The Obama campaign is launching an offensive Monday attacking Mitt Romney on his record at the private equity firm Bain Capital in a new ad campaign, painting the presumptive Republican nominee as a greedy, corporate job-destroyer.
During the primary, Newt Gingrich and even Rick Perry went after Romney as a “vulture capitalist,” prompting Democrats to attack Romney’s private equity background. But Democrats always intended to hold onto the Bain attacks until the general election.
The Obama campaign is going up with a new, two-minute ad airing in Iowa, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio, accompanied by a six-minute video and a new website, RomneyEconomics.com. The size of the ad buy is unknown, but the campaign is in the middle of a $25 million ad campaign this month.
This installment of what is sure to be an ongoing attack on Romney is about GST Steel, which was acquired by Bain Capital and subsequently shuttered. The campaign will also hold a conference call with reporters Monday morning to hear from two people involved in the closing of GST Steel: Joe Soptic, a former employee and steelworker for 30 years, and David Foster, the lead negotiator for the workers at GST Steel. The ad features former steelworkers, including Soptic, talking about losing their jobs.
“They made as much money off of it as they could. And they closed it down,” says Soptic. “We view Mitt Romney as a job destroyer,” another steelworker says. “To get up on national TV bragging about making jobs when he has destroyed thousands of peoples’ careers,” says a third.
Watch:
The longer video is here.
