Mitt Romney offered Romney-Oprah 2020 ticket – book

A biography of Sen. Willard “Mitt” Romney (R-Utah), due out next week, claims Oprah Winfrey wanted Mitt Romney to run for President in 2020, on a ticket she would join. Oprah Winfrey is strenuously denying seeking to run for anything, but did confirm asking Romney to run.

Mitt Romney for President in 2020?

The Mitt Romney for Vice-President claim comes from McKay Coppins, author of Romney: A Reckoning. (Or rather, it comes from an anonymous tipster claiming to have seen the manuscript. That someone could be his agent, an editor at his publisher, or someone in the offices of either organization.) Scribener will have the book out for shipment on October 24, according to Barnes and Noble.

Axios and the New York Post both detail the rumor. According to it, Oprah Winfrey begged Mitt Romney to run for President as an independent candidate. That, she thought, was the only way to stop Donald J. Trump from winning a second term. Romney ultimately declined, on the theory that any run by him would help Trump more than hurt him.

The only remaining dispute is whether Oprah Winfrey really intended to run for Vice-President on a Romney-Oprah ticket. The Hollywood Reporter and Variety both print her explicit denial of that claim. Her spokespeople admit she did call Mitt Romney about running for President in November 2019. But, says the spox, she never had the idea to run herself. (But yet another anonymous source claims to have heard from some of her close friends, who thought she might run.)

Romney has already decided not to seek another Senate term in 2024, when his Senate class comes up for reelection. He also is one of five nominal Republican Senators who threatened to bolt the Party if it got any more populistic than it now is.