Ann Romney, mother of five, grandmother of 18, breast cancer survivor and multiple sclerosis sufferer, understands the role she must play in presidential politics.
The wife of candidate Mitt Romney and “First Lady in waiting” began playing a political wife in 1994 when her husband was running his first campaign.
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After a 4000-word profile was published painting her as a frivolous lady-who-lunches, completely out of touch destroying her reputation and husband lost out in his bold US senate run against incumbent Ted Kennedy, the slender, stay-at-home mum swore she would never do it again.
Yet Ann has done it again and again.
She stood by her man during his successful run for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, his unsuccessful bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination and now, in 2012, in his race for the White House against incumbent Democrat President Barack Obama as the nation prepares to vote this week.
“Americans believe that wives can provide a look into who the man really is,” says Catherine Allgor, a history professor at the University of California at Riverside and an adviser to the National Women’s History Museum.
“The political process is highly scripted, we have attack ads, we are always being spun and we believe that the wife is going to break through those layers.”
So who is the woman tasked with presenting to the American people the real Mitt Romney?
Ann’s story goes like this … She met Mitt at a high school dance, shortly before she turned 16, and allowed him to escort her home.
“You can trust Mitt,” she said at the convention.
“He will take us to a better place, just as he took me home safely from that dance.” Just a few months after the dance, Ann accepted Mitt’s informal marriage proposal.
She converted to the Mormon faith at 17, while he was serving as a missionary in France, and married him at 19.
(She usually leaves out the part where, when Mitt was in Paris, she wrote him a Dear John letter of sorts, confessing that she had developed feelings for a fellow university student. Mitt begged her to wait until he got home to decide and they were engaged again during the car ride back from the airport.)
The Romneys started their family early, much to the consternation of family, friends and feminists. Although there’s no doubt that raising five boys is a great deal of work – despite one Democratic strategist’s unfortunate pronouncement that Ann Romney had “actually never worked a day in her life” – Ann has never worked outside of the home.
In fact, she planned to get a Masters in art history once her children were grown and launch a career in mid-life.
Those plans were derailed in 1998 when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Mitt has said that sitting with Ann in the neurologist’s office, watching her fail one test after another, was the worst day of his life.
Ann struggled at first with the disease, admitting that, at times, she could barely get out of bed, but ultimately found a successful combination of traditional and alternative therapies, including horse riding (she co-owns Refalca, a dressage horse that competed at the London Olympics).
Then in 2008, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a lumpectomy.
“I can tell you and promise you that I’ve had struggles in my life,” she told Fox News earlier this year. “I would love to have people understand that Mitt and I have compassion for people that are struggling. That’s why we’re running.”
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That use of the plural pronoun – “we’re running” – indicates that Ann Romney, mother of five, grandmother of 18, breast cancer survivor and multiple sclerosis sufferer, understands the role she must play.
“Some people go into the voting boothand will always vote for a single party,” says Professor Allgor.
“Some vote based on a single issue. But some go in and think, ‘How do I feel about that guy?’. How they feel about them has everything to do with his wife. If they think he’s a good guy, nice, accessible, caring, trustworthy, then the spouse has been effective.”
Has Ann Romney been effective? Only time will tell.
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