The scuffle over Mitt Romney’s taxes has touched off an arms race between the Romney and Newt Gingrich campaigns over who can challenge the other side to disclose more potentially embarrassing records.
On Tuesday, Romney released his tax return for 2010 and an estimate of his 2011 tax rate, hoping to blunt a surprisingly damaging argument from the Gingrich campaign that he should release them during the primaries so GOP voters can evaluate whether there’s any potential damage for the general election.
According to Newt spokesman RC Hammond, that’s good enough for them.
“Our problem with Mitt’s taxes wasn’t that we thought he was defrauding anyone,
but the fact that he was refusing to release his taxes at all, that he carried himself with this attitude that I know better than the people, I don’t have to do what they want me to do,” Hammond told TPM in a phone interview. “The mere fact he’s releasing it I think meets our demand.”
But that doesn’t mean the tax fight is over.
Democrats are getting involved in the transparency wars as well, demanding Romney release more years of his tax returns, including returns from when his finances were more closely entwined with Bain Capital. Asked if Romney should put out more records if the public is unsatisfied with just his latest returns, Hammond indicated that it might become a legitimate question.
“If someone’s up there making a good case why he should put out multiple years, then he should,” he said. “It shouldn’t take a tremendous amount of political pressure for him to do the right thing.”
And in the meantime, Newt’s team is moving on to new transparency demands, demanding Romney produce emails and documents from his time as governor that his staff wiped from their hard drives upon leaving office. Although some Massachusetts officials said the move was highly unusual, Romney’s campaign insists that they followed the law regarding records maintenance. According to Hammond, the technology should exist to retrieve some of the records and voters should be able to review what’s on them in order to get a clear picture of how Romney’s health care law was conceived and implemented.
“The only difference between Romneycare and Obamacare,” Hammond said “Obama will tell us how he did it.”
Meanwhile, the Romney campaign tried to turn the transparency tables on Gingrich by demanding more information about the Speaker’s time working for Freddie Mac as a consultant. Looking to get out in front of the attack, Gingrich released his contract with the housing giant for one year, but Romney’s campaign insists that more is needed to judge the issue.
“It’s only one year and we know that the contractual relationship with Newt was much longer than that,” Rep Connie Mack (R-FL), a Romney supporter, said in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday.
Again trying to stay a step ahead, Gingrich announced the same day he plans on calling on Freddie Mac to release other contracts as well. Romney spokesman Eric Ferhnstrom also told reporters after Monday’s debate that Gingrich should produce the expert he said he consulted to help ensure his contract didn’t cross the line into lobbying.
“I think he should produce this person, identify him, name him and bring him forward,” Fehrnstrom said, suggesting Newt used their advice to skirt the boundaries of lobbying laws. “I think he deserves to tell his story and be cross-examined in the press.”
Hammond told TPM that it was up to Newt’s old consulting firm, the Center for Health Transformation, and the person in question whether they wanted to come forward, but he didn’t rule out the idea. Still, he said their role was clear.
“It was nothing more than simple education and guidance so you know what the laws are,” he said. “Just like we take a drivers test to learn how to drive cars, same thing — just no license and bad picture.”
