Web Video: From the Vault: Mitt Romney's Utah Senate bid

ROBERT COSTA: Hello. I’m Robert Costa. And this is the Washington Week Extra , where we pick up online where we left off on our broadcast.

Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney is running for U.S. Senate in Utah. He made the announcement in a short video posted on social media.

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY (R): (From video.) I have decided to run for United States Senate because I believe I can help bring Utah’s values and Utah’s lessons to Washington. Utah is a better model for Washington than Washington is for Utah.

MR. COSTA: Romney is running for the seat currently held by Senator Orrin Hatch, the veteran Republican who is retiring, much to President Trump’s chagrin. Romney’s return, is this all about a 2020 bid, Dan? Does he actually want to be a senior statesman representing his adopted state?

DAN BALZ: I think in a simple sense he wants back into service and he wants back into elective office, which would give him a platform. I think beyond that it’s not clear what he really wants to do. I mean, I know there are a lot of people who think he’s getting back in to be the leader of the opposition to Trump. I suspect that’s not quite the case. He’s got kind of a tricky balancing act that he’s got to figure out. He has taken on Trump in a number of instances, but the fact of the matter is most of those have to do with Trump’s behavior and not his policies. There are a few foreign policy issues where he might have differences. But how strongly he wants to be a leader of the Trump opposition as opposed to having some things that he wants to do as a senator I think are still open questions that he’s going to have to wrestle with. That video announcement today was indicative of where he’s starting. He’s starting in Utah. He’s going to stay local for a while. He’s going to work Utah. And if he gets to the Senate, he’ll have to begin to answer those other questions.

MR. COSTA: I was trying to count how many times he was mentioning the word “Utah” in that speech. (Laughter.) Carl, you roam the halls of the Capitol. If he gets elected as Senator Romney, he can’t just keep his head down and be a low-profile freshman working on Utah issues.

CARL HULSE: Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. We all know governors don’t like the Senate that much when they get there, and he’s a former governor. You know, even with his name, though, it’s still hard. You’re the new guy, and I’m not sure – it’s interesting to me that he’s making this choice. I can actually see him being a good member of the Senate. You know, he’s a sort of consensus guy. He’s worked in a – in a blue state. But it can be really, really frustrating, and everybody – on every issue people are – on every Trump, you know, little uproar, they’re going to run to Mitt Romney and say, well, what do you say to that. So we’ll see how he deals with it. I think it’s pretty interesting.

MR. COSTA: Senator Hatch welcomed Romney into the race, but the Utah Republican chairman, Rob Anderson, he gave a pretty barbed interview to The Salt Lake Tribune , said this is someone who’s coming to the state that doesn’t really have a deep connection to the state. Yet it doesn’t seem, Kim, that Romney’s going to have much of a primary challenge.

KIMBERLY ATKINS: No, he won’t. I mean, that’s why he’s in this. He wouldn’t have gotten into a perilous fight to get back on this road. I mean, and in terms of how well he works bipartisan, I think if you talk to some folks in Massachusetts in the statehouse there where I used to work, they would have a different view of Mitt Romney.

But look, from what I understand from the people who I talk to, the best they know is that Mitt Romney’s approach is going to be not necessarily to attack Trump, but to take aim at the Trumpism that he thinks is threatening the Republican Party. So I think that’s what we will see from the campaign trail and into Washington, where he seems to have a pretty clear path to winning that election.

MR. COSTA: Think there’s anything to the point I was trying to make earlier about 2020, that he – some Republicans know President Trump could struggle in the coming years and there could be room for someone to run against him in a primary or a different scenario.

JEANNE CUMMINGS: I’d be really surprised, really surprised if he went three times. You know, he always consults with the family. That last experience was not good at all. I think the way Trump would go at a primary opponent he knows; he’s seen it. I’d just be really surprised. The one that maybe wouldn’t surprise me is if retiring Senator Jeff Flake did it.

MR. COSTA: Or Ohio Governor John Kasich.