Voters voice regard, regret over Romney

Terry O'Brien saw a flash of the man he 'd voted for in 2002 last summer, after the fatal ceiling collapse in the Interstate 90 connector tunnel. Governor Mitt Romney hurled himself at the problem, holding press conferences, touring the tunnel, and ordering a comprehensive safety inspection.

The crisis offered "a 10-minute view," O'Brien said, of the governor's keen managerial talent. It reminded O'Brien of Candidate Romney, the energetic campaigner bursting with determination to root out waste in government and kick the Massachusetts economy into high gear.

"You always felt that he had the capacity to do great things," said O'Brien, 44, an undeclared voter from Wrentham. "But I think unfortunately, as soon as he came into the state, he was elsewhere."

As Romney prepares to leave the State House and concentrate on a possible run for the presidency, Massachusetts voters are experiencing a range of emotions. "Glee!" is how one woman expressed her feelings about seeing him go. There is also hope that he will succeed in a quest for higher office, as well as gratitude for his service, and disappointment with what he left undone.

But interviews with more than three dozen voters last week most strikingly revealed a wistfulness among those who voted for the governor and even those who did not. Many saw huge potential in Romney, a smart business executive with few connections to the clannish Massachusetts establishment, when he took office four years ago. Looking back, they wondered what he might have accomplished, had his ambition to run for president not overshadowed his term as governor.

"He totally didn't use the skills he clearly has," said Judy Deal, 44, a Democrat and real estate broker from Jamaica Plain. " It's frustrating because even though I didn't vote for him, I know he has the talent to progress further. But he really dropped the ball on Massachusetts."

Few voters interviewed expressed anger about Romney's rightward drift on gay rights and abortion, saying they always believed he was socially conservative at heart. But many said the social issues distracted him from what they had hoped would be his agenda -- improving the economy and tackling patronage in government.

"To me, the amount of effort he's put into squashing gay marriage is disproportionate to the amount of effort he's put into" anything else, said Joanne Kenny, a 42-year-old Democrat and human services worker from Quincy. "If you spend that much time on one issue, you're taking time away from other stuff."

However, Tim Fradette, 32, a Republican from South Boston, said he was glad Romney was there to speak out against profligate Democratic spending. He wasn't bothered by Romney's travels, either. "The governor doesn't make a decision on every issue -- he hopefully hires people to help him do that," he said. "That's part of being a good executive."

The interviews were conducted in Boston and communities to the south of the city -- in a post office, a town library, a bookstore, a restaurant, and a beauty shop.

Romney's relationship with voters in Massachusetts was hardly typical. When he jumped into the campaign four years ago, he was already a national figure, fresh from saving the scandal-ridden, debt-plagued 2002 Winter Olympics. Wealthy, personable, and telegenic, the son of a former governor , and the patriarch of a large family, he campaigned relentlessly against Beacon Hill, vowing to apply business expertise to produce a balanced budget and a stronger economy.

Voters such as Cindy Watson, 55, a mortgage underwriter from Sandwich who was eating lunch with a colleague in Randolph last week, recalls being taken with the "magic" Romney had worked at the Olympics. A Democrat, she voted for the Republican in 2002. "It was disorganized, they had a lot of scandal; he brought integrity to that whole process," she said.

Though she didn't vote for Romney, Kenny appreciated his perspective as an outsider. "It would seem that he doesn't owe a lot of people, which a lot of politicians get bogged down in, and which I think would empower someone," she said as she paused to rest while shopping at a bookstore in Hingham.

Fred Waterman, a 53-year-old magazine writer and undeclared voter from Scituate, said he voted for Romney with the hope that he would shake up the entrenched political culture on Beacon Hill.

"I think I, and the majority of voters, hoped Romney would be an effective opponent of business as usual, and 'What will this do for my cousin Charlie?' "

But Watson, Kenny, and Waterman, along with the majority of people interviewed for this story, said Romney seemed to lose interest in his job soon after he was elected, preferring instead to concentrate on building his national profile to lay the groundwork for a presidential run. Just 10 of the 17 people interviewed who voted for Romney in 2002 said they would vote for him for governor again.

Romney, a Republican in a Democratic state who won election by less than 5 percentage points , never had much of a honeymoon in Massachusetts. In 2003, as he approached his 100th day in office, only 55 percent of residents had a favorable opinion of him, according to a Globe poll at the time. His popularity has declined markedly since the spring of this year, after he decided not to run for reelection and began spending large chunks of time out of state.

In an October Globe/WBZ poll, 54 percent of likely voters in the November governor's race expressed an unfavorable view of Romney and 34 percent a favorable view.

Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, which conducted the poll, said Romney suffered from a combination of restlessness among Democratic voters, President Bush's declining popularity, dismay that the governor would not run for reelection, and unease with his obvious interest in a presidential run. "Nobody likes it when somebody's in office and immediately has his eye on higher office," Smith said.

Voters appeared mostly unfazed by Romney's move to the right on social issues -- a subject of commentary in media and political circles. They said he masked his conservatism in 2002, when he ran as a moderate, so he could win in Massachusetts. But they also said that Romney's attention to issues like gay marriage, as he developed his conservative credentials for a presidential run, came at the expense of more important issues facing Massachusetts.

Kevin Cabral, 34, an undeclared voter who works in finance, has seen many younger people leave Massachusetts for more affordable communities in the South. He hoped Romney would focus on the economy. Instead, Cabral said, as he talked with friends in South Boston over beers on a recent evening, "he ended up spending a lot of time provoking Democrats on social issues, rather than focusing on major issues like keeping jobs in this state."

But Romney loyalists see it differently. Matt Hayes, 31, an undeclared voter from Brookline who owns Jamaica Plain Auto Body, pointed out that Romney turned the state's deficits into surpluses, "which the Democratic primary candidates were all fighting over how to spend."

"If he wants to influence evangelical Christians, that's fine with me," Hayes said , as he waited for a Cuban sandwich at El Oriental de Cuba . "Is it going to make a difference in my life? No."

A number of voters said they admired the governor's morality. Wanda Andrade, 43, a Democrat and nursing assistant from Brockton, said she was a friend of Milena Del Valle, the woman who was killed in the Big Dig tunnel collapse. Andrade was moved by what she described as Romney's kindness to the family.

"They were poor people, and he responded right away," she said. "He does the right thing, and I like people who do the right thing."

But there was an overwhelming sense among those interviewed that they never truly got to know the governor. When asked what they would miss about his personality or presence when he was gone, even some of the strongest Romney supporters shrugged.

Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com.