WASHINGTON — (CNN) Mitt Romney isn’t reconsidering his decision to stay out of the 2016 presidential race, former top aide Eric Fehrnstrom said Tuesday.
Fehrnstrom, a Romney staffer in his 2008 and 2012 Republican presidential runs, said in an interview with CNN’s Brianna Keilar on “The Situation Room” that Romney is happy spending more time with his children and grandchildren.
“Mitt Romney has made his decision. He is not reconsidering it,” Fehrnstrom said. “He is friendly with many of the Republican candidates who are running. He feels there’s a good, sizable crowd of candidates for Republican voters to choose from.”
“He’s very content watching from the sidelines in the company of his family,” he said.
Fehrnstrom’s insistence that Romney is done with politics came after New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reported that Romney is concerned by the rise of Donald Trump to the forefront of the GOP presidential pack.
Romney previously announced in a conference call with supporters in January he would not pursue the 2016 GOP nomination after publicly flirting with the idea.
“I feel that it is critical that America elect a conservative leader to become our next president. You know that I have wanted to be that president. But I do not want to make it more difficult for someone else to emerge who may have a better chance of becoming that president,” he said at the time.
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