Mitt Romney posed with health care law in official state portrait

Under fire from his Republican rivals, Mitt Romney has distanced himself from the health care reform law he passed as governor of Massachusetts, but there was a time he considered it a key part of his political legacy in the state.

As Politico's Ben Smith reminds us, Romney posed with folder containing a copy of the bill for his official state portrait.

The painting, unveiled in 2009, cost $30,000 and was paid for by Romney with campaign funds. Richard Whitney, the New Hampshire artist who painted the portrait, told the Boston Globe in a June interview the ex-governor specifically requested a symbol of the 2006 bill be included in the artwork.

"As long as the symbol was there, that was important,'' Whitney told the Globe. "He wanted to be remembered for that.''

While the portrait had been written about previously, it hadn't gotten much media attention until Smith's item today—which came a few hours after Rick Perry released a campaign video attacking Romney on health care.

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