Some of Romney's defenders discern a disturbing code at work, accusing Democrats of using weird as a code word for "Mormon." Yet, Mormon or not, the former Massachusetts governor sometimes really is, well, weird, as Globe columnist Scot Lehigh pointed out in a 2007 column.
FOR THE LAST few mornings, I've lingered over the breakfast table, reading all about Mitt Romney, from his Michigan boyhood to his boffo business career to his determined days as chief of the 2002 Winter Olympics. And what do I come away thinking?
One: Poor Seamus Romney.
And: Does a vacuum periodically settle in between the ears of the Mighty Mighty Mittster, rather like one of those low-pressure areas that sometimes stalls for days on end over New England?
Seamus was the Romneys' former mutt — ah, actually, make that a distinguished canine gentleman of Irish extraction — who, we learned on Wednesday, found himself ignominiously placed in a carrier atop the family station wagon back in 1983 as the Romneys embarked on a 12-hour drive to a vacation home Mitt's parents had on Lake Huron.
Now, Mitt had apparently rigged up some sort of windshield for the carrier. And the trip was made during the summer, so I suppose it's not exactly the equivalent of the long frosty December ride in an open carriage that supposedly nosed Beethoven toward his final decline.
Still, the treatment of loyal old Seamus struck me as a rum thing indeed, as Bertie Wooster might say.
It seems to have struck Seamus even more viscerally, at least from what one infers from our account of his not-so-excellent adventure. At some point, the unfortunate fellow evidently developed gastrointestinal distress, which made itself manifest in a plume of brown liquid leaching down over the back window.
The richest remaining candidate in the Republican presidential field has a net worth somewhere north of $200 million. With a fortune amassed as a venture capitalist at his firm, Bain Capital, he has been generous to many community, civic and political advocacy organizations.
But the vast majority of his philanthropic contributions have gone to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in the form of the tithes required of all Mormons in good standing. The former Massachusetts lay bishop has spoken candidly about his religious faith, but his prodigious contributions to the LDS Church will do little to mollify evangelical primary voters whom polls show have a deep prejudice against electing a Mormon president.
According to IRS documents reviewed by The Huffington Post, Mitt and Ann Romney's charitable foundation gave $4,325,000 to the Mormon Church in three hefty installments in 2003, 2008 and 2009. That was 74 percent of their foundation's donations from 2002 to 2009, during which time the couple gave a total of $5,854,916 to charity.
Including another $300,000 that the couple gave to Brigham Young University, the church-run college in Provo, Utah, where Romney earned his undergraduate degree, the proportion of their giving that went to support Mormon missionary work, the upkeep of church buildings and other religious activities rises to 79 percent.
In 1998, Romney gave BYU $1 million to create the George W. Romney Institute for Public Management in honor of his father, the Detroit auto executive and governor of Michigan who ran unsuccessfully for president in 1968. The couple also gave a total of $311,000 to the church in 2000 and 2001.
The Romney foundation did not make religious contributions each year. In 2003, for instance, it handed over a whopping $1,925,000 to the church. In 2005, however, it gave nothing. In 2008, the Romneys gave the LDS Church $1.8 million. The following year, they donated $600,000.
Mormons are expected to tithe 10 percent of their income to the church. During a 2002 gubernatorial debate, Romney cited the tradition of tithing, claiming he gave 13 percent of his annual gross income that year to charity. Although financial disclosure forms released in 2007 showed his worth at between $190 million and $250 million, Romney has not released income tax forms that would allow confirmation of the percentage he sets aside for charity.
In an email to HuffPost, LDS church spokesman Lyman Kirkland refused to give details of Romney's tithing, calling such contributions "personal, private matters of the individuals who make them."
But he said members typically make "contributions to church programs such as our humanitarian efforts to alleviate pain and suffering around the world, or to a fund that helps young people improve their educational opportunities and raise their standard of living. These are the types of things you would expect from a church."
David Campbell, a University of Notre Dame political scientist and co-author of “American Grace: How Religion Unites and Divides," said members are required to be a "full tithe-payer" at 10 percent of their income in order to be admitted to LDS temples, although the church doesn't conduct audits at the door. He noted that even though Mormons give a large chunk of their income to the church, it is not a "zero sum game." Mormons, he has written, give more to religious and secular causes than any other faith group.
The couple established the Ann D. and W. Mitt Romney Charitable Foundation in 1993, just as he was preparing his ill-fated bid to unseat Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). It lay mostly dormant until 1999, when the couple deposited more than $3.6 million worth of high-tech stocks in it and began to make significant contributions.
Now known as the Tyler Charitable Foundation, it is scheduled to release its 2010 financial reports later this month.
"Mitt and Ann Romney are very involved in the community," said campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom. "Some of their activity is public through their foundation, but that is not the only vehicle for their philanthropy. Their charitable giving is not something they generally talk about, but I think it's fair to say they feel an obligation to give back."
The foundation has been the Romneys' main vehicle for giving, whether to keep the lights on with a $10,000 check to a homeless shelter for veterans that couldn't pay its electric bill or to send relief to victims of Hurricane Katrina ($10,000) and the South Asia earthquake and tsunami ($25,000).
The GOP presidential hopeful has donated $127,000 in proceeds from his 2010 campaign book, “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness." Seven charities serving children, cancer and MS patients and severely wounded veterans got donations ranging from $10,000 to nearly $33,000.
The businessman-turned-politician has also foregone payment for work he did as governor and as head of the Olympics.
As head of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Romney took no salary for three years while donating $1 million to the games. Later, while he was entitled to $135,000 annually as governor of Massachusetts, he drew a salary of $1 a year for serving as the state's chief executive. And while he hasn't explicitly said so this time around, Romney vowed during his last campaign for the White House that, if elected, he would donate his $400,000 salary as president to charity.
While her husband was forgoing a paycheck, Ann Romney donated her time to a variety of causes. She has worked as a board member of New England Chapter of the MS Society to raise awareness of multiple sclerosis, the disease with which she was diagnosed in 1998, and has been a long-time supporter of the United Way of Massachusetts. She also has served as director of the Best Friends Foundation, a controversial program that promotes abstinence-only sex education for inner-city girls.
Excluding gifts to the Mormon Church and BYU, the Romney foundation typically donated a bit more than $200,000 annually to charities over the last decade. But some years the couple gave relatively little. In 2002 and 2003, they donated $75,500 and $81,200, respectively. During this same period, Romney spent more than $6 million of his own money on his successful campaign for governor, breaking previous Massachusetts records for self-funding.
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