Not long after settling into their new house, Ann and Mitt invited her parents to move in to their guest suite above a bank of garages. Ann's father was battling prostate cancer, her mother ovarian cancer, and Ann nursed them through their treatments at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In late summer 1992, Ann's father's condition quickly deteriorated. He remained opposed to organized religion, even though all three of his children, thanks largely to their association with Mitt Romney, had built their lives around the Mormon Church. As he bid his life goodbye, he urged his only daughter to make the most of hers.

In June 1993, as her condition worsened, Ann's mother asked her sons, Rod and Jim Davies, to baptize her a Mormon, according to both sons. Five days after her baptism, she died.

In summer 1993, Ann and Mitt, according to the story they both would tell, were lying in bed when she turned to him. She told Mitt, "You've got to run against Ted Kennedy." He laughed and pulled the covers over his head.

Mitt had been contemplating a move into politics for some time. At age 55, his father had used his success as a business turnaround artist to launch his second act of politics. Now Mitt, who had already established his own turnaround credentials, was looking to follow the same script, except a decade ahead of his father's schedule.

For a man who had succeeded in business largely by using rigorous analysis and fastidious preparation to reduce his margin of error, a run against Kennedy would be quite a roll of the dice.

In 32 years, no Republican had come close to dislodging Kennedy, the embodiment of Democratic liberalism. But Romney had timing on his side. An anti-Democratic storm was building nationwide. The youngest Kennedy brother was a tarnished icon, even to Catholic voters raised in homes with brittle palm fronds wedged behind pictures of John F. Kennedy. The shocking revelations about the senior senator that emerged during the 1991 Palm Beach rape trial of his nephew remained fresh in many voters' minds.

Political operatives told Romney that Kennedy was never more vulnerable. "People said to me, 'You know, he's getting older, he's over the hill. He's not coherent any more,"' Romney recalls. "I was getting ready for this guy that was going to be kind of a doddering old fool. I'd be able to crush him like a grape."

In October 1993, Romney changed his party affiliation from independent to Republican and began raising money. In February 1994, he formally announced his candidacy.

Despite Kennedy's baggage, Romney's team ruled out a character assault. Instead, Romney attacked Kennedy and his "big-government" policies as both being overdue for retirement.