Tagg Romney wants to get something off his chest — President Obama’s portrayal of his father as “this evil monster” is far from the truth.
The GOP presidential nominee’s oldest son told the Daily News Monday that the real Mitt Romney came through loud and clear when he thumped Obama in last week’s debate.
“It was just a chance to have people hear him, who he is,” Tagg, 42, told the Daily News, saying that his father’s main selling point as the man who can best fix the economy shone during the debate — not the Democratic version of him as being an out-of-touch vulture capitalist.
“The most frustrating part is the caricature they’re trying to paint of my dad is so far from who he is. No one who knows him well thinks those things about him. He’s a very good, very compassionate guy,” the son said.
But knowing from family experience that campaign attacks would come early and often, Tagg Romney recalled that when the candidate polled his loved ones two years ago on whether he should make another run for the White House, only three people in the large family voted yes: Mitt’s wife, Ann, Tagg, 42, and Tagg’s wife.
“The reason I felt strongly about it at the time was I know how good of a person he is and I know how qualified he is, and I know how big the challenges our country is facing are,” he said. “I didn’t know if he could win or not, but he had to at least try.”
All five of the Romney boys have thrown themselves into the campaign, but Tagg Romney and his brother Josh have taken on perhaps the highest-profile roles in pitching the former governor of Massachusetts to the American public.
“My specific role is to be a character witness. People already know how competent he is — I think I [know] better than anyone, other than my mom, how compassionate he is,” Tagg Romney said.
“There’s not any one particular demographic I’m targeting; voters in swing states is what it is.”
Like his mother, one of Tagg Romney’s biggest tasks on the stump is to bring the sometimes-starchy politician into a softer focus, speaking often about his father’s honesty, his warmth, and his love of a good prank.
“It’s pretty hard to find someone who can offer stronger testimony about Mitt and his character and integrity than Tagg,” said Romney advisor Kevin Madden.
“He helps people who want to know more about Mitt understand what makes him a great father, a great husband and also a great leader.”
With his strong chin and thick, dark hair, Tagg Romney looks remarkably like his pop.
He graduated from Brigham Young University before earning a degree from Harvard Business School, as his father did. Tagg Romney himself is the father of six kids with his wife Jennifer. The family lives outside of Boston, where he works as a managing partner at investment firm Solamere Capital.
Unlike during his father’s earlier campaigns, Tagg Romney says that he has not been involved in “strategy or debate prep or ads.”
“I have six kids, so I’m busy with my six, but also I’ve got my own business. I owe it to my investors to do my best by them,” he said.
A recent POLITICO story quoted an unnamed family friend as saying Tagg Romney would be working behind the scenes at being “more assertive in making the organization work better, cleaning up some of the organizational dysfunction.”
But Tagg Romney said that’s simply not the case.
In fact, he said he hasn’t been to a strategy meeting in more than a year, and the last time his father specifically solicited his advice on a campaign issue was in considering his selection of a running mate.
“It sounds like a great story, but it’s not based in reality at all,” he said of the suggestion that he’d be the one to broker peace between warring factions inside Romneyland.
“I’ve never approached anyone about wanting to play that role. No one has approached me,” he said.
“This is not spin, the team really gets along well. There’s no internal squabbling or fighting for territory or turf.”
Despite his commitment to his family and his job, Tagg Romney has had some grueling days on the road trying to get his father the country’s most prestigious job.
Last Tuesday alone, Tagg Romney blitzed through seven campaign stops in five New Hampshire towns, including wooing Dartmouth students in Hanover and chatting up voters at a Londonderry cafe.
His pitch to voters who are worried about losing a job, finding a job, or working a job for which they’re overqualified is simple: “Give my dad a chance.”
“The guy who’s in there is not working, [and] it’s because he’s got the wrong policies; he doesn’t have the background experience to get this done,” Tagg Romney said.
“[My father is] running to try to help America get back on its feet.”
In 2008, when Mitt Romney was outperformed in the GOP primaries by Arizona Sen. John McCain, voters were simply in a different frame of mind, but that has changed now in the Republican’s favor, Tagg Romney reasoned.
“I think the big difference [now] is the country realizes how much trouble we’re in economically. He’s a guy who knows how to fix the economy. Four years ago people were more concerned about the war in Iraq,” he said, adding bluntly that his dad was “the wrong candidate then” but the right candidate now.
When he’s not extolling his father’s finer points to swing-state voters, Tagg Romney and his brothers gather around their father to keep him relaxed and upbeat at pivotal moments, such as before the first debate in Denver last week.
The family tries to keep it light. Tagg Romney said that before Denver, “We talked about movies and about new TV shows and primarily about our kids and how they’re doing, about sports teams we follow.”
For the candidate’s family, it is not always easy to deal with the attacks and the mud being hurled from the other side, or with voters who are ready to slam the Mitt Romney who says he likes “being able to fire people” or mocks people’s cheap plastic rain ponchos, or wants to write off “the 47%.”
“To be perfectly honest, it’s not fun, but at the same time, you’ve got to have thick skin,” so you don’t flip out “and do something you’re going to regret later,” Tagg Romney said.
Faced with the constant campaign combat, Tagg Romney said he tries to keep an even keel while maintaining a belief that this time, his father is going to win — and win big.
If he does, “My personal life would be a lot more fun,” Tagg Romney jokes.
On a more serious note, he added: “I really want him to win for our country, but it’s not going to kill me or anyone else in our family if he doesn’t win … life will be good for us and for him like it was for my grandpa [former Michigan Gov. George Romney] when he didn’t win [in his presidential run in 1968].”
As to how best get to that big win, Tagg Romney says there’s no shortage of random people who seek him out to share their detailed advice.
“You wouldn’t believe how many people give me advice,” he said with half a laugh. “I had to change my phone number again today!”
ckatz@nydailynews.com
