Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Romney Dated Jewish Girl in High School

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had a Jewish high school girlfriend, the Washington Post reported May 10.

Mary Fisher Image by getty images

That girlfriend, who dated Romney only briefly, was Mary Fisher, the daughter of Max Fisher, known as the “dean of the Jewish Republicans.”

Mary Fisher later became a prominent HIV/AIDS activist.

According to the Washington Post, Romney and Fisher dated only briefly while both were students at elite Michigan boarding schools. Romney was reportedly wowed by Fisher’s wealth, telling friends with amazement about the family’s private movie theater.

“I just remember him being really nice,” Fisher told the Post.

Mary Fisher came to prominence in 1992 when she discussed her own HIV+ status in a televised address in front of the Republican National Convention. Wearing a red ribbon, she urged the Republican Party to confront the issue of AIDS in its party platform.

“It does not care whether you are Democrat or Republican,” Fisher said said of HIV/AIDS.

Fisher also praised her father in the much-discussed talk. “My 84-year-old father, who has pursued the healing of the nations, will not accept the premise that he cannot heal his daughter,” Fisher said. “My mother refuses to be broken. She still calls at midnight to tell wonderful jokes that make me laugh.”

Mary’s father, Max Fisher, who died in 2005, was a gasoline magnate and leading Republican Jewish activist. An unofficial advisor to Republican presidents beginning in the 1950s, he was the founder in 1985 of the group now known as the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Fisher also headed a handful of major Jewish organizations, including the American Jewish Committee and the Council of Jewish Federations, now the Jewish Federations of North America.

Mary Fisher, now 64, is an artist and speaker.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.