Massachusetts GOP Chairman Peter Torkildsen told the Deseret News that it "would have been a huge plus" for the state party to have Romney on the ticket.

When Romney served as governor of Massachusetts, Torkildsen said he helped that state's GOP "in terms of profile" but wasn't able to boost the number of elected Republicans.

Still, members of the Massachusetts GOP seemed every bit as thrilled to hear from him as their counterparts in Utah were on Monday. Romney made the larger Utah Republican delegation his first stop after arriving in Minnesota for the convention.

Not everyone in the audience was a Romney supporter, though. Doug Bennett, who works for the Boston area courts, said he supported McCain in the Massachusetts GOP primary on Feb. 5 because he believes Romney is "too aloof. He lacks the common touch."

Romney had a relatively narrow win over McCain in the Massachusetts primary — unlike Utah, where he won a whopping 90 percent of the GOP vote on Feb. 5.

---

E-mail: lisa@desnews.com