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http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=mAE1AAAAIBAJ&sjid=Mk8KAAAAIBAJ&pg=3578,1309352&dq=romney+abstinence+only+education&hl=en (Not going to work)
On Tuesday, the President released his newest attack ad, bashing Mitt Romney’s penchant for shipping U.S. jobs overseas during his tenure at Bain Capital and for supporting policies that promote outsourcing ever since. The 30-second television spot, titled simply, “Believes,” will air in nine states, including Pennsylvania. The President’s offensive continues on Thursday when—with the new ad in full rotation—he kicks off his “Betting on America” tour—a two-day bus trip that will take him to parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Obama’s stump tour comes barely two weeks after Romney’s own bus rolled through the Keystone State, where the former Massachusetts moderate made news for eluding a protest led by Ed Rendell and marveling over how easy it is to order a meatball sandwich at Wawa.
All this attention being showered on the commonwealth certainly isn’t coincidental. Pennsylvania is one of a dozen so-called swing states that pundits in both the Obama and Romney camps are expecting to play a deciding factor in who wins in November. Unfortunately for Romney, there’s some pretty strong evidence he’s got his work cut out for him in any state that isn’t already solidly red.
A string of recent polls shows that due to a variety of factors, the President is making significant headway in the 12 “battleground” states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.
An additional blind trust existed in the name of the Romneys' children and grandchildren that was valued at between $70 and $100 million as of 2007.[83] The couple's net worth remained in the same range as of 2011, and was still held in blind trusts.[84] In 2010, Romney and his wife received $21.7 million in income, almost all of it from investments, of which about $3 million went to federal income taxes (a rate of 13.9 percent, based upon the beneficial rate accorded investment income by the U.S. tax code) and almost $3 million to charity, including $1.5 million to the LDS Church.[85] Romney has always tithed to the church, including stock from Bain Capital holdings.[13][86][87] In 2010, the Romney family's Tyler Charitable Foundation gave out about $650,000, with some of it going to organizations that fight specific diseases such as cystic fibrosis and multiple sclerosis.[88]
Local LDS Church leadership
During his years in business, Romney held several specific positions in the local lay clergy, which generally consists of males over the age of 12.[13] Around 1977, he became a counselor to the president of the Boston Stake.[89] He served as bishop of the ward(ecclesiastical and administrative head of his congregation) at Belmont, Massachusetts, from 1981 to 1986.[90][91] As such, in addition to home teaching, he also formulated Sunday services and classes using LDS scriptures to guide the congregation.[92] He forged bonds with other religious institutions in the area when the Belmont meetinghouse was destroyed by a fire of suspicious origins in 1984; the congregation rotated its meetings to other houses of worship while it was rebuilt.[86][91]
From 1986 to 1994, he presided over the Boston Stake, which included more than a dozen wards in eastern Massachusetts with about 4,000 church members altogether.[65][92][93] He organized a team to handle financial and management issues, sought to counter anti-Mormon sentiments, and tried to solve social problems among poor Southeast Asian converts.[86][91] An unpaid position, his local church leadership often took 30 or more hours a week of his time,[92] and he became known for his tireless energy in the role.[65] He generally refrained from overnight business travel owing to his church responsibilities.[92]
He took a hands-on role in general matters, helping in maintenance efforts in- and outside homes, visiting the sick, and counseling troubled or burdened church members.[90][91][92] A number of local church members later credited him with turning their lives around or helping them through difficult times.[86][91][92] Some others were rankled by his leadership style and desired a more consensus-based approach.[91] Romney tried to balance the conservative dogma insisted upon by the church leadership in Utah with the desire of some Massachusetts members to have a more flexible application of doctrine.[65] He agreed with some modest requests from the liberal women's group Exponent II for changes in the way the church dealt with women, but clashed with women whom he felt were departing too much from doctrine.[65] In particular, he counseled women not to have abortions except in the rare cases allowed by LDS doctrine, and also in accordance with doctrine, encouraged prospective mothers who were not in successful marriages to give up children for adoption.[65] Romney later said that the years spent as an LDS minister gave him direct exposure to people struggling in economically difficult circumstances, and empathy for those going through problematic family situations.[94]
1994 U.S. senatorial campaign
Main article: United States Senate election in Massachusetts, 1994
By 1993, Romney had been thinking about entering politics, partly based upon Ann's urging and partly to follow in his father's footsteps.[45] He decided to challenge incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, who was seeking re-election for the sixth time. Kennedy was potentially vulnerable that year – in part because of the unpopularity of the Democratic Congress as a whole, and in part because this was Kennedy's first election since the William Kennedy Smith trial in Florida, in which Kennedy had suffered some negative public relations regarding his character.[95][96][97] Romney changed his affiliation from Independent to Republican in October 1993 and formally announced his candidacy in February 1994.[45] He took a leave of absence from Bain Capital in November 1993, and stepped down from his church leadership role during 1994, due to the campaign.[92][98]
Radio personality Janet Jeghelian took an early lead in polls among candidates for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat, but Romney proved the most effective fundraiser.[99][100] He won 68 percent of the vote at the May 1994 Massachusetts Republican Party convention; businessman John Lakian finished a distant second and Jeghelian was eliminated.[101] Romney defeated Lakian in the September 1994 primary with over 80 percent of the vote.[15][102]
In the general election, Kennedy faced the first serious re-election challenger of his career in the young, telegenic, and well-funded Romney.[95] Romney ran as a fresh face, as a businessperson who stated he had created ten thousand jobs, and as a Washington outsider with a solid family image and moderate stances on social issues.[95][103] When Kennedy tried to tie Romney's policies to those of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, Romney responded, "Look, I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to take us back to Reagan-Bush."[104] Romney stated: "Ultimately, this is a campaign about change."[105] After two decades out of public view, his father George re-emerged during the campaign.[106][107]
Romney's campaign was effective in portraying Kennedy as soft on crime, but had trouble establishing its own positions in a consistent manner.[108] By mid-September 1994, polls showed the race to be approximately even.[95][109][110] Kennedy responded with a series of attack ads, which focused on Romney's seemingly shifting political views on issues such as abortion and on the treatment of workers at the Ampad plant owned by Romney's Bain Capital.[95][111][112] The latter was effective in blunting Romney's momentum.[68] Kennedy and Romney held a widely watched late October debate without a clear winner, but by then, Kennedy had pulled ahead in polls and stayed ahead afterward.[113] Romney spent $3 million of his own money in the race and more than $7 million overall.[114][nb 9] In the November general election, despite a disastrous showing for Democrats overall, Kennedy won the election with 58 percent of the vote to Romney's 41 percent,[52] the smallest margin in Kennedy's eight re-election campaigns for the Senate.[117]
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