Today’s New York Times includes a fascinating story about how Mitt Romney personally loaned money to a couple so they could buy a home. This, of course, is counter-narrative, which might explain why we are just now hearing about it.
As the Times notes, after a land deal Romney was involved in flopped,
The renters were offered the first chance to buy, but the Stampses could not qualify for a mortgage, recalled Mr. Stamps, who at the time had recently lost his job at an oil company.
“Then I got this phone call, personally, from Mr. Romney, asking if we really wanted to buy the house,” Mr. Stamps, 63, said in an interview the other day at the barbershop he now runs. “I said, yes we did. And he said he would loan us the money. He really helped us when we needed it.”
Again, it is interesting that this story, which the Times notes is “a counterpoint to the image, seized upon by political opponents, of Mr. Romney as a cold, calculating financier,” isn’t more widely known. You can bet bet that — if this story weren’t flattering to Romney (if it resembled the above photo more than a guy who just wanted to help out a nice family) — that you would have heard about it:
Mr. Stamps said that he and his wife had received calls in recent months from strangers who “seemed to be looking for negative stuff” about Mr. Romney, but that the couple had nothing to say to them.
Perhaps this would make a nice Romney ad?