Romney and religion

SLICK WILLARD is back -- and the artful dodger who is Mitt's Romney's alter ego may just be hurting his national hopes by injecting religion into Romney's might-be presidential campaign.

Those with long memories may recall that the governor had barely finished arranging the photographs on his desk before he was off exploring a presidential campaign.

The reason for that premature politicking, political advisers maintained, was the need to gauge whether conservative Christian Republicans would be open to a Mormon candidate, since some evangelicals distrust the Mormon Church and its unorthodox theology.

Still, until last week, Romney's Mormonism hadn't emerged as a big issue, even as the governor has emerged as a much-talked-about possible presidential prospect.

In part, that's because Romney has shrewdly stressed shared conservative values while downplaying his specific religion. As governor, he has reached out to the black clergy, promoted faith-based initiatives, and cultivated Catholics, going so far as to travel to Rome when Archbishop Sean O'Malley was made cardinal.

In light moments, Romney likes to quip that he believes marriage should be "between a man and a woman and a woman and a woman." Mainstream Mormonism, of course, abandoned polygamy more than a century ago. Thus Romney's self-spoofing sally helps highlight both his conservative values and his marriage to the one and only Ann Romney, a singular campaign asset.

So until last week, Romney seemed to be handling the religion issue with real skill. Enter, stage right, that duplicitous doppelganger known as Slick Willard.

By having his political team meet with Mormon Church officials about ways of building a national network of Mormons to boost a Romney candidacy, the Slickster may just have ignited a concern the governor had worked hard to defuse.

As the Globe has reported in the last few days, Romney's son Josh and Don Stirling, a consultant for the governor's Commonwealth PAC, attended a Sept. 19 meeting with Mormon Church apostle Jeffrey Holland, a former president of Brigham Young University, in Holland's church office. Their goal: to find ways to tap the alumni network of the BYU business school.

About a week later, a trio of Romney operatives -- -- brother Scott Romney and political aides Spencer Zwick and Stirling -- had dinner with Steve Albrecht, the associate dean of the BYU business school, among others. Albrecht and his boss, business school dean Ned Hill, subsequently e-mailed two groups associated with the school to solicit support for Romney.

When Scott Helman and Michael Levenson of the Globe first reported on those activities last Thursday, the Romney camp and the church described the efforts as simply informal discussions, the Sept. 19 meeting as little more than a courtesy call.

On Sunday, however, the Globe quoted e-mails from Stirling saying that Holland had assumed a leading role in the pro-Romney efforts, that the church elder had informed Mormon Church president Gordon Hinckley and another high-ranking church official about the plan, and that they had no objections, despite the church's supposed neutrality.

Faced with that further account, the Romney campaign made Stirling its fall guy, claiming that the Romney aide had "overstepped his bounds."

But that attempt to dismiss an obviously well-coordinated effort -- one that included Romney's brother and one of his sons -- raises real questions about the Romney operation's honesty.

Although Romney's religion hasn't been an issue during his time as governor, it did become one when he ran for the US Senate in 1994, in part because of anti-abortion counseling Romney had offered or condemnations of homosexuality he allegedly made in his former capacity as a local church official. However, when Ted Kennedy raised the issue of the Mormon Church's pre-1978 exclusion of blacks from the priesthood, Romney countered shrewdly, accusing the senator of betraying JFK's own stand against religious bigotry.

Romney can't have it both ways, however.

In 1960, JFK made it clear both that he believed in an absolute separation of church and state and that he should not be considered the Catholic Church's candidate. "I do not speak for the church on public matters and the church does not speak for me," he declared.

Here, Romney's own camp has brought his religion into things through its ill-advised efforts to quietly enlist Mormon Church institutions in his campaign efforts.

So if the governor finds religious issues raised anew, or his credibility questioned, he has no one but Slick Willard to blame.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.