Romney: Olympic savior or opportunist?
In his book, he takes great pains to attribute the success of the Games to the team he and his predecessors at SLOC put together — from supportive federal officials in Washington, D.C., to a volunteer corps of 26,000 in the Beehive State. He acknowledged his responsibility was big — as the face of the Games, the herald of its values and the guarantor of a pledge to deliver the event on budget — but said that his high-exposure role was necessary to distinguish the new-and-improved SLOC from the old corrupt one.
Such high-minded pronouncements do not ring entirely true to two of Romney’s more vocal local critics, who argue he exaggerated SLOC’s problems to make himself look better when Salt Lake City’s Olympics rebounded.
Ken Bullock, who represented the Utah League of Cities and Towns on SLOC’s board, said “Romney was a great face for the Games. He deserves credit, just not all the credit he’s claiming.
“We did not have a crisis in hosting or managing the Olympics. It was a crisis of image, a crisis related to the IOC. That’s not to say he didn’t do a good job and play a vital role,” Bullock said. “But so did [bid leader] Tom Welch. Tom was a great visionary. He displayed the tenacity, convictions and passion to pursue it. He’s forgotten. And Frank Joklik? With his engineering background, he put the scaffolding together. Mitt did a nice job putting meat on the bones.”
Steve Pace, a studious skeptic whose scandal-inspired “Slalom and Gomorrah” T-shirt quickly caught Romney’s eye, conceded SLOC’s new leader “did an incredible job and built bridges.”
“But Mitt’s efforts here,” Pace said, “were more about Mitt than the greater glory of the Olympics or helping out Utah.”
