Mitt Romney contemplated running for president in 2016 on a ticket with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in a bid to stop Donald Trump from winning the Republican nomination, according to a new book, the Guardian reports.
McKay Coppins reveals the plan, which never materialized, in Romney: A Reckoning, a biography of the Republican presidential hopeful that is set for publication next week by Scribner.
Coppins writes that in February of 2016, Romney was approached by his friend Robert O’Brien and former U.S. Sen. Jim Talent about entering the Republican primary in an attempt to stop the rise of Trump, who had recently placed second in the Iowa caucus.
“An interloping frontrunner was on the verge of hijacking the GOP, and the rest of the field had shown they couldn’t beat him,” Coppins writes in the book. “If no one else stepped up by March 1, they argued, Romney should enter the race and tap Cruz as his running mate to unite Republican opposition to Trump.”
Romney, as Coppins points out, was not a fan of Cruz, whom he considered “scary” and “a demagogue.” Axios reports that in Coppins’ book, Romney blasts the Texas Republican for putting “politics above the interests of liberal democracy and the Constitution” in claiming that Trump actually won the 2020 election.
The plan to have Romney and Cruz run on a ticket together didn’t work out, and Trump clinched the Republican nomination and, ultimately, the presidency. Romney ended up running for, and winning, a U.S. Senate seat from Utah in 2018. Last month, Romney announced he would not seek re-election to the Senate in 2024.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
