The Real Romney (29 page)

Garff, Leavitt, and Romney quickly paid a series of visits to Huntsman, who cooled his opposition to their management and made peace with all three. The elder Huntsman later helped fund Romney’s political campaigns and served on his national finance committee for the 2008 presidential race. But church leaders, wary of appearing to exert too much influence on the Games, asked Romney to scale back his requests for aid, which he did. They also curbed their ambitions to use the Olympics to promote Mormonism—with a few exceptions, among them a book that one of the church’s publishing companies released for the Games,
Why I Believe
, in which the Romneys joined about fifty other prominent Mormons in expressing their faith. “It all worked out beautifully after the church backed off and the prophet [Hinckley] said we won’t have any missionaries on the streets proselytizing,” Garff said.

Yet Romney’s funding problem persisted. Three years shy of the opening ceremonies at the University of Utah’s hillside stadium, Romney had inherited a $1.45 billion budget. After he and Fraser Bullock completed an analysis, they concluded that the organizing committee needed to raise at least $400 million more to meet expenses. Romney later joked that at the rate they’d been going, the Olympic cauldron “was going to be a couple of Weber grills welded together and hauled up a flagpole.” He cast the challenge as a monumental crisis, one that would require extraordinary efforts from everyone involved. “We could be liquidated by our creditors, and shamed,” Romney told Leavitt.

Romney rapidly trimmed the budget to $1.32 billion, launched marketing campaigns, and established an austerity program, which included an end to free lunches for the trustees. No more grand, multicourse buffets such as committee members had enjoyed until Romney’s first meal with them. After that he ordered pizza and required board members to pay $1 a slice, plus $1 per soda. No one resisted the change, although one financially strapped trustee considered the new meal plan part of her sacrifice to public service. Joan Guetschow, a former winter Olympic biathlete who served on the board as an athlete representative, said, “Mitt was very adamant about being squeaky clean on every single rule. I was a volunteer. I didn’t have a lot of money. I had to take vacation time from work to go to meetings. I thought, ‘Can I at least get a free piece of pizza?’ ” Romney’s culinary austerity extended through the Games. Olympic sponsors and other VIPs had grown accustomed through the years to organizing committees’ providing lavish buffets. Yet their main staple at the Salt Lake Games was not exactly haute cuisine. “I ate more chili in those two weeks than I’ve eaten in my entire life,” D’Alessandro said. When a local paper ran a cartoon depicting Romney saying, “We’re cheap!” in front of “MittFrugal’s,” his discount Winter Games, Romney was so proud he had it framed.

Though most of Romney’s belt-tightening moves—both symbolic and substantive—energized the organizing committee, some people familiar with the budget insisted that his dire forecasts were overstated. A review of archived records shows that the organizing committee had already secured commitments of nearly $1 billion in revenues, including $445 million as its share of NBC’s broadcasting contract, and nearly $450 million in sponsorship deals before Romney arrived. In addition, the Utah State Legislature had already loaned $59 million in sales tax revenue to the Games and Congress was prepared to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in direct support, despite protests from Arizona Senator John McCain. Direct federal aid for the Games ultimately totaled $382 million. “Most of the federal money was already in place before Mitt came on,” said Robert Bennett, a Republican senator from Utah who served as point man for the federal funding for the Salt Lake Games. “The Clinton administration was completely supportive in saying these are America’s Games, we will do whatever we can to make sure they are successful. The one concern I had was whether we would get the same degree of support from the Bush administration, which we did.”

Even some key members of the organizing committee, including the friend who had recommended him for the job, didn’t believe the budget was in peril. “Yes, we were out of balance, but we had [three] years to organize that,” Robert Garff said. “In my mind, there was no sense of panic.” But Fraser Bullock said the hole was real. “I was the chief financial officer, so all these other people who say it wasn’t that dire, they needed to be in my shoes,” he said. Romney has since touted his economic rescue of the Games as a hallmark of leadership, saying, “The tsunami of financial, banking, legal, government, morale, and sponsor problems following the revelation of the bid scandal swamped the organization. It was the most troubled turnaround I had ever seen.”

Romney did have to work quickly to revive corporate support, the lifeblood of the Olympics. Fund-raising had stalled as companies feared becoming stained by the scandal. Sponsors had been scared off in part by D’Alessandro, who was highly critical of Olympic leaders for bringing on the assorted investigations. D’Alessandro had standing. After all, his company, John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance, had committed $50 million to sponsor the Games. “The I.O.C.’s sponsorships have become radioactive,” D’Alessandro said before Romney took over. “They’ve got to find a way to make sponsorships safe again.” Romney cast himself as the clean businessman who would restore integrity to the Games. He began by personally winning over D’Alessandro. That cleared the way for Romney to assume the role of chief salesman, crisscrossing the country to help reap more than $300 million in additional sponsorships. His entrepreneurial abilities were on full display. He was prohibited from soliciting companies in marketing categories that already had been claimed—Pepsi could not sponsor the Games, for instance, because Coca-Cola had already committed. So he created more than twenty new categories, including an official furniture supplier (Herman Miller) and an official online job recruiter (Monster.com). He also struck a deal for an official meat (certified Angus beef), which explained why the free buffet for VIPs was heavy on chili and hot dogs.

His salesmanship, which involved raising an additional $100 million from companies and individuals in Utah, extended to NBC headquarters at Rockefeller Plaza in New York. The company had paid $555 million to broadcast the Games, and network executives would not abide having their investment damaged by subpar management. Had Romney botched the assignment, he would have earned the wrath of Dick Ebersol, who was chairman of NBC Sports and Olympics and had been identified by
Sporting News
in 1996 as “the most powerful person in sports.” But Romney impressed Ebersol. “I have no doubt whatsoever, as the representative of the chief investor in the Salt Lake City Olympics, that Mitt Romney was single-handedly responsible for those Games being the immense success they were,” Ebersol later said. “The list of people who could have pulled it off began and ended with Mitt Romney.”

Part of Romney’s appeal was his insistence on high ethical standards. Yet Romney himself risked the appearance of conflicts by soliciting sponsorships from companies such as Staples and Marriott International on whose boards of directors he served. As a director, he was responsible for protecting the companies’ interests; as CEO of the organizing committee, he had promised to get the best deal for the Olympics. Romney dismissed the notion of any conflict. “That’s not a conflict of interest,” he said. “That’s trying to encourage people who I knew to get with the Games.” In Garff’s view, Romney mitigated any risk of a possible conflict by citing his business affiliations on an ethics statement. To be sure, Romney’s entanglements were nothing like those of the trustees who resigned when he took over, including Alan Layton, whose construction company had received a $29 million contract from the organizing committee, and Earl Holding, whose ski area had signed a $13.8 million deal with the committee. Romney did allow some trustees whose companies engaged in relatively small business with the committee to remain on the board. “They removed the people who were the poster children for conflicts of interest,” said Glenn Bailey, a leader of Salt Lake Impact 2002 and Beyond, a coalition of community groups. “But they still had conflicts.”

E
ven if the finances were fixable, there were real doubts about how to repair the reputation of the Games, Salt Lake City, and Utah. Romney acted quickly to remove the taint of the scandal, partly by laying the blame on Welch and Johnson. Romney joined Leavitt in casting the two men as rogue members of the organizing committee who had betrayed their Olympic cause. Until the case went to trial, Romney supported federal prosecutors, who alleged that Welch and Johnson had participated in defrauding the committee of more than $1 million by doling out gifts to IOC delegates. Facing bribery charges punishable by up to seventy-five years in prison, Welch asserted that everyone involved in the process, including Governor Leavitt, had known that favors were being given to members of the international selection committee. “We amassed significant, undeniable information that everybody involved in the process was knowledgeable about what was going on, all the way to the governor’s office,” said Max Wheeler, one of the defense attorneys. Leavitt denied knowing anything.

Welch’s view was widely shared in the Salt Lake community. “If you’re going to fault Tom Welch for anything, you can fault him for having tunnel vision,” said Zianibeth Shattuck-Owen, who served on the organizing committee. “He was given the directive to get the Olympic Games. He’s not a dumb man. He saw what he was up against and played to win. Is he a devil or a bad man? No, not to me.” Garff, too, took exception to criticism of Welch, Johnson, and the committee for some of their actions before Romney arrived. “All we did was do what other people did,” Garff said. “The IOC expected and wanted to be pampered.” But Romney barred Welch’s and Johnson’s names from appearing on a list of more than 20,000 other committee staffers and volunteers on a Wall of Honor at the city’s Olympic Legacy Plaza. And he went so far as to encourage Welch to accept a plea bargain for the good of the Games. One of Welch’s friends, Sydney Fonnesbeck, said that Romney had urged her to persuade Welch to plead guilty to a lesser charge. “Mitt called and said he thought it would be best for the Olympics and for everyone’s benefit,” said Fonnesbeck, a former Salt Lake city councillor who helped organize the Games as a member of the state’s Sports Advisory Council. “He said they would slap Tom’s hands and it would be over.”

She recalled Romney saying, “You never know what could happen if he goes to trial. He could end up going to jail.” “Well, I’ll send him some books,” Fonnesbeck replied. She said that Romney was civil throughout their conversation, but she resented his urging her to intervene. “I don’t know if it was legally inappropriate, but I felt it would have been incredibly inappropriate to do what he asked me to do,” she said. Welch’s defense team agreed. “Tom was represented by counsel, and it was inappropriate for [Romney] to be talking to a defendant in a criminal case about pleading,” Wheeler said.

Romney’s request looked even worse when a federal judge threw out all fifteen felony charges against Welch and Johnson for insufficient evidence and praised their contributions to the Games. “I can only imagine the heartache, the disappointment, the sorrow that you and your loved ones suffered through this terrible ordeal,” U.S. District Judge David Sam told Welch and Johnson. Yet even after the charges were dismissed, Romney continued to express doubt about Welch’s and Johnson’s innocence, blaming the acquittal in part on ineffective prosecutors. “Of course, not being convicted of a crime isn’t vindication of wrongdoing, and not all unethical behavior is criminal,” he contended. “Even when criminal conduct occurs, it may be difficult to prove—and that’s with effective prosecutors. I believe those who pursued Welch and Johnson were inept.”

“Mitt’s objective was to look as good as he could, to wear the white hat,” Welch said. “The more critical he could be of what was there before him, he was. He didn’t have to do it, but he chose to. He viewed everything in terms of how he could promote himself and his legacy, even at the expense of others. He showed a mean side, as well as a competent side.” The government’s chief prosecutor, Richard Wiedis, believed he had lost the case primarily because several members of the organizing committee who had agreed to testify against Welch and Johnson “essentially went south during the trial” by supporting the defendants. “Mitt Romney, as far as I know, was never in the courtroom, didn’t review any of the evidence, and never asked the prosecutors for a summary of their case,” Wiedis said. “I don’t see how he was in a position to make a judgment as to the competence of the prosecution team.”

T
o that point in his life, the tests of Mitt Romney’s capacity for leadership had been conducted largely in private, his skills and shortcomings visible only to business associates and fellow Mormons. The Senate campaign had brought him to the fore, but it had ended in failure. It wasn’t until he took over the Olympics that his ability to lead was put on intensely public display. The overall picture that emerges from those who worked with and observed him in Salt Lake City is of a man focused on the task at hand with laserlike intensity. To some, that was an inspiring thing. His many admirers viewed him as ethically pristine, amiable, and self-effacing. But he developed another image among a group of dissenters: as petty, vindictive, and self-aggrandizing. Romney was also dismissive of the few trustees who aggressively questioned his practices.

Romney’s chief foe was Ken Bullock, who was no relation to Fraser Bullock. Ken Bullock, who served on the organizing committee as executive director of the Utah League of Cities and Towns, believed his professional position made him an official watchdog for the state’s $59 million investment in the Games. “He tried very hard to build an image of himself as a savior, the great white hope,” Bullock said of Romney. “He was very good at characterizing and castigating people and putting himself on a pedestal.” Bullock was among those bemused by Romney’s efforts to promote himself, which seemed to run against the grain of his buttoned-down business persona. Romney became the first Olympics executive to approve a series of commemorative pins bearing his likeness. One pin depicted his face under a heart with the words:
HEY MITT . . . WE LOVE YOU!