Advisers try to Squelch Mitt Romney 2016 Efforts .. but it's Gaining Steam

Talk to any of Mitt Romney’s closest political advisers, and the answer is the same: He won’t run for president in 2016.

“I take Mitt at his absolute word. He’s not running,” says Ron Kaufman, Republican national committeeman for Massachusetts and a senior adviser to Mr. Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.

“He’s been very clear – he loved running, gave it his best, and lost,” Mr. Kaufman told this reporter at the RNC’s summer meeting in Chicago last week. “Now he’s helping the Republicans win the Senate.”

Romney’s former finance chair, Spencer Zwick, has also put out word that Romney is focused on the 2014 midterms and to please stop the draft efforts, which are a distraction. Most significant among them is DraftMitt.org, organized by the chairman of the Utah Republican Party. The three-month-old site is closing in on 117,000 signatures. The campaign's Facebook page is also getting a lot of traffic.

"Look, the focus needs to be on the midterm elections. That's what Mitt is doing," Mr. Zwick told the Deseret News in Salt Lake City last month. "The organization has no merit. None."

But in Chicago last week, when asked about his draft effort, Utah GOP chairman James Evans was happy to talk.

“We are mindful of Romney insiders’ concerns, but we’re not going away,” says Mr. Evans.

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“This is a grass-roots efforts,” Evans says, “and we want to demonstrate that, collectively, America got it wrong” in 2012, when President Obama beat Romney.

As head of the Utah GOP, Evans is well-positioned to keep his effort going. Utah is one of Romney’s “home bases.” He lived there for a time when he ran the 2002 Winter Olympics and owns a home there. Utah is also headquarter of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which Romney is a prominent member.

But Evans is, in other ways, an unlikely champion. He’s originally from South Carolina, a Southern Baptist, and black – the only African-American state GOP chair in the continental US.

Evans says he told Romney directly that he wanted to launch a draft effort, and the former Massachusetts governor smiled and was polite.

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