The deceased Lenore Romney, the mother of 2008 and 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney and the wife of republican governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969 George Romney, came into the spotlight in 2012 when both Time Magazine and the Washington Post featured stories that covered her effect on her son?s political career. Both stories featured her failed run for a senate seat in Michigan in 1970.  Compared to the contemporary images of Ann Romney as a housewife, what was most striking about these stories was not that Lenore Romney did not win the election for the U.S. senate seat but that she had run for office at all. It is necessary to note that Ann Romney also did actually run for and win a public office position  in the 1970s. She was elected as the town meeting representative in Belmont, Massachusetts in 1977.[1] However, probably because she has not pursued her own political career, the story has fallen mostly by the side after her husband stepped into political spotlight.

The example of Lenore Romney as a Mormon political wife and political candidate defies easy categorization of her story as either that of a typical Mormon woman or a typical conservative woman. Her role as a political spouse and figure allows one to understand how she balanced her various political beliefs with her own status as a mostly politically conservative woman in the long moment during the beginning of the feminist movement and before the rise of the Religious Right and the now longstanding (and often misleading) conflation of conservatism and profound religiosity.

Lenore Romney?s background before marriage fit–with a few exceptions–the stereotypical background of a young Mormon woman in the mid-early twentieth century. She was born in Logan, Utah in the early twentieth century and grew up in Salt Lake City.   She eventually attended the American Laboratory School of Theatre in New York before moving to Hollywood to pursue acting. However, she discontinued her acting career when George Romney asked her to marry him in 1931. Throughout her married life to George Romney, she refrained from paid work to raise her children and was often involved in multiple speaking engagements and served in various capacities for civic, political, and charitable groups in her role as Michigan?s first lady.

She was never hesitant to articulate her stance on woman?s place in society. In 1971, she stated: ?The role of women doesn?t begin and end with homemaking. A woman needs to contribute to society to make her life worthwhile.?[2] Lenore Romney?s comments do not disparage or dismiss the role of a stay at home wife and mother yet references her belief that it was a woman?s duty to act as informed and responsible political citizen. This statement also fits within a long tradition of the earlier generation of Mormon women who fought for women?s suffrage and some of who ran for political office in the early days of Utah?s statehood. Forty-one years later in 2012, DNC adviser Hilary Rosen commented that Ann Romney had ?actually never worked a day in her life.? In response, taking advantage of her new twitter account, Ann Romney tweeted: ?I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.?[3] While the sentiments expressed in these two anecdotes are from mutually exclusive, it reveals a shift in thinking and illuminates a change in tone regarding the role of the housewife or stay at home mother. Ann Romney?s statement indicates that is more than?to borrow Lenore Romney?s word??worthwhile? to just do the ?hard work? of a stay at home mother.

During her candidacy for the republican senate seat in Michigan in 1971, Lenore Romney was quoted more than once as saying, ?I am a stand-in for no one? as a response to the assumption she was merely running to represent her husband. [4] George Romney, who was then President Richard Nixon?s secretary of housing and urban development, kept an unexpectedly low profile during his wife?s political campaign only to become more involved closer to the election.  She ultimately lost the election to longtime Michigan democrat favorite and incumbent Senator Philip A. Hart.  The reasons for her loss were numerous but were tied to three principle factors: the fact that she was a woman, a vague campaign, and complicated behind the scenes turmoil in the national Republican Party. However, her religious status as a Mormon?even after her husband?s discontinued presidential campaign in 1868– never seemed to be prominent determining factor in her political defeat.

What stuck most with Lenore Romney as to the main reason for her defeat was the fact that she was a woman. One of her campaign slogans ?Never before has the voice and understanding of a concerned woman been so needed? centered around what differences she had to offer to the political world in Michigan as an elected woman. Reflecting on her landslide defeat to Hart in November of 1970, she told Look magazine in 1971: ?I found in my campaign that many men and women openly resented the fact that a woman would even try to unseat a man.? This reluctance to elect a woman in the 1970s did not sit well with Lenore Romney, who living during a historical moment in which more and more American women were gaining and taking advantage of their political rights. It is be difficult to situate all of Lenore Romney?s politics directly within the burgeoning feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. A Milwaukee Journal article from 1975 stated she openly supported the passage of the Equal Right Amendment (ERA)?which would become a very unpopular move for Mormon women?yet she also declared that ?the women?s rights movement should not overlook the importance of women in the homes.?[5] Despite recent claims that she supported access to safer abortions for women, there is growing evidence that she was actually against abortions.[6]  Nonetheless, there is no doubt her rhetoric was affected by larger trends within the movement.

Lenore Romney?s experience as a political wife (and subsequent political candidate) parallels but also contrasts sharply with the experience of Ann Romney.  Of course, their experiences took place in remarkably different times in American  history. George and Lenore Romney?s religious status merely served as a curiosity to the many of the numerous non-Mormons in Michigan in the 1960s and earl 1970s. The fact that Lenore Romney was asked to be involved with numerous religious and interfaith groups during her time as Michigan?s first lady suggesting that many non-Mormon religious leaders valued her involvement and, perhaps, religious views.  Whereas?as we all know?Mitt Romney?s two bids for president held a great deal of responsibility for the most recent widespread interest in Mormonism.  The United States? most recent fascination with Mormonism also centered on the sometimes implicit and often explicit question of whether the United States was ready to have or would even elect a Mormon as President. Throughout the 2012 campaign season, Ann Romney was constantly characterized as a wealthy wife and mother who was out-of-touch with the needs of the many members of the voting public.

When considering Lenore Romney?s failed run for the Michigan senate seat in 1970, it becomes apparent that to the contemporary Michigan voters it was not that her religious status did not matter, but it was not (obviously) as much of an issue as it may have been today. It leads to larger questions about what matters during regional and local political elections compared to those on the national level. Additionally, it also affirms the importance of placing Lenore Romney?s campaign within the larger historical tradition of Mormon women?s political activism whether it be for suffrage in the nineteenth century or as an exception to the massive movement against the ERA in the 1970s.  Finally, it also points the possibilities of moving away from a black and white interpretation of Ann Romney?s experiences as just a candidate?s wife and stay at home mother but utilizing an analysis that takes her identity as a Mormon convert, her various health issues, a sometime reluctant politician?s wife, and other personal factors into consideration.