Mitt Romney, who was the Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007, is one of the Republican candidates for the presidential nomination. He beat his rivals for the GOP presidential bid in a new survey of the Republican voters of Republicans.

Romney married Ann Davies, his high school sweetheart, back in 1969. His favorite novel is Huckleberry Finn. The soft-spoken candidate has graduated in the top 5% of his Harvard Business School class. He is considered the most charismatic speaker since Bill Clinton. In the aftermath of the first Republican debate, he managed to use the voters' confusion that Rudy Giuliani's abortion stance has created to his advantage.

Romney's religion (Mormonism) and his staunch opposition to gay rights did not endear him to certain voting blocks in the country. At one point he fought hard to oppose gay marriages, and rooted for the Federal Marriage Amendment, although he had not been totally consistent about his views on that subject.

But he is feeling the pressure. He went on the record the other day and said he could work with the lawmakers to craft a "civil union" law to give some marriage rights to homosexual couples, despite the fact that he also supports a constitutional amendment to protect and maintain traditional marriages.

He did not know what to say exactly when he was quizzed by a group of gay Republicans at a breakfast meeting in 2002. Romney ended up promising the group of gay Republicans that he'd "keep his head low" on the issue of gay marriage.

And as we said earlier, Romney actually flip flopped on the issue over time. When Romney was the Governor of Massachusetts, Daniel Winslow, his chief legal counsel, told the state's 1,200 justices of the peace that they had to marry same-sex couples, or risk being removed from their benches. So it's not easy to categorize the man.

Romney's got the money and the organization. He was the first candidate to launch TV and radio advertisements in February 2007.

Most people who know him as a person say that “Mitt Romney is a man with good family and next-door neighbor values.” Yes, he does have evangelical values “but at least he lives by them,” as one observer put it. Yet his detractors insist he's going to say anything just to get elected. There seems to be little middle ground when it comes to perceptions of Romney. People either love the fresh-scrubbed handsome candidate or do not trust him at all.

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