Romney Seeks a Neighborly Reception

But other Republicans here do not hold Romney's address against him, saying he did his best to restrain his state's liberal impulses. Romney, who settled in the Boston area after attending Harvard Business School, tries to encourage this line of thinking, referring often to his battles against tax-and-spenders in Massachusetts. One of his television advertisements begins, "In the most liberal state in the country, one Republican stood up."

Dukakis warns that Romney's denigration of Massachusetts might offend the regional pride of even some New Hampshire Republicans.

"He's got a tough row to hoe," Dukakis said. "He's running around the country belittling Massachusetts, then he comes back to a region that thinks of itself as a region, that all New Englanders take pride in. He has to decide: Does he campaign as a near-neighbor, or does he run away from it? He's all around the lot on this."

In New Hampshire last week, Romney could be seen walking a fine line in reminding voters of his local ties without placing too much weight on them. Addressing a Rotary luncheon in Concord, he referred to Massachusetts simply as "my state to the south of here" in discussing the universal health-care plan he signed, the subject of some skeptical questions at the event. Delivering a stump speech with the help of PowerPoint, he looked more like a businessman visiting from Ohio than a Boston pol.

Arriving later in the day at the diner in Meredith, not far from his family's lake house, Romney joked about being back among friends and about paying New Hampshire property taxes. But he also relayed an anecdote portraying himself as a clueless flatlander on his first visit to the family's house in winter, when he crept out on the frozen lake with a ladder to spread his weight out, only to see a pickup truck go speeding past on the ice.

And in his closing riff, he cast himself less as a local than as a kind of cross-regional paragon. "The first time I went to Iowa," he recalled, "they said, 'You have heartland values.' I said, 'Explain what they are.' I listened, and I said, 'Well, yeah, I do have heartland values.' When I was in the South, they said, 'You have Southern values.' Well, yeah, you have Southern values, too, because they're the same thing," he said. He then concluded almost as an afterthought, "It's same thing here. You have Yankee values."

To many residents of the Lakes Region, Romney is simply another of the well-to-do people who flock to the area in the summertime. They recall the fuss after he was elected governor and the Massachusetts State Police set out buoys declaring the waters near the Romney house off-limits. "That didn't last too long. He took a lot of abuse," said David Hughey, a Massachusetts investment adviser who retired in the area.

And they recall the time in 2003 Romney and two of his sons rushed into the lake on their personal watercraft to rescue a family of six adults whose boat had sprung a leak, an episode that garnered Romney flattering headlines in the local papers. But those who probably know Romney best in the area are members of the local Mormon community, which triples in size in the summer with the influx of dozens of vacationing families. Members of that cohort trace the influx to the Marriott hotel family, which decades ago bought a former girls camp on the lake as a family estate. Fellow Washington area Mormons visited them, fell in love with the Lakes Region and bought places of their own.

At the temple in Wolfeboro, a genteel resort town visited in the summer by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, members said Romney and his family were notable for their inconspicuousness within the congregation. Grace Boyer, another leader of the temple's Cub Scout troop, said she recalled leading a Sunday school class in the summer and being struck by Romney's willingness to hold back, even though he had in the past held a leadership title within the church.

"For a man of his stature, he can sit and let others learn and discuss," she said. "He doesn't have to be the man of the hour."