Mitt Romney speaks in the course of the opening ceremonies of the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympic Video games at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake Metropolis on Feb. 8, 2002. Romney says his most rewarding skilled expertise was heading the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake Metropolis. Tom Sensible, Deseret Information
A extremely profitable businessman, governor of Massachusetts and Republican presidential nominee, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney says his most rewarding skilled expertise was heading the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake Metropolis.
“I say that not as a result of it was essentially the most well-known of the occasions or essentially the most financially rewarding or it made me a family identify or something like that. I say that as a result of we had a big group of individuals, nearly 2,000 individuals, within the group and all of us knew that we might all lose our job on the identical time,” he mentioned at a Sutherland Institute discussion board Thursday.
Romney took over the Video games after allegations surfaced that Salt Lake bidders tried to purchase Worldwide Olympic Committee votes with lavish items and journeys. Salt Lake Metropolis is seeking to host the Winter Video games once more in 2030 or 2034.
Recognizing that everybody on the Salt Lake Organizing Committee can be unemployed when the Winter Video games resulted in February 2002 created an uncommon dynamic, he mentioned.
Nobody was seeking to get promoted over or attempting to get forward of another person. Staff, he mentioned, didn’t level fingers at those that weren’t doing an excellent job however requested how they might assist. There have been no politics within the group, Romney mentioned.
Everybody realized that to ensure that their resumes to look good, the Video games had to achieve success and so they have been all targeted on the identical factor, he mentioned.
“It was a incredible expertise. It’s completely totally different than working within the Senate … as a result of there all people has totally different agendas,” Romney mentioned.
“Of the 100 senators, in all probability 95 or so actually suppose they should be president and are laying observe to truly turn into president, all these totally different concepts about who will get forward. So it’s a really totally different atmosphere.”
Romney, who has not mentioned whether or not he would search a second time period within the Senate, mentioned he realized shortly that he must work with each political events to get issues performed.
“It didn’t take me lengthy to determine that if I needed to get one thing performed in america Senate that I needed to discover Democrats and Republicans that I can work with,” he mentioned, noting most payments want 60 votes to go within the evenly divided physique.
Romney mentioned he ran for Senate for 2 causes. He mentioned he felt it wanted extra “steady, sober” in addition to “severe and mature” individuals to cope with crises.
“I considered myself in that class,” he mentioned.
He additionally ran to get legal guidelines handed that will assist Utah and the nation.
“I needed to get stuff performed. For me, this isn't about performing so I can get a terrific job on Fox as a commentator. It was not about changing into well-known ...,” Romney mentioned, including that fame is fleeting.
Romney has labored with a bipartisan group of senators on main laws, together with the infrastructure invoice that he mentioned will ship billions of dollars to Utah.