Romney said on Wednesday that he occasionally found common ground with the Democratic leadership in the Massachusetts legislature. Independent agencies have looked at his claims in the past, and reported on just how few of Romney's vetoes were sustained.
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney declares victory in the Wisconsin presidential primary at the Grain Exchange, Tuesday, April 3, 2012, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)More politics news
Mitt Romney's tenure as Mormon Church leader gives clues to his ability to relate to average people: Those who interacted with Mitt Romney during his time as a church leader in Massachusetts give differing opinions about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
In an interview with NBC on Wednesday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was asked how Washington would be different if he were elected president.
Romney responded, as he often does, by pointing to the bipartisanship he learned as governor of Massachusetts.
“All I can say is that I got elected governor of a state that was 87 percent Democrat,” Romney said. “And it was not lost on me that if I went around attacking the Democrat leadership, I was going to get nothing done and none of my vetoes would be upheld. And I began a relationship with the speaker of the House and the Senate president that was personal. We respected each other. We often disagreed. But we found common ground from time to time.”
So how often were Romney’s vetoes upheld?
This issue was examined by several media agencies during Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign – and the answer is, rarely, given the heavily Democratic legislature that Romney faced in Massachusetts.
Factcheck.org reported, based on an independently-obtained list of veto override votes, that out of more than 800 budget line-item vetoes during Romney’s four years as governor, 707 were overridden. A separate Factcheck.org post put the exact number of Romney’s vetoes at 844 – and noted that “more than 700” were overridden.
The Boston Globe reported that in 100 instances Democrats did not challenge Romney and his vetoes stood. In cases when the Senate challenged him, Romney was overridden every time. When the House challenged him, Romney was overridden more than 99 percent of time, the Globe reported, based on statistics from the House minority leader’s office.