Eric Fehrnstrom, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s feisty media strategist and spokesman, explained in a curious tweet Thursday afternoon why he and the former Massachusetts governor weren’t present when pro-Romney hecklers disrupted Obama adviser David Alexrod’s press conference in Boston.
Romney and Fehrnstrom are still in California, as election-watchers know. But according to Fehrnstrom, they stopped by the headquarters of the embattled solar energy company Solyndra to host a quick press onference.
Sorry I missed the fireworks in Boston today. I’m at Solyndra with @MittRomney. twitter.com/EricFehrn/stat…
— Eric Fehrnstrom (@EricFehrn) May 31, 2012
Romney’s surprise news conference at Solyndra twitter.com/EricFehrn/stat…
— Eric Fehrnstrom (@EricFehrn) May 31, 2012
The Obama administration gave Solyndra a $535 million loan guarantee to support its pursuit of green energy. The company subsequently went bankrupt. Romney will likely use Solyndra as a recurring campaign theme to demonstrate what he says is President Barack Obama’s inability to manage the economy.
In a release emailed to reporters during the California press event, Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul accused Obama of spending”the last three years punishing job creators” and “showering taxpayer dollars on his political allies and donors, like those involved in the Solyndra fiasco.”
In an apparently coordinated effort, the Republican National Committee also released a 22-page report that it called a “research briefing book” about Solyndra. The report, RNC research director Joe Pounder wrote in an email, covers “the Obama administration’s rush to invest in Solyndra, the consequences of ignoring repeated red flags, the taxpayer loss [and] the Obama bundler gains.”
UPDATE: Yahoo! News adds details on why the event was kept secret until the last moment:
“According to a senior Romney aide, who briefed reporters on the way to the event, the visit was not announced to the public because of fears ‘the Obama administration’ and the company might try to block the event from happening.
“Asked if the campaign was being ‘paranoid’ in thinking the White House might try to block Romney’s event, the aide replied, ‘He is the president.'”
ABC News has more:
“‘The reason for keeping it quiet is because we knew if word got out that Solyndra would do everything in their power and the Obama administration would do everything in their power to stop us from having this news conference,’ an aide said in a briefing en route. ‘But taxpayers made a substantial investment in Solyndra, there are serious questions about what happened at Solyndra, why that investment was selected, what happened to that money.'”
