Romney Won’t Endorse Harris, Saying He Wants to Keep His Voice in the Party

Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican nominee for president, says the party may need to be rebuilt.

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Senator Mitt Romney said he won’t endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.

Senator Mitt Romney, the retiring Republican from Utah and onetime standard-bearer of a party that has shifted under his feet, said Tuesday that he would not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in the election because it might hamper a critical role he could play in helping to rebuild the G.O.P. down the line.

“I’ve made it very clear that I don’t want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States,” Mr. Romney said at the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah. But, he added later: “I want to continue to have a voice in the Republican Party following this election. I think there’s a good chance that the Republican Party is going to need to be rebuilt or reoriented.”

That moment could arrive immediately, he said, or after Mr. Trump’s next term, if he wins, which Mr. Romney said he thought was the race’s more likely outcome. “I believe I will have more influence in the party by virtue of saying it the way I’ve said it,” Mr. Romney said, explaining why he was stopping short of the seemingly obvious next step of an endorsement for Ms. Harris. “I’m not planning on changing.”

Mr. Romney wrote in the name of his wife, Ann, for president in 2016. In 2020, he said he had not voted for Mr. Trump but would not say if he had voted for President Biden. On Tuesday, he joked that his vocal opposition to Mr. Trump left his audience to “do the very difficult calculation of what that would mean” in terms of his vote this year. Given his track record, the answer was far from clear.

Mr. Romney’s unwillingness to endorse Ms. Harris was a blow for her campaign, which has been pouring tens of millions of dollars into advertising aimed at anti-Trump Republicans. Mr. Romney, who voted twice to impeach Mr. Trump and who praised Ms. Harris after her debate performance against him, seemed like an obvious target.

Ms. Harris has gone out of her way to highlight endorsements from conservatives like former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who have potentially helped create a model for deeply conservative voters reluctant to support Mr. Trump to vote for a Democrat for the first time in their lives.

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