governors, has said that scrubbing the servers was a common practice but that selling the hard drives was not. When news of the actions became widely known in 2011, a Romney spokesperson said that the purchase of the computer equipment "complied with the law and longtime executive branch practice." State government officials and aides to Romney's three predecessors as governor said that they did not know of any prior sales of hard drives to staffers. When questioned on the subject in 2011, Romney responded that he had not wanted the information to be available to "opposition research teams". Romney's term ended January 4, 2007. Romney filed papers to establish a formal exploratory presidential campaign committee on his next-to-last day in office as governor. Job approval ratings as governor Romney had job approval ratings around 50 percent for most of his term, but they began to decline towards the end of his term. A March 2005 poll found that only 32 percent felt Romney should be re-elected if he ran for a second term as governor (69 percent of Republicans said he should be re-elected, compared to 31 percent of independents and 12 percent of Democrats). Many in Massachusetts grew dissatisfied with Romney's frequent out-of-state travel and shift toward promoting socially conservative issues as he began to focus increasingly on national rather than state politics. Cabinet and administration * reports to Commonwealth Development ** reports to Economic Development Source: www.mass.gov See also Massachusetts state legislature in 2003–2004 and 2005–2006 References External links Profile of Mitt Romney from The Official Website of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 2003 establishments in Massachusetts 2007 disestablishments in Massachusetts Romney, Mitt Mitt Romney