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 said 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 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.
The answer was also a curious one for Mr. Romney, who announced in September that he would not seek re-election, saying that he wanted to make way for a “new generation of leaders.”
That retirement announcement was in some ways the culmination of a long divergence between Mr. Romney, a genteel and wealthy former governor with traditional conservative views, and the Republican Party, which has molded itself to fit Mr. Trump’s needs in recent years. That Mr. Romney still thinks there is a role for him to play in the G.O.P. hinted at an optimism about a turnaround in the party that few critics of Mr. Trump share.
Mr. Romney has made no secret of his disgust for Mr. Trump, imploring donors and Republican candidates during this year’s G.O.P. primary to unite around someone else. When that did not happen, he said he could not vote for Mr. Trump in November because character mattered more than policy.
“When someone has been determined by a jury to have committed sexual assault, that is not someone who I want my kids and grandkids to see as president of the United States,” he told MSNBC, a reference to the civil case brought against Mr. Trump by the former magazine writer E. Jean Carroll.
Mr. Romney also holds Mr. Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, in particularly low esteem.
“I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more,” Mr. Romney told his biographer, McKay Coppins of The Atlantic, last year.
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