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ByStevePeoples The Associated Press WASHINGTON After a three-week flirtation with a new campaign for the White House, Mitt Romney announced Friday that he will not seek the presidency in 2016. "After putting consider- able thought into making another run for president, I've decided it is best to give other leaders in the party the opportunity to become our next nominee," Romney told supporters on a confer- ence call. Romney's exit comes af- ter several of his former major donors and a vet- eran staffer in the early vot- ing state of Iowa defected to support former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. BushandNewJerseyGov. Chris Christie would have served as Romney's most likely rivals for the support of the Republican Party's es- tablishment-minded voters. In his call with support- ers, Romney appeared to take a swipe at Bush, saying it was time for fresh leader- ship within the GOP. "I believe that one of our next generation of Republi- can leaders, one who may not be as well-known as I am today, one who has not yet taken their message across the country, one who is just getting started, may well emerge as being better able to defeat the Democrat nominee," Romney said. "In fact, I expect and hope that to be the case." The former governor of Massachusetts, who is 67, had jumped back into the presidential discussion on Jan. 10, when he surprised a small group of former do- nors at a meeting in New York by telling them he was eyeing a third run for the White House. It was a monumental change for Romney, who since losing the 2012 elec- tion to President Barack Obama had repeatedly told all who asked that his ca- reer in politics was over and he would not again run for president. On Friday, Romney said he had been asked if there were any circumstance un- der which he would again reconsider. That, he said, "seems unlikely." "Accordingly, I'm not or- ganizinga PAC ortakingdo- nations," he said. "I'm not hiring a campaign team." The exit of Romney from the campaign most immedi- ately helps those viewed as part of the party's establish- ment wing, including Bush, Christie, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. The more conservative side of the field is largely unchanged, with a group of candidates that will likely include Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Arkan- sas Gov. Mike Huckabee In the three weeks since the meeting in New York, which caught several in at- tendanceoff-guard,Romney made calls to former fund- raisers, staff members and supporters, and gave three public speeches in which he outlined his potential vision for another campaign. "I'm thinking about how I can help the country," he told hundreds of students Wednesday night at Missis- sippi State University. In that speech, and what amounted to a campaign stop a few hours before at a barbecue restaurant with Mississippi State football coach Dan Mullen in tow, Romney sounded every bit like a politician preparing to run. "We need to restore op- portunity, particularly for the middle class," Romney said then. "You deserve a job that can repay all you've spent and borrowed to go to college." But as Romney sounded out his former team about putting together a new na- tional campaign, he dis- covered that several of his past fundraisers had al- ready made plans for 2016 and were now committed to Bush. Several key former Rom- ney donors told The Asso- ciated Press this week that in Bush they see someone who can successfully serve as president, as they believe Romney could. But they also think Bush has the person- ality and senior staff needed to win the White House, something the former Mas- sachusetts governor could not bring together in his two previous presidential campaigns. POLITICS Former GOP nominee Romney will not run for president in '16 By Jeff Karoub The Associated Press DETROIT The federal gov- ernment is considering al- lowing those of Middle Eastern and North Afri- can descent to identify as such on the next 10-year Census, which could give Arab-Americans and other affected groups greater political clout and access to public funding, among other things. The U.S. Census Bureau will test the new Middle East-North Africa (MENA) classification for possible inclusion on the 2020 Cen- sus if it gets enough posi- tive feedback about the pro- posed change by Sunday, when the public comment period ends. Arab-Americans, who make up the majority of those who would be covered by the MENA classification, have previously been classi- fied by default as white on the Census, which helps de- termine congressional dis- trict boundaries and how billions of dollars in fed- eral funding are allocated, among other things. Those pushing for the MENA classification say it would more fully and ac- curately count them, thus increasing their visibility and influence among poli- cymakers. The Census Bureau plans to test it later this year by holding focus group dis- cussions with people who would be affected by the proposed change. Congress would still have to sign off on the proposal before the change could be added to the 2020 Census. "We know the chal- lenges," says Hassan Ja- ber, who runs a Detroit- area social services group and serves on a census ad- visory board formed to eval- uate Americans' changing racial and ethnic identities. "It really does take rethink- ing ... who we are as a pop- ulation and what our needs are, (but) there are specific needs for Arab Americans that are not being recog- nized and not being met." Jaber's group, ACCESS, and others that serve U.S. Middle Eastern communi- ties have been pushing for the new Census classifica- tion, which could also al- low people to identify un- der sub-categories such as Assyrian or Kurdish. "Frankly, being under MENA will also give us a chance for the first time for minorities within the Arab communities, such as Chal- deans, Berbers and Kurds, to self-identify," said Jaber, a Lebanese-American who serves on the U.S. Census' National Advisory Com- mittee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations. Arabs have been coming to America in large num- bers since the late 19th cen- tury and their ranks have grown in recent decades due to wars and political instability in the Middle East, with many settling in and around Detroit, New York and Los Angeles. The Census' 2013 American Community Survey, which had a sample size of about 3 million addresses, esti- mated that 1.5 million peo- ple were of Arab ancestry in 2006-10. Although Jaber thinks the public comment and testing periods should go well, he said it could be dif- ficult getting congressional approval. Some Republican lawmakers are generally critical of the expense and intrusion of the Census and have sought to eliminate the community surveys, which, unlike the main de- cennial count, aren't con- stitutionally mandated. There also isn't universal support for the proposed Census change among those who could identify as Middle Eastern or North African. Some have expressed concern about sharing such information with the government in a post-9/11 world. And some have said that keeping the status quo would let them feel more American. "I'm not for it. ... I feel I'm a Mayflower Ameri- can," said Eide Alawan, a 74-year-old son of a Syrian immigrant whose roots are mostly Arab. Alawan, a diversity liai- son at a Detroit hospital and interfaith outreach co- ordinator at the area's larg- est mosque, said he knows there are benefits to hav- ing the category, but that he thinks the change would be divisive. "We're broken down into villages and countries (where we come from)" — I don't like that." Some older Middle East- ern immigrants or their descendants live with the legacy of U.S. laws in the early 20th century that ex- cluded Asians from entry and at one point included Syrians and others from the eastern Mediterra- nean. Groups were formed to fight those decisions and eventually the Middle Eastern immigrants were deemed white and were al- lowed to become citizens. Sally Howell, an asso- ciate professor at Univer- sity of Michigan-Dear- born and author of sev- eral books on Arabs and Muslims in Detroit, said that argument is common among "people that were raised in an America that was more polarized along black and white lines." But she added younger people generally are "less eager to see the world in those bi- nary terms," and the Cen- sus should reflect that. No matter what hap- pens, identity would re- main a choice, but she said an evolving popula- tion requires asking new questions. "We need to kind of re- think who Arab-Ameri- cans are, really. The com- munity has changed rad- ically over the last 25-30 years," she said. "The only way we're going to have a good sense of the changes is if we have good data to work with." POPULATION COUNT By Lauran Neergaard The Associated Press WASHINGTON Holding out the promise of major med- ical breakthroughs, Presi- dent Barack Obama on Fri- day called on Congress to approve spending in med- ical research that tailors treatment to an individual's genes. Obamawants$215million for what he's calling a preci- sion medicine initiative that moves away from one-size- fits-all treatments. The am- bitious goal: Scientists will assemble databases of about a million volunteers to study their genetics — and other factors such as their environ- ments and the microbes that live in their bodies — to learn how to individualize care. "That's the promise of precision medicine — deliv- ering the right treatment at the right time, every time, to the right person," Obama said in announcing the pro- posal Friday. The effort is a hot but challenging field in medical research that has already yielded some early results. For example, it's becom- ing more common for pa- tients with certain cancers to undergo molecular test- ing in choosing which drug is their best match. People with a rare form of cystic fi- brosisnowcanchooseadrug designed specifically to tar- get the genetic defect caus- ing their illness. Some medi- cal centers, such as the Mayo Clinic, have opened "individ- ualized medicine clinics." But only recently has the cost of genomic sequencing dropped enough, and the computer power of medi- cine increased, to make it possible for large-scale pur- suit of the approach, said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, which will lead the initiative. HEALTH Obama calls on Congress to fund 'precision medicine' studies CAROLYNKASTER—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS President Barack Obama and former NBA basketball player Kareem Abdul Jabbar are seen in the East Room of the White House on Friday in Washington, a er the president spoke about calling for an investment to move away from one-size-fits-all-medicine. ROGELIO V. SOLIS — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE Former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Miss. PAUL SANCYA — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Hassan Jaber, Executive Director of ACCESS and a member of a census advisory board on racial and ethnic populations is shown in Dearborn, Mich. on Thursday. US mulls Middle East-North Africa category for 2020 Census Select"Subscribe"tabinlowerrightcorner Complete information for automatic weekly delivery to your email inbox That's it! This FREE service made possible by the advertisers in TV Select Magazine Kindly patronize and thank them. Click on their ads online to access their websites! FREE online subscription to TV Select Magazine Digital edition emailed to you, every Saturday! Just go online to www.ifoldsflip.com/t/5281 (You'll only need to go there one time) N EWS D AILY RED BLUFF TEHAMA COUNTY • Fully searchable online, zoom in, print out pages and more! • No newspaper online subscription or website access required. • Best of all ... it's ABSOLUTELY FREE! | NEWS | REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2015 6 B