Mitt Romney reiterates he won’t vote for Trump — and will not endorse Harris

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, will not vote for former President Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election, the senator repeated Tuesday. But he does not plan to publicly endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, either.
Speaking at an event hosted by the Sutherland Institute at the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics on Tuesday, an audience member asked what is stopping Romney from announcing his support for Harris.
“I’ve made it very clear that I don’t want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States, and you’re going to have to do the very difficult calculation of what that would mean,” Romney said.
Romney said he wishes to “to continue to have a voice in the Republican Party following this election,” saying he believes “there’s a good shot that the Republican Party is going to need to be rebuilt and reoriented, either after this election, or if Donald Trump is reelected, after he’s the president,” he said.
“I believe I will have more influence in the party by virtue of saying it as I’ve said it,” Romney added. “I’m not planning on changing the way I’ve described it.”
Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee for president, has been openly critical of Trump ever since Trump emerged as a leading candidate in the 2016 Republican primary. During that election, Romney delivered a speech at the Hinckley Institute of Politics, where he denounced Trump as a “phony” and a “fraud.”
In 2020, Romney became the first U.S. senator to vote to impeach a president of his own party, when he casted a vote to convict Trump. A year later, in 2021, Romney again voted to convict Trump, this time for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
On Tuesday, Romney referenced both of those decisions. “Given the fact I voted twice to convict him in the impeachment process, which would have prevented him from actually running again, I think where I stand on Donald Trump is pretty clear,” Romney said.
In recent weeks, Harris has received endorsements from a number of prominent Republicans, including former Vice President Dick Cheney; former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.; and former U.S. Ambassador and Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. Flake, like Romney, is a graduate of Brigham Young University and a Latter-day Saint.
Both the Harris and Trump campaigns are ramping up their efforts to target Latter-day Saint voters. Harris has announced formal Latter-day Saint outreach efforts in Arizona and Nevada, and Trump is expected to launch a similar effort this week, the Deseret News previously reported.