President Barack Obama’s aides have formally launched their long-expected media-campaign against Gov. Mitt Romney’s business experience, but Romney’s team pushed back quickly and the Obama campaign has curbed its criticism to avoid offending other business executives that are sitting on the political fence.
Romney’s business experience at Bain Capital is “the central premise of his campaign for president … [but] he cares about making money for himself and his partners, no matter the cost,” said Stephanie Cutter, Obama’s deputy campaign manager.
The Obama campaign, however, tempered its criticism of Romney with repeated claims that their criticism is aimed at his qualifications to become president, not at other wealthy investors who work with American private equity firms.
“No one is questioning the private equity industry as whole. … This is about about whether Romney’s business experience qualified him to become president,” Cutter said.
His goal at Bain, she said, was to ensure that “a handful of investors can make a fortune [but] a president like that would be a disaster.”
The Obama campaign’s caution is likely prompted by its need to bolster its weak support among entrepreneurs, top managers and investors.
They have influence on employees and on voters, and can donate heavily to either political campaign. In 2008, Wall Street donated heavily to Obama’s campaign, but has since backed away and may instead donate heavily to Romney’s 2012 campaign.
The campaign’s need for caution was made clear when a lobbying group for private investors quickly pushed back against Cutter’s criticism of Romney and Bain.
“We expected the general election would bring new attention to private equity, but what is lost in the politically-charged debate is the fact that private equity has pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, supporting and strengthening tens of thousands of businesses in all fifty states,” said a statement from Ken Spain, vice president for public affairs at the D.C.-based Private Equity Growth Capital Council.
The Obama campaign’s character-based attack on Romeny is intended to damage Romney’s reputation and support among blue collar and middle-class voters in critical swing states. That criticism is vital for Obama’s campaign, because his support has been hit hard by record unemployment, record national debt, record deficits, a stalled economy and by rising gas prices.
Romney’s strategy is built around his promise that his business experience can help spur future economic growth. He claims that his investments at Bain created 100,000 jobs, including 6,000 jobs at a new, high-tech steel mill, Steel Dynamics.
Romney’s team countered Obama’s criticism rapidly.
An 8:55 a.m. email from his campaign sought to shift the media’s focus back to Obama’s economic record, and to subtly highlight Obama’s efforts to talk about non-economic issues, such as same-sex marriage, contraceptive regulations and Romney’s treatment of his family dog.
“We welcome the Obama campaign’s attempt to pivot back to jobs and a discussion of their failed record,” said the e-mailed statement, which was sent out almost two hours before a 10:45 a.m. telephone press conference scheduled by the Obama campaign.
“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,” said the e-mail.
In a follow-up e-mail, the Romney campaign also cited a Kansas City firm, Sanofi, which is laying off 431 people after getting “tens of millions” in federal funds.
Romney’s actions at Bain “tell us about what type of president Romney would be,” Cutter said during the Obama campaign press conference.
The conference also included emotional criticism from two people who worked at GST Steel Co., an old steelworks that was bought by Romney’s Bain Capital, but which later closed amid low-wage competition from Chinese steelmakers. The firm employed 750 people.
“It is upsetting what Mitt Romney and his partners did to us in Kansas City,” said David Foster, a negotiator for the workers at GST. “They made as much money off it as they could… they closed it down and filed for bankruptcy with no concern for the folks that worked there,” said Foster.
“He’s only worried about one group of people — that’s people like him, people at the top,” Foster added.
The Obama campaign showcased its criticism of Romney May 14 with a new website, romneyeconomics.com.
The website’s main page highlights a quote from another managing partner at Bain Capital. The quote — “I never thought of what I do for a living as job creation. … The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors” — is likely intended to frame Romney as an uncaring predatory investor.