Washington, D.C. is about to lose one of its strongest Republican critics of Donald Trump.
“[Utah] is where my public service career began, and this is where it ends,” Sen. Mitt Romney told reporters at a Dec. 13 news conference at his offices in Salt Lake City.
Romney reflected on his career in public service, which began in 2002 when he organized the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. That led him to the Governorship of Massachusetts and two presidential runs. He lost his 2012 bid to President Barack Obama. He re-entered the political ring with a run for Senate in Utah in 2018.
He’s had time to think about it since he announced he would not seek another term in office back in 2023. So, what’s next for the 77-year-old?
“I'll be doing nothing,” he said. “I say that jokingly.”
Romney said he’ll probably work with young people in a college setting, and “I'll be speaking from time to time, I'm not going to be going back into business and I'm not going to be a political person.”
Still, Romney left a legacy during his time as a one-term senator.
He was part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers who helped pass a sweeping infrastructure law in 2021. He also was a bipartisan vote in 2022 when Congress passed protections for same-sex marriage that also respected religious rights.
He was the first senator to vote to impeach a president of his own party in 2020. Romney then joined six other Republicans and all Senate Democrats in a vote to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection in 2021. He’s long maintained that his disagreements with Trump were not about policy.
“The areas I had difficulty with President Trump were character areas, the sexual assault decision by the court, the what shall I say, a relaxed relationship with the truth,” he said. “There are a number of things that I found to be very troubling on the character front and that prevented me from supporting him.”
Despite Trump making more than 100 threats to punish perceived “enemies” on the campaign trail, Romney thinks Trump will be focused on the future during his second term instead of relitigating the past. Even if Trump does go after Romney in some way, he’s not sure what he’d be in trouble for.
“There's not something in my past that I'm particularly worried about someone taking a look at,” he said. “I've been pretty careful in my life to follow the law.”
While he’s stepping away from the political spotlight, Romney still shared his thoughts on the state of the GOP.
“The Republican Party really is shaped by Donald Trump now and you'll find the House and the Senate members of the Republican Party pretty much following what he puts out there,” he said. “I would like to see the party return to more conservative principles and a principle-based, character-based priority in our party.”
Due to the 22nd Amendment, Trump cannot run for another term as president. As far as what happens to the GOP once Trump is no longer on the ballot, Romney said “a lot is shaped by what the Democrats do.”
“I think the Democratic Party is in real trouble … because they’ve lost their base,” he said. “I'm not an expert in political science, but I do say that the Republican Party made up of working-class Americans and Republican policy positions don't necessarily really line up terribly well.”
Romney pointed out how, broadly speaking, the party is opposed to policies that would likely benefit Trump’s base, like raising the minimum wage and strengthening unions — positions that have been traditional pillars of Democratic politics.
Leah Murray, director of the Olene S. Walker Institute of Politics & Public Service at Weber State University, thinks that could be an opening for Democrats — and ultimately Romney’s traditional conservatives — in the future.
“Donald Trump is very good at keeping that [populist] wave high,” she said. “I don't know any other Republican that does that, so I'm not sure the Republicans can manage that and maintain that [without him].”
While the current state of the GOP might be centered around Trump, Murray thinks Romney could have much more influence right now for one simple reason: He’s not running for anything.
“While he’s a senator, he is open to all the threats that come from that populist wave reacting to how you behave vis-a-vis Donald Trump,” she said. “He's no longer a senator. There’s nothing they can do to him.”
Romney leaves office on Jan. 3. He’ll be replaced by Congressman John Curtis, who easily secured victory in November.
