(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mitt Romney waves to the crowd after speaking at the Tech Summit at the Salt Palace Convention Center, Friday, January 19, 2018.
During his second public appearance this week, Mitt Romney again avoided any mention of a campaign, though he is widely expected to run for the seat held by retiring Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch.
But this time, Romney did it with a bit of humor.
“You know enough about politics to know that you would never make a critical announcement on the week that the Mormon church just named the new president, when it’s a Friday — of course you only put out bad news on a Friday — and No. 3, when someone lights a gasoline truck on fire on I-15,” he said with a laugh. “So, no. There will be no announcements today.”
That explanation didn’t stop the crowd at the Salt Lake City tech conference from encouraging him anyway. “Way to go, Mitt,” one man shouted. “Mitt for president,” yelled another. (Former congressional candidate Tanner Ainge took credit for that one on Twitter.)
“I tried that once, thanks,” Romney responded to cheers.
Still, if his speech Tuesday at a downtown economic summit previewed the positions he’d take if running for office, Romney’s address Friday served to prove his business acumen.
During his 30-minute Q&A, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee spent most of the time talking about his work as a venture capitalist, how he formed a team of entrepreneurs and his efforts to organize the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
In each of those enterprises, Romney said he was afraid to fail. He didn’t want to lose other people’s money. He was terrified of messing up. He worried about being “too conservative.”
“You may not know this, but I ran for president and lost,” he said. “The fear of failing was actually realized … [but] failure is not the end. Failure is part of life. You learn from it and move on.”
From the claps and whistles, it seemed most in the audience of 10,000 hoped Romney would give it another go in Utah, where he has a home and actively votes as a Holladay resident.
The Mormon politician undeniably has broad support here, a state which he won with roughly 73 percent of the vote in the 2012 presidential election. And Romney has already piled up would-be endorsements from leaders across Utah and the nation, including Jon Huntsman Sr. and Jeb Bush. President Donald Trump, too, called to encourage him to run, a source close to the White House told The Salt Lake Tribune.
During Friday’s tech event, Romney also responded to questions about his wife, Ann Romney, and her battle with multiple sclerosis, his optimism in the economy and his experience as the governor of Massachusetts, serving with a Democratic-majority state Legislature. He pitched his approach to the job as a prescription for solving congressional gridlock.
“If you want to get something done,” he said, “you have to understand that not everybody agrees with you.”
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