Ann Romney's airplane made an emergency landing in Denver, Colo., on Friday after its cabin filled with smoke, the campaign of her husband, Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney, said.

Everyone on board the private plane was safe, a campaign spokesman said.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the Canadair Challenger 601 operated by World Wide Jet was traveling from Omaha, Neb., to Santa Monica, Calif., and was diverted to Denver at about 2:40 p.m. (4:40 p.m. ET) after the pilot reported smoke in the cockpit. Upon landing, passengers exited via the stairs on the taxiway, the FAA said.

Anne Romney and her husband spoke shortly after the landing, Romney campaign press aide Rick Gurka told reporters traveling with the candidate in Las Vegas.

The cause was believed to be an electrical fire, Romney campaign press secretary Andrea Saul said in a tweet.

Reuters contributed to this report.

More content from NBCNews.com:

• For first time, gay marriage may win statewide vote
• From sports shoes to bomb shields: the odd detour of a key U.S. military material
• Pennsylvania couple charged with selling neighbor's dog on Craigslist
• Video: Cops, ‘yarn bombers’ team up to protect art
• Empty chair 'lynchings': Anti-Obama protests gone too far?

Follow US News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

TAMPA, FL -- Just hours after addressing the Republican National Convention herself Monday night, Ann Romney was back at it again bright and early Tuesday morning, making her pitch to a group of women voters.

Slideshow: The 2012 Republican National Convention

"So many of the women in this nation have got to figure out, am I going to go in that voting booth and vote for my children’s future?" Mrs. Romney asked the several hundred women at a breakfast just a few blocks from the GOP convention. "That’s what they have got to ask because this is going to be an economic question for them. We’re OK. We’re OK. The next generation is going to be paying for our debts."

With Mitt Romney struggling with the gender gap -- President Barack Obama is leading among females 51 percent to 41 percent according to the NBC News/WSJ poll --  his wife appears to be taking on the role of helping try to reduce that.

Charlie Neibergall / AP

Ann Romney, wife of U.S. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, addresses the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., on Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2012.

Not only did Ann, who wore a light pink suit, share personal stories about her and Mitt Romney's 42-year long marriage -- their love, struggles, and family -- all five of her daughters-in-law appeared on stage with stories of their own.

"One thing I really love about Ann is she’s a really modern feminist. She’s kind of the 21st century woman. She is so comfortable in her own skin and I promise that’s for real," Andelyne Romney, son Ben's wife, said.

Making her debut on the campaign trail, Janna Ryan, wife of the vice presidential nominee-in-waiting, Rep. Paul Ryan, also gave very brief remarks inside the Hyatt Hotel.

"I have to say it again, wasn't Ann great last night. So good," Mrs. Ryan said, giving Americans the first glimpse of America's potential next Second Lady. "Ann's story is an inspiration for millions of women across this country and her friendship is an unexpected blessing in this campaign. It is a privilege to join you and Mitt on this campaign."

And Mitt Romney himself, via video, joined the conversation as well to talk about "his sweetheart."

"By the time I get to town, the delegates may have decided to nominate Ann instead. And wouldn’t that be interesting?," Romney joked. "And do you think if Ann were the nominee, the press would write stories about how my job is to humanize Ann? I don’t think so."

ABOARD THE ROMNEY CAMPAIGN PLANE -- Only hours before delivering her speech to a national audience, Ann Romney is ready to go (but her outfit is not).

While passing out home-baked Welsh cakes, her specialty, to the secret service and press corps, the former first lady of Massachusetts expressed confidence in the team that helped write her speech, and a bit of dismay that those same strategists would be also be helping to select her wardrobe.

“We’re having a great time. I’m excited about it,” Mrs. Romney said of the speech. “And the funniest thing of all is that Stuart Stevens, who wears his shirts inside-out, is advising me on what dress I should wear tonight. So I know I’ve come really full-circle now.”

“It was going to be like my wedding night -- I wasn’t going to let him know what I was going to wear. But now they have opinions,” Mrs. Romney said of her husband and his staff.

Mrs. Romney, who usually delivers her brief stump speech off the cuff, and almost never uses a teleprompter, said preparing for her speech with a teleprompter was “hard,” and said the ongoing process of refining the speech was exciting, if challenging.

“You know, I think you will see that my speech is heartfelt, and I think a lot of you have been covering me long enough and you know I've never gone off a written text. So this is a unique experience for me,” Romney said.

A reporter asked Romney what she hoped viewers at home would think as they watched the speech on television.

“How important this election’s going to be and how important it’s going to be for them to consider the right things to make their right decisions,” Mrs. Romney said, wrapping up the Q & A session.

“I think that’s it, guys. I’m just going to pass out the Welsh cakes now.”

TAMPA, Fla. – Arizona Sen. John McCain expressed concern Sunday that further weather-related cancellations of the Republican National Convention here could deprive the GOP of an opportunity to make its case to voters.

Speaking Sunday on “Meet the Press,” the 2008 Republican presidential nominee said that the decision by convention organizers to effectively cancel Monday’s session due to the effects of the impending Hurricane Isaac wouldn’t have much harm on Republicans.

Jacquelyn Martin / AP

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. attends a news conference about the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Thursday, July 12, 2012, on Capitol Hill.

“It's Wednesday, Thursday night that are the big moments,” he said. “It's not that we don't want that first night, but I don't think it will be harmful if we lose the first night.”

But, the veteran senator added: “It could be harmful if we lose more than that.”

Recommended: Hurricane impending, Republicans cancel first day of convention

Republicans announced on Saturday that they had decided to delay the beginning of the convention until Tuesday; the impending storm threatens logistics and safety problems that made it unfeasible to convene for Monday’s activities.

But convention organizers haven’t yet released the revised schedule, and haven’t officially foreclosed the possibility of further weather-related changes to the schedule bleeding into Tuesday.

Related: GOP elders describe high stakes for Romney in Tampa

As things stand, Ann Romney and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are scheduled to be featured speakers on Tuesday evening. Mitt Romney won’t speak until Thursday, though the formal roll call vote to nominate him for president is currently scheduled for Tuesday.

By Brooke Nevils
Rock Center

LLANGYNWD, Wales - About two hundred miles away from the Greenwich, England, arena where her purebred horse Rafalca competed in the London Olympics, Ann Romney stroked the nose of Magic, a Welsh pony.

"You're so pretty, Magic," said Mrs. Romney.

In the rugged coal country of southern Wales, you see a different side to Ann Romney: she is at one point teary-eyed, another laughing, but always a tough defender of her husband.  She talked at length about her life with multiple sclerosis, her conversion to the Mormon faith and her decision to stay home to raise her five boys.

As Rock Center Correspondent Natalie Morales found in her exclusive interview with the wife of presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, scheduled to air Thursday at 10pm/9c on NBC's Rock Center, this coal miner's granddaughter is much more than an owner of an Olympic dressage horse.

Mrs. Romney is a first-generation American.  Her father, Edward Davies, emigrated to the United States from this part of Wales in 1929, at age 15.

"It's very emotional for me to come back and to know what kind of life my grandfather lived, and my father," said Mrs. Romney, touring a coal mine much like the one in which her grandfather began working at age six.

The Davies family settled in Detroit, where a nearly 16-year-old Ann met 18-year-old Mitt at a party, and the high school sophomore's "heart went aflutter."  Four years to the day after their first date, they were married.

"We are partners, true partners in every sense of the way," she told Morales. "I don't think he could do it without me. I don't believe he could.  I couldn't obviously be here without him either."

Despite her steadfast support on the campaign trail, Mrs. Romney -- much like her sons -- was not so keen on her husband's role in public life after his failed bid for the Republican nomination in 2008.

"After the election was over and [John] McCain was the nominee, I made a decision that I would never do it again," she said. "You know who your husband is. You know-- I know what a good person he is. And oh - the negative - it's so hard as a wife to sit there and listen to that."

But when Morales asked why she changed her mind, Mrs. Romney said, "We have a reason why we're running and it's because I believe in my heart that Mitt is going to save America, that economically we are in such difficult times and that he is the person that’s going to pull us through this."

The criticism that plagued the Romneys during the 2008 campaign has continued, particularly in regards to their reported $250 million fortune and the issue of their tax returns.

When pressed by Morales, Mrs. Romney stood her ground. "We have been very transparent to what's legally required of us,” she said. “There's going to be no more tax releases given."

Mrs. Romney said if they release any more information, "it will only give them more ammunition."

In regards to their finances,  she said "there's nothing we're hiding."

"It's been managed by a blind trust since before Mitt was governor, you know, 2002 forward,” she told Morales.  “And so, you know, I'll be curious to see what's in there too."

Editor's Note: Natalie Morales' full interview with Ann Romney aired Thursday, August 16 on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Mitt Romney went well beyond his standard stump speech at a closed-door fundraiser on Sunday evening, and offered some of the most specific details to date about the policies he would pursue if elected. 

Karen Bleier / AFP - Getty Images

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney floated the idea of eliminating the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the cabinet-level agency once led by the candidate's father.

In a speech to donors in the backyard of a private home here, the former Massachusetts governor and presumptive GOP presidential nominee outlined his plans to potentially eliminate or consolidate federal agencies, win back Latino voters and reform the nation's tax code.

And even Ann Romney, the subject of a national debate last week over the role of women in the workplace, was more direct than usual. She sounded like a political tactician when she described a Democratic consultant's criticism of her decision to be a stay-at-home mom as "an early birthday gift."

Romney went into a level of detail not usually seen by the public in the speech, which was overheard by reporters on a sidewalk below. One possibility floated by Romney included the elimination of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Cabinet-level agency once led by Romney's father, George. 

"I'm going to take a lot of departments in Washington, and agencies, and combine them. Some eliminate, but I'm probably not going to lay out just exactly which ones are going to go," Romney said. "Things like Housing and Urban Development, which my dad was head of, that might not be around later. But I'm not going to actually go through these one by one. What I can tell you is, we've got far too many bureaucrats. I will send a lot of what happens in Washington back to the states."

Asked about the fate of the Department of Education in a potential Romney administration, the former governor suggested it would also face a dramatic restructuring. 

"The Department of Education: I will either consolidate with another agency, or perhaps make it a heck of a lot smaller. I'm not going to get rid of it entirely," Romney said, explaining that part of his reasoning behind preserving the agency was to maintain a federal role in pushing back against teachers' unions. Romney added that he learned in his 1994 campaign for Senate that proposing to eliminate the agency was politically volatile. 

At that time, Sen. Ted Kennedy ran ads against Romney — then a political neophyte — accusing him of being uncaring for saying he wished to eliminate the agency.

Romney told the audience here tonight (along with the Weekly Standard in an interview in early April) that that experience remains fresh in his mind. It's contributed to his caution in publicly naming federal agencies and programs he would eliminate or dramatically curtail.

Romney's wife Ann also spoke briefly, where she described her role in a controversy over women in the workplace and Republicans' efforts to make inroads with female voters.

Mrs. Romney acknowledged Republicans' deficit at present with female voters, and urged the women in attendance to talk to their friends, particularly about the economy. She also discussed the criticism she faced this week, and her pride in her role as a mother.

"It was my early birthday present for someone to be critical of me as a mother, and that was really a defining moment, and I loved it," Mrs. Romney said.

Gov. Romney went further in engaging the so-called "war on moms" that followed in the media — upon which his campaign has been aggressively fundraising — calling it a "gift" that allowed his campaign to show contrast with Democrats in the general election's first week.

Romney also went into greater detail than he has on the campaign trail in describing how he would maintain the progressive structure in the tax code after implementing his 20 percent across-the-board tax cut.

Democrats have argued that Romney's tax proposals would disproportionately help the wealthy, but on Sunday, Romney identified specific loopholes and deductions for the wealthy that he would eliminate in order to both finance his tax cut, and ensure that the nation's top earners face the same tax burden they do today.

"I'm going to probably eliminate for high income people the second home mortgage deduction," Romney said, adding that he would also likely eliminate deductions for state income and property taxes as well.

"By virtue of doing that, we'll get the same tax revenue, but we'll have lower rates," Romney explained. "The nice thing about lower rates is that small businesses not get to keep a larger share of what they're earning and plow it back in to hire more people and expand their business."

Romney covered much of the ground he does in his standard stump speech before a crowd of several dozen donors, who were gathered to contribute to his new general election "Victory Fund." But Romney also offered, over fried chicken and snapper, a simpler way of understanding his economic policies.

"I'm asked — how do you boil it down, how do you encapsulate this into a campaign message: Two things, jobs and kids," Romney said, explaining that restarting job growth and preserving a better future for the next generation were the campaign's guiding principles.

Though the general election campaign has only begun in earnest — and the policy proposals floated by Romney on Sunday evening were far from formal platform items — the former governor's remarks marked the campaign's acute sense of what awaits them in the coming months. 

That sense was represented in Ann and Mitt Romney's discussion of how they might win back women. The former governor also addressed how he might make strides toward winning back Hispanic voters, another crucial voting bloc with whom he and other Republicans lag, according to recent polls.

Predicting that immigration would become a much larger issue in the fall campaign, Romney told his audience, "We have to get Hispanic voters to vote for our party," warning that recent polling showing Hispanics breaking in huge percentages for President Obama "spells doom for us." 

Romney said the GOP must offer its own policies to woo Hispanics, including a "Republican DREAM Act," referring to the legislative proposal favored by Democrats that would offer illegal immigrants a limited path to citizenship, to give Hispanic voters a real choice between parties. 

Romney nonetheless predicted that, by November, the economy would trump immigration as a driving issue for Hispanic voters, and he vowed also to remind the Hispanic community that, despite promises of comprehensive immigration reform by Obama, Democrats ultimately fell short in passing legislation in their two years in control of Congress and the White House at the start of the president's term. 

Romney also described his media strategy going forward, including his views on so-called "earned media," and how the campaign might pair surrogates with complimentary news outlets.

He said his campaign had been well-covered by Fox News, but that Fox was watched by "the true believers," and that he knew he would have to reach out to a broader audience in order to win over independents and women voters that will decide the election in November. He painted a picture of a media landscape in which liberal voices won out on television, but conservatives were strongest online.

"We are behind when it comes to commentators on TV. They tend to be liberal," Romney said. "Where we are ahead or even is on twitter and on the Internet."

Vice President Biden called a Democratic consultant's assertion that Ann Romney hadn't worked a day in her life "an outrageous assertion" in an interview to air Thursday evening.

Biden joined a chorus of top Democrats -- from first lady Michelle Obama to re-election campaign manager Jim Messina and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz -- in distancing himself from comments made yesterday by Hilary Rosen.

"My response to that is that’s an outrageous assertion," Biden told MSNBC's Ed Schultz when asked about Rosen's comments.

Rosen said last night on CNN that Ann Romney, the wife of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, had "never worked a day in her life."

Surrogates for the Romney campaign pounced quickly; New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte called Rosen's remarks "insulting" in a conference call this morning. Moreover, the Romney campaign has sought to link Rosen to Obama, though Rosen has done no work for the re-election campaign or the DNC (though her firm has done some contract work).

Rosen apologized in a statement this afternoon, pleading with the campaigns to "declare peace in this phony war and go back to focus on the substance."

"Look, I fought my whole career, and I’m no hero, whether it’s the violence against women act or equal pay my entire career as a senator and as a vice president, to get to one point where my daughter is able to make whatever choice she wants and no one question it," Biden said. "My daughter happens to have a master’s degree, she’s a social worker, she’s getting married and if my daughter wants to be able to say I’m staying home and raising my kids no one should question it."

Biden was in New Hampshire on Thursday to deliver a campaign speech about the "Buffett Rule," the Obama administration's proposal that the wealthy be required to pay a minimum effective tax rate of 30 percent.

The full interview with Biden will air at 8 p.m. ET on MSNBC.

President Obama responded to democratic strategist Hilary Rosen’s comments about Ann Romney having never worked a day in her life by saying that it was an “ill-advised statement by somebody on television.”  In an interview with the Columbus affiliate WCMH, he also said that spouses are “off-limits” because they have a “really tough job.”

The President and the rest of the Democratic establishment has been quick to distance themselves from the comments that have become a rallying and fundraising cry for the Romney campaign but also the Republican National Committee.

Ann Romney defended her husband Mitt on Thursday, praising him as someone who respects and admires women both personally and professionally.

Amid an uproar over comments made last night by Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen, who said Mrs. Romney had "never worked a day in her life," the would-be first lady pleaded for "respect."

"My career choice was to be a mother. And I think we all know that we need to respect choices that women make," Ann Romney said during an interview on Fox News.

The former first lady of Massachusetts has emerged throughout the Romney campaign as a top public advocate for her husband, both on the campaign trail and in television interviews. Her stop on Thursday morning on Fox comes amid a sustained blitz by the Obama re-election campaign and Democrats, who blame Republicans for waging a "war on women."

That narrative has been sustained by recent polling data that shows Romney lagging behind Obama among women voters. ("It's just too early. People haven't had a chance to listen to us or hear us," Ann Romney said of the reason for the gap.)

She echoed Mitt Romney's rhetoric that the economy is the number one issue for women, and also sought to portray her husband as somebody who's attentive to the women around him (pointing out that Romney's lieutenant governor and chief of staff were women).

"Mitt Romney is a person that admires women and listens to them and I am grateful that he listens to me," she said.

Ann Romney said she was bothered by the notion that her husband doesn't respect women. "You should see how many women he listens to; that's what I love about Mitt," she said.

Mrs. Romney also sought to project empathy for women who are struggling in the harsh economic environment.

"I know what it's like to struggle. Maybe I haven't struggled as much financially as some people have, but I can tell you: I've had struggles in my life," she said, referencing, in part, her battles against breast cancer and multiple sclerosis.