The assault on Romney brought him sympathy, and he accused Democrats of "ridiculous, dirty politics."

Peddling change

The fight over Romney's residence proved to be a good tuneup for the race against his Democratic opponent, Shannon P. O'Brien, a former legislator and the state's first female treasurer, who won a rugged four-way primary but spent $4.5 million, draining her war chest.

The feisty, Yale-educated O'Brien came from a family that had been active in Massachusetts politics for four generations.

At the outset, O'Brien was the aggressor, attacking Romney incessantly on trustworthiness and needling him on issues, including his now nuanced support for abortion rights. More broadly, she painted him as out of touch with average voters.

In her primary night victory speech, she declared: "Massachusetts doesn't need a governor who thinks getting in touch with working people is a costume party." It was a jibe at Romney's photo-op "work days" on the stump, taking a turn at blue-collar jobs to soften his privileged image.

Romney assumed the demeanor of an amiable, if somewhat stiff regular guy who was free of IOUs at the Statehouse.

In a state where Democrats outnumbered Republicans by almost a 3-to-1 ratio, Romney rarely identified himself as a Republican. He positioned himself as an agent of change, vowing to "clean up the mess on Beacon Hill." It was a direct appeal to independent voters, who make up half the Massachusetts electorate.

The Republican Party had owned the corner office for 12 years, but neither Romney nor his running mate Healey had ties to government, the GOP's own cronyism or oversight of the granddaddy of all messes — the cost overruns and mismanagement of the $14.6-billion Big Dig highway project in Boston.

With the state losing jobs and facing a ballooning budget deficit, Romney and O'Brien clashed over their managerial experience, job creation, and budget plans.

"Absolutely," Romney insisted, he could cut $1 billion from the state's $23 billion budget by eliminating "waste, fraud, and mismanagement" - while rolling back taxes over several years.

Neither candidate took a no-new-taxes pledge, but Romney vowed to fight any tax increase and painted O'Brien as a tax-and-spender.

He favored the death penalty and an initiative petition to replace bilingual education with English immersion; she opposed both. O'Brien favored civil unions; Romney did not but endorsed certain rights for same-sex partners.

Ad battle

Despite his efforts to show concern for working people at job sites, Romney struggled to connect with average voters.