By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
Some of the most explosive moments in presidential campaigns are fueled by surprise. The political power of an unexpected allegation often comes from the frenzy surrounding its revelation.
That wasn’t the case on Monday, when President Obama’s campaign unveiled what might turn out to have been the most anticipated attack of the 2012 campaign: the critique of Mitt Romney’s years at Bain Capital.
In the new ad, Mr. Obama’s campaign unleashes a broadside against Mr. Romney’s business credentials, accusing him of being a corporate raider whose private equity firm preyed on weak companies, seeking profits, then tossed aside their employees with little regard.
This morning, Priorities U.S.A., a “super PAC” backing Mr. Obama, is out with its own ad about Bain Capital, which echoes the theme set by Mr. Obama’s campaign. The organization will spend $4 million to air its Bain ad in Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
“With Romney and Bain Capital, the objective was to make money,” a former employee of GST Steel, a company taken over by Bain Capital, says in the Priorities U.S.A. ad. “If we lost, they made money. If we survived, they made money. It’s as simple as that.”
The attacks on Bain underscore the fundamental premise of Mr. Obama’s campaign — that voters will reject the idea of handing the White House over to a wealthy businessman who got rich by buying and selling companies with little concern for workers.
In a conference call with reporters on Monday, Stephanie Cutter, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama’s campaign, said the fate of the GST Steel mill in Kansas City demonstrates what Mr. Romney’s values are and “what they tell us about what type of president Mr. Romney would be.”
But as Mr. Obama tries to make that case against Mr. Romney, he faces the challenge of reviving an issue that has been lodged against the Republican nominee for more than a decade, including by members of his own party.
Mr. Romney survived attacks on Bain Capital when he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. And he weathered charges of being a “vulture capitalist” by some of his Republican rivals earlier this year.
In an interview Monday evening, Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney, shrugged off the attacks, saying they have already been litigated in the court of public opinion.
“We’ve been down this road before,” Mr. Fehrnstrom said. “Attacks on how our free enterprise system works have a way of backfiring.”
That may happen. If voters conclude that Mr. Obama’s attacks on Mr. Romney amount to an unfair criticism of capitalism, it might boomerang on the president as a political weapon. (It also has the potential to turn off wealthy donors who may already view Mr. Obama with suspicion because of his efforts to regulate the banking industry.)
Still, Mr. Romney’s campaign is not ignoring the attacks. The Republican campaign quickly released its own Web-only video on Monday that tells the story of another steel plant that Mr. Romney’s firm invested in. In this case, the company is thriving, having added thousands of jobs.
“When others shied away, Mitt Romney’s private sector leadership team stepped in,” the ad says of the Bain Capital investment. “Building a dream with over 6,000 employees today.”
The quick response, with a video that was produced long before Monday, suggests that Mr. Romney’s camp might be more worried than they are letting on.
It’s one thing to weather attacks from a gubernatorial opponent in a statewide campaign. It’s something altogether different when an aggressive presidential campaign like Mr. Obama’s takes aim.
During the Republican primaries, Mr. Romney fought back against the attacks from Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney by vastly outspending his rivals. He bombarded the airwaves with criticisms of their records, drowning out even the ads by the well-funded super PAC backing Mr. Gingrich.
So far, Mr. Obama’s investment in the Bain attacks is tiny — the two-minute ad will run only once on Wednesday during the evening news. But in the end, Mr. Romney will not have the same kind of overwhelming position in the general election as he had in the primary battles.
And even though the outlines of the attack on Mr. Romney are not new, the specifics are powerful, especially to voters in states that were not subject to millions of dollars of campaign ads during the primaries.
The former employees of the GST plant in Kansas City offer emotional testimony about what happened to them — losing their jobs, their pensions, their health care benefits. They blame Mr. Romney even though he had left Bain Capital by the time the steel company went bankrupt.
“They came in, they bought the plant, and they made as much money off it as they could,” said Joe Soptic, a former employee who told reporters during the conference call how the lack of health insurance affected his wife’s battle with cancer. “He is only worried about one group of people, and that’s people like him, people at the top.”
Mr. Romney’s campaign is betting that they can counter those employees with ones of their own. In the web video they released, employees of Steel Dynamics, the successful steel company in Indiana, thank Mr. Romney for creating jobs.
“If it wasn’t for a company like Steel Dynamics, this county wouldn’t have a lot,” one employee says.
Both campaigns take issue with the way the other tells the story of Mr. Romney’s experience at Bain.
Mr. Obama’s campaign accuses Mr. Romney of taking undue credit for jobs at Steel Dynamics that didn’t come until years later. Mr. Romney’s campaign says the bankruptcy at GST Steel was the result of nationwide economic conditions that drove more than 30 similar plants out of business at the time.
Mr. Ferhnstrom also accuses Mr. Obama’s campaign of “desperation” for beginning the Bain attack now, rather than in the final weeks of the campaign.
“We were expecting Obama to launch his negative Bain attacks in the fall, closer to the election,” Mr. Fehrnstrom said. “He’s moved up all of his negative attacks to the spring. It has the feel of a desperation move.”
But desperation or not, Mr. Obama’s attacks have the potential to put a human face on the argument that Mr. Romney is an uncaring, wealthy politician whose business experience taught him the wrong lessons to deal with the economic struggles of the middle class.
If the ads work with independent voters as Mr. Obama hopes, it could help cement that image. If it doesn’t, Mr. Romney could once again emerge unscathed from the Bain attacks — and sitting in the White House.
That wasn’t the case on Monday, when President Obama’s campaign unveiled what might turn out to have been the most anticipated attack of the 2012 campaign: the critique of Mitt Romney’s years at Bain Capital.
In the new ad, Mr. Obama’s campaign unleashes a broadside against Mr. Romney’s business credentials, accusing him of being a corporate raider whose private equity firm preyed on weak companies, seeking profits, then tossed aside their employees with little regard.
This morning, Priorities U.S.A., a “super PAC” backing Mr. Obama, is out with its own ad about Bain Capital, which echoes the theme set by Mr. Obama’s campaign. The organization will spend $4 million to air its Bain ad in Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
“With Romney and Bain Capital, the objective was to make money,” a former employee of GST Steel, a company taken over by Bain Capital, says in the Priorities U.S.A. ad. “If we lost, they made money. If we survived, they made money. It’s as simple as that.”
The attacks on Bain underscore the fundamental premise of Mr. Obama’s campaign — that voters will reject the idea of handing the White House over to a wealthy businessman who got rich by buying and selling companies with little concern for workers.
In a conference call with reporters on Monday, Stephanie Cutter, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama’s campaign, said the fate of the GST Steel mill in Kansas City demonstrates what Mr. Romney’s values are and “what they tell us about what type of president Mr. Romney would be.”
But as Mr. Obama tries to make that case against Mr. Romney, he faces the challenge of reviving an issue that has been lodged against the Republican nominee for more than a decade, including by members of his own party.
Mr. Romney survived attacks on Bain Capital when he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. And he weathered charges of being a “vulture capitalist” by some of his Republican rivals earlier this year.
In an interview Monday evening, Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney, shrugged off the attacks, saying they have already been litigated in the court of public opinion.
“We’ve been down this road before,” Mr. Fehrnstrom said. “Attacks on how our free enterprise system works have a way of backfiring.”
That may happen. If voters conclude that Mr. Obama’s attacks on Mr. Romney amount to an unfair criticism of capitalism, it might boomerang on the president as a political weapon. (It also has the potential to turn off wealthy donors who may already view Mr. Obama with suspicion because of his efforts to regulate the banking industry.)
Still, Mr. Romney’s campaign is not ignoring the attacks. The Republican campaign quickly released its own Web-only video on Monday that tells the story of another steel plant that Mr. Romney’s firm invested in. In this case, the company is thriving, having added thousands of jobs.
“When others shied away, Mitt Romney’s private sector leadership team stepped in,” the ad says of the Bain Capital investment. “Building a dream with over 6,000 employees today.”
The quick response, with a video that was produced long before Monday, suggests that Mr. Romney’s camp might be more worried than they are letting on.
It’s one thing to weather attacks from a gubernatorial opponent in a statewide campaign. It’s something altogether different when an aggressive presidential campaign like Mr. Obama’s takes aim.
During the Republican primaries, Mr. Romney fought back against the attacks from Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney by vastly outspending his rivals. He bombarded the airwaves with criticisms of their records, drowning out even the ads by the well-funded super PAC backing Mr. Gingrich.
So far, Mr. Obama’s investment in the Bain attacks is tiny — the two-minute ad will run only once on Wednesday during the evening news. But in the end, Mr. Romney will not have the same kind of overwhelming position in the general election as he had in the primary battles.
And even though the outlines of the attack on Mr. Romney are not new, the specifics are powerful, especially to voters in states that were not subject to millions of dollars of campaign ads during the primaries.
The former employees of the GST plant in Kansas City offer emotional testimony about what happened to them — losing their jobs, their pensions, their health care benefits. They blame Mr. Romney even though he had left Bain Capital by the time the steel company went bankrupt.
“They came in, they bought the plant, and they made as much money off it as they could,” said Joe Soptic, a former employee who told reporters during the conference call how the lack of health insurance affected his wife’s battle with cancer. “He is only worried about one group of people, and that’s people like him, people at the top.”
Mr. Romney’s campaign is betting that they can counter those employees with ones of their own. In the web video they released, employees of Steel Dynamics, the successful steel company in Indiana, thank Mr. Romney for creating jobs.
“If it wasn’t for a company like Steel Dynamics, this county wouldn’t have a lot,” one employee says.
Both campaigns take issue with the way the other tells the story of Mr. Romney’s experience at Bain.
Mr. Obama’s campaign accuses Mr. Romney of taking undue credit for jobs at Steel Dynamics that didn’t come until years later. Mr. Romney’s campaign says the bankruptcy at GST Steel was the result of nationwide economic conditions that drove more than 30 similar plants out of business at the time.
Mr. Ferhnstrom also accuses Mr. Obama’s campaign of “desperation” for beginning the Bain attack now, rather than in the final weeks of the campaign.
“We were expecting Obama to launch his negative Bain attacks in the fall, closer to the election,” Mr. Fehrnstrom said. “He’s moved up all of his negative attacks to the spring. It has the feel of a desperation move.”
But desperation or not, Mr. Obama’s attacks have the potential to put a human face on the argument that Mr. Romney is an uncaring, wealthy politician whose business experience taught him the wrong lessons to deal with the economic struggles of the middle class.
If the ads work with independent voters as Mr. Obama hopes, it could help cement that image. If it doesn’t, Mr. Romney could once again emerge unscathed from the Bain attacks — and sitting in the White House.
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