Obama campaign ad attacks Mitt Romney’s Bain tenure
The Obama campaign launched an ad on May 14, 2012, attacking Republican rival Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital.
The latest ad released by the Obama campaign on Monday sought to portray Mitt Romney as a greedy job destroyer in order to discredit his business credentials, according to the Associated Press.
The ad focuses on the shut down of a steel mill in Kansas City, Mo., after it was bought by Bain Capital.
Joe Soptic, one of the workers at the mill who was interviewed, says in the ad, "They made as much money off of it as they could. And they closed it down."
Jack Cobb, another worker, adds, "It was like a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us," according to the AP.
The Obama campaign said in a statement, "Romney’s business strategy wasn’t about strengthening companies and creating jobs for long-term economic growth. It wasn’t about investors and workers playing by the same set of rules, and it certainly wasn’t about creating an economy built to last by rewarding hard work and responsibility and strengthening the security of middle-class families," according to ABC News.
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The ad will run in five battleground states, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Colorado, as part of a $25 million ad campaign, said the AP.
The New York Times noted that the Obama campaign has also launched a new website, romneyeconomics.com, which accuses Romney of business practices that were "profitable for a handful of corporate investors, but sometimes devastating for local communities."
The tactic was first used against Romney by Republican rivals Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry who portrayed him as a "corporate raider," said The Times.
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A spokeswoman for Romney's campaign, Andrea Saul, said the campaign welcomed "the Obama campaign’s attempt to pivot back to jobs and a discussion of their failed record," and added that the steel mill layoffs and bankruptcy happened after Romney left Bain in 1999, according to The Times.
However, ABC News noted that the Romney campaign has taken credit for jobs created by Bain after Romney left.
The Romney campaign also released a web ad called "American Dream" focusing on a successful steel company backed by Bain.
Saul said, "Mitt Romney helped create more jobs in his private sector experience and more jobs as Governor of Massachusetts than President Obama has for the entire nation," according to The Washington Post.
Steven Rattner, a former economic adviser to Obama on the auto bailout, said he thought the add was unfair. Speaking on MSNBC, he said, "This is part of capitalism, this is part of life, and I don't think there's anything Bain Capital did that they need to be embarrassed about."
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Here is the Obama campaign's ad:
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