It’s officially open season on Romney’s Bain Capital days in the Republican primary. On Wednesday, Jon Huntsman’s campaign became the latest to accuse the private equity firm Romney co-founded of cruelly laying off workers.
In a conference call with reporters, Huntsman supporters in New Hampshire described the pain of watching dozens of their neighbors lose their jobs as a a factory owned by Holson Burnes Group Inc. was trimmed and then closed entirely after being taken over by Bain Capital, which ended up making an impressive profit off the company as many of its operations were moved overseas.
“The people who worked there, people who were laid off, the final 37 [workers] we had to deliver the news to, they where constituents, they were families,” former Claremont Mayor Scott Pope said. “They had hopes and dreams.”
Huntsman’s hardly a blue collar populist — he’s a second-generation billionaire and his economic proposals are among the most regressive in the field — but his backers contrasted his father’s manufacturing business with Romney’s investment work.
“A lot of the folks that I represent can’t identify with Wall Street corporate raiders or decisions made at that level,” Grantham, NH Chamber of Commerce president Don Gobin said. He added that Huntsman “grew a family business with him and his brothers with real products.”
A spokesman for the Romney campaign, Andrea Saul, indicated to TPM that Huntsman’s attacks were playing into Democrats’ hands.
“President Obama and his friends on the left are continuing their attacks on the free enterprise system – and by attacking the free enterprise they are willingly dividing Americans,” Saul said. “Mitt Romney has a quarter-century of experience working with entrepreneurs and real businesses in the real economy. With years of private sector experience and a comprehensive plan for our economy, Mitt Romney is the conservative candidate who can beat Barack Obama and ensure America remains a merit-based society, not an entitlement society.”
The Holson Burnes story, which also included deep layoffs in South Carolina, is a good example of the kinds of cases that Republican rivals and Democrats alike are looking to use against Romney. Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich have both attacked Romney over downsizing at Bain in recent weeks. Romney rebutted critics on Tuesday by suggesting that they exhibited a basic ignorance of free market principles.
