the 1920s for the NFL’s Chicago Bears.

Public service, politics, faith, personal responsibility and discipline animated the Romney household. His father, George Romney, served three terms as governor of Michigan and contended in 1968 for the Republican presidential nomination. His mother, Lenore, unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate from Michigan in 1970.

Romney met his wife, Ann, while he was a senior in high school in Michigan. After graduation, he went off to Stanford, then to France on his Mormon mission. The day he returned--he hadn’t seen Ann for 2 1/2 years--he proposed and they soon married.

Romney finished college at Brigham Young and they moved to the Boston area, where he earned graduate degrees from Harvard in law and business in 1975. George W. Bush was a business-school classmate. The Romneys stayed in the Boston area, in suburban Belmont, and from 1978 to 1984, Mitt was a vice president at Bain & Co., a management consulting firm.

In 1984, he organized Bain Capital, an unaffiliated investment company, and became its CEO. It has since acquired or started more than 120 companies, including Staples, Domino’s, Brookstone, Totes, FTD Florists and the Sealy Corp.

In 1990, Romney, by then a millionaire, returned to Bain & Co. to engineer a turnaround.

The company had accumulated significant debt, but costs were cut and confidence rebuilt--the company’s co-founders agreeing to forgive some notes as well as put $25 million cash back into the company. Bain now has offices worldwide and more than 2,000 employees.

“He knows how to think practically and communicate those thoughts, which gets people to accomplish results,” said Orit Gadiesh, chairman of the board of Bain & Co., and one of the 15 who vowed then to stand by Romney.

In 1994, Romney took a leave from Bain to run for U.S. Senate against the Kennedy dynasty.

“What Mitt sees is that Dad had a legacy,” said older brother Scott Romney, a Detroit attorney. “And Mitt has an opportunity to leave a legacy, to make the world a better place.”

Romney cast himself as socially moderate but fiscally conservative Republican: Frugal on government spending. Insisting welfare recipients work for their checks. Willing to ban assault weapons. Supporting a woman’s right to choose abortion.

Early polls indicated Romney might well win. But Kennedy fought back, launching a series of ads well-remembered by political analysts.

The campaign depicted Romney as a job-cutting corporate fat cat. One accused him of making $11 million while his largest company, Staples, “provided no health insurance to many workers.” Another accused Ampad Corp., a Texas company in which Bain had invested, of slashing benefits, firing employees and provoking a strike at an Indiana paper plant.

In one ad, a laid-off worker said of Romney: “Basically, he cut our throats.”

Romney challenged the ads. Staples, he said, provided health insurance to full-time workers; only part-time workers were not covered. Ampad, he said, bought the plant after he took leave from Bain to launch his Senate campaign.

But Kennedy won big, 58%-41%, and Romney says now that the campaign taught him a key lesson--define yourself, or someone else will define you.

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Romney was recruited to take over the Salt Lake City Games in February 1999, just a few months into the scandal that erupted after disclosures that bidders had showered IOC members or their relatives with more than $1 million in cash, gifts and other inducements to win the 2002 Games for Salt Lake City.

The timing couldn’t have been worse: Just weeks before, Ann was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Together, the couple decided Romney should take the job, even though the demands would mean long hours away from home, and endless travel. But playing host to a successful Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City was a calling, they believed.

“When we came out here, the first little while, it was so intense,” Ann Romney said of her symptoms. “It was so bad. He was doing the grocery shopping, the cooking. If anyone had known how much he was still taking care of me while holding all those balls in the air--that was amazing to me.”

She said she now seems to be symptom-free.

“I am here,” Mitt Romney said the day he was introduced as SLOC’s president and CEO, “because I believe the Olympics are one of the most important symbols for peace on the world stage, because they show us heroic moments and occasionally reveal to our children true heroes.”

He went on to define the mission: The “highest level of ethical conduct.” No unpaid bills for taxpayers. “We’ll get it right,” he said.

But those first few months, Romney says now, he wondered if he was wrong. The financial situation was so poor he questioned “if the Games could be held or whether we would be unable to proceed.”

There also were disputes involving environmentalists concerned about where the venues and infrastructure would be built. And there were some Salt Lake City residents who felt overwhelmed, even oppressed, by the scope of preparations for the Games. Animal rights activists remain furious over plans to hold a rodeo in conjunction with the Olympics.

Then came Sept. 11, which prompted a thorough reevaluation of the security plan for the Games. In all, security costs total $310 million with the U.S. Secret Service handling planning.

“We feel confident that every source or risk has been addressed,” Romney said. “That doesn’t mean there’s a guarantee.’

Meantime, with the Games opening today, there have been other areas of concern, such as the controversy triggered earlier this week when an IOC subcommittee rejected a proposal to have U.S. athletes carry the tattered ground zero flag into tonight’s ceremony, as Romney wanted.

His response was classic Romney, those who know him say: Identify a problem, don’t fear taking a stand, propose a solution, see if it flies. If it doesn’t, start the process all over again. First, he released a statement backing an IOC decision that the flag could be raised at the ceremony but not carried by U.S. athletes.

Hours later he reconsidered, releasing another statement saying he “respectfully disagreed” with the decision. Then, late Tuesday, as the flap was becoming front-page news, Romney arranged a meeting with IOC President Jacques Rogge. A compromise was hammered out: The tattered flag would be carried into the stadium, but not during the protocol-laden parade of athletes, and then given a place of honor near the flagpole as the “Star-Spangled Banner” is played.

“It was apparent to us that we had not found an ideal way to honor the flag and victims,” Romney explained Wednesday, “and that we needed to work to find a way.”

As the Games begin, he said he fully expects “snafus,” particularly early on in transporting thousands in and out of the mountains.

“In some respects we will be judged not by whether we have problems but whether we’re able to correct them quickly enough that they don’t interfere with the athletes’ experience or the experience of the world that watches them,” he said.

If all goes well, he said, the Games could be “healing for the nation,” perhaps “magical.”

If so, Romney will have followed his mantra to redefine himself.

Instead of corporate rich guy, political experts say, he will be in position to pitch himself to voters as an Olympic-caliber turnaround expert with compassion and soul.

Asked about her husband’s future, Ann Romney said, “I truly want Mitt to fulfill his destiny and for that to happen, he’s got to do politics.”