THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: As frontrunner in the Republican White House race, Mitt Romney is seen by many as out of touch. Now his wife Ann's Welsh relatives have come to the rescue.
It is a long way from a small two-bedroom terraced brick home on King's Terrace in the mining village of Nantyffyllon to the colonnaded splendour of the White House. And it is a far cry from a 1920s open-sided charabanc in Porthcawl to Air Force One.
But Ann Romney is drawing on the working-class British roots of her Welsh-born father and her coalminer grandfather to bolster her husband Mitt's bid for the Republican presidential nomination, as was reported last week.
Now the full story of her family's journey from the mines of Glamorgan to the highest echelons of US society can be told for the first time after Mrs Romney's relatives in South Wales talked to The Sunday Telegraph.
For Roddy Evans, watching the election drama unfold from Porthcawl, the prospect of Mrs Romney as America's First Lady is sometimes difficult to imagine.
The former Wales and British Lions rugby union player, 77, is her second cousin and the Romneys and their five sons have been regular visitors over their years.
"I'm very proud of what they've achieved," he said last week at his home, where he received his annual Christmas card from his cousins last month. "It would be wonderful if the first lady had such humble roots in a little mining village in south Wales." » | Philip Sherwell, Manchester, New Hampshire and Ben Leach | Sunday, January 08, 2012
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