They resented how Hart tried to paint Lenore as a nice woman whose place was in the home, not the Senate. "At the start of every debate, he would come over and hand her a rose," Scott recalls.

In the end, Hart handed out more than flowers, drubbing Lenore and giving her sons two important lessons about politics, according to Scott. "You need to define yourself, and not let others define you. And it's no fun to lose."

Tied in polls

Mitt's own race in 1994 got off to a good start. After he easily won the Republican primary, polls showed Romney to be even with or even slightly ahead of Kennedy.

But the Kennedy machinery, rusty at the start, was cranking up. So was the senator.

Kennedy's campaign said Romney should be asked about past policy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that excluded blacks from the priesthood.

Romney held a news conference to criticize Kennedy for violating his own brother's edict to separate religion and politics, which in 1960 helped John Kennedy become the nation's first Catholic president.

But it was George Romney who stole the show that day. Surprising even his son, he stepped forward and thundered, "I think it is absolutely wrong to keep hammering on the religious issues. And what Ted is trying to do is bring it into the picture."

The Kennedy camp also hammered Romney on abortion, asserting that he had a secret pro-life agenda.

Although he always said he was personally opposed to abortion, Romney sought to reassure Massachusetts voters of his pro-choice bona fides by citing his mother's example.

Lenore had run for the Senate in Michigan on an abortion-rights platform, a stance forged by the death of her son-in-law's teenage sister from an illegal abortion.

"My mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter," Romney declared. "And you will not see me wavering on that."

But there had been some wavering. Early in the campaign, he said he opposed Medicaid funding for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or threat to the mother's life. Later in the campaign, he said he would leave that matter up to the states. Women's groups and political foes voiced skepticism over Romney's support of abortion rights.

Although he said that as a politician he would not force his beliefs on others, Romney acknowledged that as a church leader, he had counseled women against having abortions. The Globe reported that as a Mormon bishop Romney had urged a mother of five, whose pelvic blood clot made her pregnancy dangerous, not to have an abortion.