E-Mail This Article to a Friend Upward mobility Mitt Romney wants to ride the national conservative wave into the White House, but he better make sure it doesn’t wash him right out of the State House BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI

GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY repeatedly denies that he’s looking to run for national office. But, come on now, who really buys that? Ever since Robert Novak, of the Chicago Sun-Times, penned a July 4 column naming the Massachusetts politician as a leading Republican contender for the presidency in 2008, speculation over our governor’s future prospects has swirled — all while Romney and his minions try to quell the rumors.

Last week, for example, the idea of Romney as a "potential 2008 presidential candidate" was floated on the front page of the Washington Times. Under the headline ROMNEY SEEN AS FACE OF FUTURE BY PARTY LEADERS, the July 13 article painted the Massachusetts governor as "a rising Republican star" and "a popular conservative in a bastion of liberalism." But when the Times asked him about a future run for national office, the governor brushed off the possibility as "the furthest thing from my mind." When Romney faced a similar question from the Washington, DC, press corps on July 14 — the day he delivered a widely reported speech at the National Press Club — he deflected the topic again. "To be honest," he told the Press Club, "the job I have is so overwhelmingly consuming that there is nothing further from my mind than thinking about what comes next."

Asked by the Phoenix about all the conjecture about the governor’s presidential aspirations for 2008, Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s communications director, had this to say: "The only people talking about this are the press. No one in the governor’s office is." Then, as if to stay on message, he added: "Mitt Romney is totally consumed with the job of governor."

It may be true that Romney is "consumed" with the job of governor. But it’s hard to reconcile the governor’s purported focus on the Bay State with his ever-escalating national profile. For one thing, the governor somehow found time to pen a book, due for release right before the Democratic National Convention; it is not, mind you, about his experience as Massachusetts governor, but rather about his leadership of the US Olympics, in 2002. More notably of late, Romney made a name for himself across the country as the anti-gay-marriage spokesperson after testifying last month before a US Senate panel on the societal ills that could result from allowing same-sex couples to legally wed. That trip to Capitol Hill, however, was just one of the governor’s many appearances in DC this year. Over the past six months, according to Fehrnstrom, Romney has visited Washington as many as a dozen times. He’s attended meetings of the National Governors Association, which has designated him a "lead governor" on homeland security, and enjoyed face time with cabinet secretaries, White House fellows, business leaders, US senators, and the editorial board of the National Journal.

Add to this lengthy list the governor’s July 14 remarks to the Press Club. The 20-minute speech, "Presidential Politics: A Perspective from the States," included its share of attacks on the junior US senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry, who will become the official Democratic presidential nominee at the DNC, in Boston, next week. Romney, in a predictable show of support for President Bush, blasted Kerry as "simply too conflicted to be president of the United States." More significantly for his own ambitions, the governor laid out his vision of the nation’s future, covering such on-the-stump topics as homeland security, the economy, and education. Indeed, his speech sounded more like an audition for the presidency than the impressions of a first-term governor.

Fehrnstrom downplays the governor’s growing prominence on the national level, insisting that he is simply responding to invitations for speaking engagements. ("Governors get invited by all sorts of organizations to speak, and Governor Romney is no different," is how he puts it.) Yet among Bay State pundits and politicos, this latest speech has erased any doubt about the governor’s plan to use his gubernatorial tenure as a stepping stone to higher office. After all, as one Republican insider points out, it is rare for "any governor of any state to put himself through the rigors of the national stage" — of delivering speeches, of testifying before Congress — "unless he’s looking to move beyond his state."

Romney has created his national profile — and thus positioned himself for a run for higher office — by focusing on such issues as gay marriage, tax cuts, and labor-busting tactics. Only one question remains: will his efforts cost him a bid for re-election in Massachusetts in 2006?