HOUSTON — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was booed by an African-American crowd on Wednesday when he told them he would eliminate President Barack Obama's signature policy achievement, the U.S. healthcare overhaul.

Romney's conservative message did not go down very well with at the annual convention of the NAACP, a civil rights organziation whose African-American members are among Obama's strongest supporters.

The reaction was not uniformly negative. Romney received a standing ovation at the end and there were numerous instances of applause throughout the speech.

The crowd of hundreds in a half-filled ballroom had applauded politely until he got to the portion of his speech where he said if elected on Nov. 6, he would work to repeal and replace the health care plan.

“I'm going to eliminate every expensive, non-essential program. That includes Obamacare,” Romney said. Then the boos erupted.

Romney seemed unsettled by the reaction.

He also drew boos when he said the Democratic President had promised to create more jobs, but “he will not, he cannot, and his record of the last four years proves it.”

And boos erupted once again when he said:

“If I am President, job one for me will be creating jobs. I have no hidden agenda. If you want a President who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him.”

Romney knew he was not speaking to people who would normally vote for him. Obama, the first black U.S. President, gets the support of about 90 percent of African-Americans.

“We don't count anybody out, and we sure don't make a habit of presuming anyone's support,” he told them at the outset, citing his ability to attract voters from both sides in his race to win the governor's chair in Massachusetts, an overwhelmingly Democratic state.

Still he hoped his economic message would break through, that his free market principles would trigger job growth that would lift the middle class in ways that Obama has not been able to achieve.