By Phillip Rawls, Associated Press Writer | April 11, 2007

MONTGOMERY, Ala. –Ann Romney, the wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said Wednesday concerns about their Mormon faith disappear once people get to know them.

“I frankly am thinking at some point this is not going to be an issue,” she said.

Her husband, if elected, would be the nation’s first Mormon president. Campaigning in a state where Southern Baptist is the largest denomination, Ann Romney acknowledged that some people have concerns about her family’s faith.

“If anyone has a chance to see us, hear us, feel us, touch us, they are fine. There’s no problem at all,” she said in an interview.

Romney said that when people pick a heart surgeon, they want the best surgeon regardless of religious faith. “I think at some point they are going to have to ask the same thing about nominating and electing a president of the United States,” she said.

She told a meeting of the Alabama Federation of Republican Women that her husband has the expertise to lead the United States after years of turning around troubled businesses, bringing the Salt Lake Olympics back from debt and scandal, and erasing a $3 billion budget deficit while serving as governor of Massachusetts.

Romney also talked about her battle with multiple sclerosis. She recounted being too sick to get out of bed on Oct. 25, 1998, and then being diagnosed with MS. When her husband took the job as head of the 2002 Winter Olympics a few months later, “I was almost in a wheelchair,” she said.

Romney said she had to battle self-pity and depression. Some days she thought she was dying. “There were other times when I realized I wasn’t dying and I honestly wished I was dying,” she said.

But she said her family and her love of riding caused her to fight back and get a new perspective. She said she now realizes that everybody “has their own bag of rocks they are carrying over their shoulder,” whether it’s an illness, a divorce or a troubled child.

“It has given me a compassionate heart,” she said.