BOSTON --Gov. Mitt Romney, declaring his work nearly done as governor even before he completed his first term, announced Wednesday he would not seek re-election in 2006 but refused to close the door on speculation he will seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.

"My decision comes down to this: In this four-year term, we can accomplish what I set out to do. In fact, we've already accomplished a great deal," he said in a speech televised live from the Statehouse.

Romney has a problem. He is a Mormon, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which, as Washington Monthly's editor Amy Sullivan points out, makes him unacceptable to evangelical voters who make up 30 percent of the Republican electorate. Their hostility to Mormonism is not some vague prejudice that some Americans have. It's a ''doctrinal thing," based on their conviction that Mormonism ''isn't just another religion," but a ''cult" that they claim is ''false," ''blasphemous," and a threat to the Christian religion.

But Romney has an additional and perhaps even more serious problem. As taught by Mormon prophets from Brigham Young's day to the late 1970s, blacks have been regarded as ''not equal with other races," an inequality (to quote Mormon Apostle Bruce R. McConkie) that is ''the Lord's doing based on his eternal laws of justice." Mormon theologians have justified this racial bias by asserting that the black race is descended from Cain, who was cursed and marked (supposedly with a black skin) and whose descendants continued to bear the mark and the curse.

The shocker of the evening was that Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney placed second, besting far better-known rivals Arizona Sen. John McCain and Virginia Sen. George Allen. Romney finished with 14 percent of the vote.

Third place was shared by Allen and President Bush, each of whom won 10.3 percent of the ballots cast. Bush, who of course is not eligible to run again for president, was the write-in candidate that McCain was pushing through the weekend.

The results of the GOP straw poll were announced live at 9pm Eastern Time on MSNBC’s Hardball.

WASHINGTON - Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney may not be officially running for president in 2008, but he appears to be laying all the groundwork.

Romney, who led the successful 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, has set up political action committees (PACs) across America in states where early presidential primaries are historically held.

"The acronym is PAC, which might as well stand for presidential aspiration committee," says Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics. "Why else would a governor of Massachusetts feel a need to be active in politics in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina?"

Traditionally, at least since President Reagan, potential candidates who want to draw support have set up campaign headquarters or operations in states that cast the first votes in presidential primaries, says Jan Baran, a Washington lawyer who was general counsel to President George H.W. Bush's 1988 presidential race.

Having a PAC in those states allows a candidate to throw money at local candidates, pay consultants or buy a few dinners for the well-connected.

Mitt Romney's Mormonism is his biggest political hurdle. The Massachusetts governor, who will almost certainly seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, has become a dark-horse favorite thanks to his achievements (health-care reform) and personal qualities (he's charismatic, smart, and absurdly wholesome). But in a 1999 Gallup poll, 17 percent of respondents said they wouldn't vote for a presidential candidate who's a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And since the conservative evangelicals prominent in today's GOP are deeply suspicious of the LDS Church, Romney's religion could cripple him in the Republican primaries. Romney knows he needs to dispel these heebie-jeebies to win the presidency, so he's spent the past few months figuring out how to play the Mormon card.

He's already rejected the JFK approach. When voters worried that Kennedy's Catholicism would make him a papal surrogate in the White House, JFK promised that his religion would have no effect on his politics. Romney tried a similar tack back in 1994–during his U.S. Senate campaign against Ted Kennedy, no less–when Teddy linked Romney to the LDS Church's refusal, prior to 1978, to ordain African-American men. Romney responded by invoking JFK, and Kennedy looked like a hypocrite. But this strategy won't work for Romney today. As a Republican and self-styled social conservative, Romney's courting voters who want faith to shape government; he's got to be a kind of theological ambassador, playing up the good aspects of Mormonism and minimizing the bad.

I guess it was only a matter of time before Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's religion became an issue in the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. Romney's impressed a lot of folks as someone who's smart and telegenic. Romney has a wife who's a real asset on the campaign trail and he has a breakthrough health care plan to boast about.

But Romney is a Mormon. Many evangelicals, who now represent the most powerful part of the GOP's grassroots base, consider Mormonism to be a cult. Today in the Chicago Sun Times, columnist Robert Novak, usually a reliable guide to controversies inside the conservative political movement, reports that millions of evangelicals will not vote for Romney for president solely because he is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints. Even if that means Hillary becomes president.

BOSTON -- Gov. Mitt Romney says he would be willing to talk about his Mormon religion in broad terms should he run for president but would shy away from debating specific beliefs.

"I think initially some people would say, 'Gosh, I don't know much about your faith. Tell me about it.' And I'd probably outline the fundamentals: I'm a religious person, I believe that Jesus Christ is my savior," Romney said during an appearance on PBS's "The Charlie Rose Show." "But then as you get into the details of doctrines, I'd probably say, 'Look, time out.'"

Would Mitt Romney take directions from the prophet of the church if he were elected president? Of course he would! And any pretense that the prophet or the church wouldn't try to influence him on matters important to them is just fantasy.

The fact that Mitt has a temple recommend indicates that he has already given his total obedience to his leaders in all matters.

Governor Mitt Romney's political team has quietly consulted with leaders of the Mormon Church to map out plans for a nationwide network of Mormon supporters to help Romney capture the presidency in 2008, according to interviews and written materials reflecting plans for the initiative.

Over the past two months, Romney's political operatives and church leaders have discussed building a grass-roots political organization using alumni chapters of Brigham Young University's business school around the country. More recently, representatives of BYU, which is run by the church, and Romney's political action committee have begun soliciting help from prominent Mormons, including a well-known author suggested by the governor, to build the program, which Romney advisers dubbed Mutual Values and Priorities, or MVP.

The president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Gordon B. Hinckley, has been made aware of the effort and expressed no opposition, the documents show, and at least one other top church official has played a more active role.

Holland, a former BYU president, suggested using the alumni organization of the university's business school, the BYU Management Society, to build a network for Romney, according to the documents. Such a plan would give Romney an established infrastructure -- the alumni group has 5,500 members in about 40 US chapters -- for raising money and generating support.

The LDS Church denies playing favorites in the presidential sweepstakes.

The Boston Globe says cites political emails on Romney’s behalf that reportedly inch close to the top of LDS hierarchy.

While the emails were not sent to the church or by anyone affiliated with its administration, in the text they acknowledge Elder Jeffrey Holland, one of the 12 Apostles, and say it was his idea to start a grass-roots campaign for Romney.

The Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is growing increasingly concerned about the public-perception hit the presidential candidacy of Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney may have on the Mormon Church.

That's one reason the church is looking at what is being called a "public education" campaign that could reach a budget in the tens of millions in media buys for TV, radio and print.

"There is an expectation that some of the church's more archaic traditions and obscure points of history will become more widely publicized by Governor Romney's opponents in an effort to embarrass him and raise doubts about his faith in the minds of the public," says a New York-based media consultant who has heard buzz of the potential campaign.

Already, the Mormon Church runs a series of radio ads about family issues that are branded as messages from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There is also a small TV campaign that runs occasionally highlighting the church and some of its faith-based publications.

But the current campaign is of a different sort, one that would be high profile in as much as the church would be openly discussing and clarifying points of the Mormon faith that have long been either misunderstood or misreported.

Any advertising campaign targeted in that way would almost assuredly come under review by the Federal Election Commission and perhaps by the Internal Revenue Service, due to the church's tax exempt status.