LAS VEGAS, NV — Mitt Romney received a warm welcome in Nevada on Wednesday, firing up a rally at the warehouse of the Brady Linen company.
The frontrunner was in need of a friendly face — or thousand — after a rough day in which he was pilloried from the left and right alike for saying that he was “not concerned about the very poor” because they have a government safety net.
As he often does in his speeches, Romney played up his personal empathy with the average American family’s economic struggles. Saying President Obama’s talk of a growing recovery showed he was “detached from reality,” Romney described how “you have middle income families that wonder with the decline in their buying power can they still put food on the table at the end of the week.”
He also had some choice words alluding to the ever-expanding effort to brand him as an out-of-touch millionaire, a tactic both Democrats and the Gingrich campaign have used to great effect in the last several weeks.
“The success of some does not make the rest of us poorer, the success of some makes us all better off,” he said. “The president seems intent on dividing America, on replacing ambition with envy, on poisoning the very spirit of America by causing class warfare. This is wrong.”
Romney spent most of the campaign using his speeches to exclusively go after President Obama, but in recent days he departed from his formula to level a series of tough attacks against rival Newt Gingrich. While he took some jabs at Newt in comments to reporters on Wednesday, his speech didn’t mention Gingrich once.
Nevada, which holds its caucus on Saturday, is one of Romney’s strongest states, thanks in no small part to the large Mormon population, who made up as much as 25% of caucus-goers in 2008 and gave Romney 94% of their vote. Many locals brought their whole families to see Romney (Ann Romney noted the large number of children in her introduction) and several audience members sported Brigham Young University shirts, Romney’s alma mater.
Romney alluded to his many personal friendships with Nevadans thanks to his close connection to neighboring Utah, where he also ran the 2002 Olympics. And indeed it wasn’t hard to find people with personal ties to the candidate: Ashley Hall, a local who works in real estate, said his father knew Romney from their BYU days and that he had personally met the governor a handful of times through their alumni work.
“He radiates that he’s focused and driven,” Hall said of his experience with Romney. “He’s positive, upbeat, never down on America, and never down on American business.”
Less enamored with Romney’s arrival were a group of Brady employees, who held a gathering outside of the company ahead of the event to protest Romney’s opposition to the DREAM Act. According to the Culinary Workers Union, whom the employees are members of, 90% of the company’s workforce have an immigrant background.
“We need immigration reform,” Ana Serrano, a 20 year veteran of Brady, said. “We want Mr. Romney to listen to us, to listen to working families in Nevada.”
Serrano said the issue is especially close to her heart given that her son is serving in the Army in Afghanistan and many of his friends hope to serve their country en route to permanent residency and citizenship.
“There’s a lot of people who want to have the same opportunities,” she said. “That’s why we need immigration reform for everybody.”
