Tagg Romney Biography

Taggart 'Tagg' Romney was born on March 21, 1970 in Provo, Utah, United States to Mitt Romney and his wife Ann. The first of five sons, he was born when both his parents were undergraduate students at the culturally conservative Brigham Young University and were living in a basement apartment. After finishing school, he went to Brigham Young University like his parents, and as a newlywed, lived in the same basement apartment his parents lived in when he was an infant. Also like his father, he went to Bordeaux in France on a Mormon mission while still in college. He graduated magna cum laude with a BA in economics from the university in 1994. All his four younger brothers, Matthew, Joshua, Benjamin and Craig, also graduated from the traditionally Mormon Brigham Young University. He later earned an MBA degree from Harvard Business School in 1998.

After completing his MBA, Tagg Romney turned down lucrative offers to join the startup eGrad. A Boston Red Sox fan, he quit eGrad to launch Season Perks, a company that bought unused tickets to re-sell to fans. He was in between jobs when his father was running for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. He became an aide to his campaign and was also the campaign manager for his running mate Kerry Healey. He served as director of strategic planning at Elan Pharmaceuticals before becoming the head of marketing for the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 2007, he left the job and moved back to Boston to serve as a strategist when his father began his first presidential campaign.

In February 2008, weeks after the campaign ended, he and his father's chief fundraiser, Spencer Zwick, formed the private equity firm Solamere Capital out of the campaign headquarters with $10 million from his mother's blind fund. He subsequently served as the VP of onfield marketing at Reebok and then became management consultant at both Monitor Group and McKinsey & Co. While serving as an advisor in his father's 2012 presidential campaign, he suddenly drew media attention after it was reported that he, along with his mother, led an "intervention" to save his father's faltering campaign. They prevailed over paid staff members on key decisions such as advocating a 'Let Mitt be Mitt' approach, picking Paul Ryan as his running mate, and upholding his record as a moderate governor. However, talking to the media, he dismissed such theories as fairy tales.

Following the 2012 presidential campaign, increased media scrutiny revealed disturbing details about Tagg Romney's business and political involvements. As the possibility of a third presidential run by Mitt Romney loomed large, many raised questions were about conflict of interest as Mitt became the chairman of the executive committee of the $700 million firm Solamere Capital, co-founded by Tagg, in March 2013. Previously, one of Solamere's investment partners, HIG Capital, had supplied voting machines in Ohio in 2012. It was reported that the company "freely mixed politics and business" and several of Mitt's political allies and previous funders had also invested in the company. Many potential Republican Party Presidential candidates for 2016 were in attendance at the three-day 'Romney Retreat' sponsored by Solamere in June 2014.

Tagg Romney is married to Jennifer Dyan Thomas, with whom he has six children. Their oldest child Allie is also the oldest grandchild of Mitt Romney. They welcomed their fourth child Jonathan via surrogacy in August 2010, and in May 2012, they had twins David Mitt and William Ryder through the same gestational surrogate. While the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which he and his wife are members of, encourages having large families, it also "strongly discourages surrogate motherhood" as well as in vitro fertilization. According to distant relative Ron Scott, three of Mitt Romney's five children "have wrestled with fertility issues", and "have sought solutions that are seemingly inconsistent with their father’s views on abortion and stem cell research". He lives in Belmont, Massachusetts with his family.