Activists remember a different Romney

Advocates for gay and abortion rights and the environment say the GOP candidate misled them on his positions.
By Peter Wallsten
LA Times

March 25, 2007

BOSTON — As an abortion-rights advocate, Deborah Allen did not think she would find much in common with Mitt Romney. Then she heard his pitch.

If elected Massachusetts governor, Romney said in an endorsement meeting, he would "preserve and protect" legal abortion. The judges he picked would probably do the same. And then he said something so unexpected that Allen began to see Romney, a Republican whom she had considered an uncertain ally, as sincere in his search for common ground.

"You need someone like me in Washington," he said, according to Allen and two other abortion-rights activists, whose group was deciding whether to endorse Romney in the 2002 race for governor. Though running for state office, Romney hinted at national ambitions and said he would soften the GOP's position on abortion. The Republians' hard-line stance, he said, was "killing them."

Today, Romney is running for president and promising to pull the Republican Party in the opposite direction, returning it to the conservative principles of Ronald Reagan. He has renounced his support for abortion rights and has shifted his language on gay rights, campaign finance and other issues, bringing him more in step with Republican voters. He mocks Massachusetts, the state he led until January, as "sort of San Francisco East, Nancy Pelosi-style."

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