Romney says he never got a call from the White House asking him to support a voting-rights bill

A close-up of Sen. Mitt Romney — Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah.
Stefani Reynolds/The New York Times via AP, Pool

Sen. Romney criticised Biden for not creating more bipartisan support for a voting-rights bill.
He said he "never got a call" seeking his support in building a consensus.
Romney said he was working with a bipartisan group to pass a narrower bill.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said he "never got a call from the White House" seeking his support to help broker a bipartisan voting-rights bill.

Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday morning, Romney was critical of President Joe Biden as he approaches his first year in office, saying that he should done more to build bipartisanship.

—Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) January 16, 2022

"Things are not going well. And the president needs to stop and reset and say what is it he's trying to accomplish? And if it's to try and transform America, he is not going to unite us," said Romney, who was the Republican Party's presidential candidate in 2012.

"Bringing us together means finding a way to work on a bipartisan basis. He had one success, the infrastructure bill, and that was done by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate working together. Build on that kind of success."

Host Chuck Todd asked Romney whether he'd be willing to work with the White House on reforming voting.

"Sadly, this election reform bill that the president has been pushing, I never got a call on that from the White House," said Romney.

"There was no negotiation bringing Republicans and Democrats together to try and come up with something that would meet bipartisan interest. Sure, we can work together on almost every issue where there's common ground."

Romney said he was already involved in an attempt by a group of 12 Republican and Democratic senators to rally bipartisan support around a more modest voting-rights act, known as the Electoral Reform Act.

The act stops short of the sweeping measures to protect elections sought by Biden, who says that Republican-controlled state legislatures are seeking to undermine elections by limiting opportunities to vote.

The Electoral Reform Act instead makes changes to the way elections are certified by Congress. Biden's certification as president on Jan. 6 2021 was a target the Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol.

Romney went on to criticise the more expansive measures championed by Biden, which he said amounted to a "federalized takeover" of elections, which he said had been delegated by the Founding Fathers to be conducted by states to avoid an autocrat seizing control of them.

He also said in the interview that Biden had been elected to "stop the crazy" and reintroduce stability into US politics after the tumultuous years of the Trump administration, not to conduct sweeping reforms.

Though a staunch critic of Trump and one of the Senate's leading GOP moderates, Romney voted against both of the voting-rights bills that Democrats have sought to pass in 2021, helping defeat them in the Senate as they failed to obtain a filibuster-proof 60 vote majority.

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