Will Romney Flip on Minimum Wage?

July 24, 2007 — -- Automatic increases to the state minimum wage were a key part of Mitt Romney's campaign platform for governor -- No. 39 on the list of promises he offered Massachusetts voters in 2002.

Now that Romney is seeking the 2008 Republican nomination for president, he is shying away from minimum wage indexing at the federal level.

"You know, I haven't looked at the federal minimum-wage process," Romney told ABC News. "I'll look at that. I don't have a -- I haven't taken a position on that at this stage."

Romney spoke to ABC News just days before the federal minimum wage was set to rise for the first time in a decade.

The politics of automatic increases in the minimum wage are dicey for Romney: If he sticks with the position he staked out while running for governor of one of the most liberal states in the country, he runs the risk of alienating the pro-business groups that are critical to winning the GOP nomination. At the same time, if he abandons his previous support for minimum-wage indexing, he will renew questions as to whether his '08 positions stem from conviction or calculation.

"I think that indexing the minimum wage is a problem for Gov. Romney," said Pat Toomey, the president of the conservative Club for Growth. "Clearly he has taken a number of positions" in his presidential campaign "that are more conservative than he has in the past," Toomey said, referring to Romney's initial opposition to the Bush tax cuts. "The question free-market conservatives are asking is: How sincere is this conversion? How strongly does he believe in these things now?"

While campaigning for governor in 2002, Romney pledged to raise the state's minimum wage to $6.94 per hour. He also advocated linking future increases to inflation growth, a process called "indexing." His campaign was "so proud of its worker-friendly position," according to a 2006 story in the Sentinel & Enterprise, that it posted a "message to union members" on its campaign Web site, touting the candidate's support for wage indexing.

Of the many "promises made" listed in Romney's "Progress Report to the People of Massachusetts," "index the minimum wage" is one of three items checked "not yet." The booklet, which was published in 2005, was paid for by Romney's political committee. The minimum-wage promise remained unfulfilled when he left office in early 2007.