Photographers Blog

Boston, Massachusetts

By Brian Snyder

Election Day:

We received the email with the election day schedule around 1am and we weren’t even at our hotel for the night yet. The 6:55am call time for Tuesday morning would mean we would be in our hotel rooms less than 4.5 hours. The schedule indicated that the protective pool would cover Governor Mitt Romney voting in Belmont, Massachusetts and then travel to Cleveland, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for some Get Out the Vote phone calls, before returning to Boston to await the election result.

Voting in Belmont went much like it did in March when Governor Romney voted in the Massachusetts primary on Super Tuesday.

A short motorcade trip from Belmont to the airport and we were off to Cleveland, where we met up with Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan.

The two men went to a campaign call center in the Cleveland suburb of Richmond Heights where we were told they would make some calls to voters. It seemed odd at the time that they never sat down and made any calls – rather, they went around the room shaking hands with and thanking workers and volunteers as well as briefly addressing them as a group.

Busy filing photographs from the visit on the ride back to the airport, we scrambled out of the vans when the motorcade stopped at a Wendy’s restaurant. Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan went inside and ordered some food.

By Brian Snyder

Here’s something almost everyone who covers a U.S. Presidential campaign says or thinks, “That event yesterday/last week/last month seems like an eternity ago.” That’s certainly how Mitt Romney’s formal announcement of his candidacy at Scamman Farm in Stratham, New Hampshire June 2, 2011 seems.

SLIDESHOW: CHRONOLOGY OF ROMNEY’S CAMPAIGN

But that’s recent history. I was surprised when I looked into the Reuters archive and saw how far back my coverage of Romney extends:

From the early days of the current election cycle in New Hampshire in 2011:

Back to unsuccessfully chasing the Republican presidential nomination in 2008:

And further back to Governor Romney, signing into law the now contentious healthcare reform legislation that would attempt to provide health insurance for all of Massachusetts residents in 2006:

By Brian Snyder

Before his campaigns to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States, Mitt Romney challenged Ted Kennedy for the U.S. Senate. While Romney ultimately lost the race against Senator Kennedy, I covered his victory rally in September 20, 1994 when he won the Republican primary.

Some things have changed since then, but much has not. Romney’s parents, who were with him onstage in 1994, have since died, and he now campaigns not only with his children, but also his grand children.

His wife Ann remains at his side, often introducing him at campaign stops.

(Click on the images above for a high resolution version)