SALON

Tuesday, Aug 7, 2012 6:46 PM UTC

AdWatch: Democrats’ ad hits Romney on Bain past

By

Topics: From the Wires,

AdWatch: Democrats' ad hits Romney on Bain pastThis photo taken Aug. 7, 2012 shows Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaigning in Elk Grove Village, Ill. Barack Obama's backers roll out a new ad assailing Mitt Romney's business record at Bain Capital, while the Republican candidate seeks to paint the Democrat as a big-government liberal. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)(Credit: AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — TITLE: “Understands”

LENGTH: 60 seconds.

AIRING: On television in Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Florida, and on the Web.

KEY IMAGES: Joe Soptic, a grim-faced former Kansas City steelworker is shown in close-up, talking about how the 2001 shuttering of GST Steel affected his family. The steel firm had been taken over in 1993 by a group of partners including Bain Capital, the private equity firm run by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. As the screen alternates between Soptic, shots of the vacant GST Steel plant rung by barbed wire and a photo of Romney at a conference table, Soptic links Romney and Bain to the cancer death of his wife.

“When Mitt Romney and Bain closed the plant, I lost my health care, and my family lost their health care. And a short time after that my wife became ill. I don’t know how long she was sick and I think maybe she didn’t say anything because she knew that we couldn’t afford the insurance, and then one day she became ill and I took her up to the Jackson County Hospital and admitted her for pneumonia and that’s when they found the cancer and by then it was stage 4. It was, there was nothing they could do for her. And she passed away in 22 days. I do not think Mitt Romney realizes what he’s done to anyone, and furthermore I do not think Mitt Romney is concerned.”

ANALYSIS: The latest ad by the pro-Obama Priorities USA Action super political action committee, part of a $20 million campaign, is the most intense negative media attack yet on Romney for his 15-year stewardship of the Bain Capital private equity firm and the layoffs that sometimes resulted from the firm’s cost-cutting at its takeover targets.

Soptic’s conclusion that Romney bears some blame in his wife’s death is not backed up factually in the ad, but his harrowing widower’s narrative would not be easily refuted. Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams did not mention Soptic in his response, instead saying that “President Obama’s allies continue to use discredited and dishonest attacks in a contemptible effort to conceal the administration’s deplorable economic record.”

Bain Capital and Romney’s culpability is not crystal-clear in the closing of GST Steel. Romney was CEO of Bain when the firm became a majority shareholder in GST Steel in October 1993. Bain was not the only stakeholder; a group of the firm’s executives and several other firms also had stakes. Bain put up about $8 million in the $75 million deal. Over the next eight years, Bain held onto its stakes and bought more investments as the steel company grew, merged with a South Carolina steelmaker, modernized and added millions of dollars in debt.

When the firm declared bankruptcy in February 2001 and shut down the Kansas City plant, Soptic and 750 other workers learned that their health care coverage, pensions and other benefits guaranteed by the company were rescinded.

Romney had left Bain Capital in February 1999 to lead preparations for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. His campaign has argued that he was no longer in day-to-day control of the firm. A recent Associated Press Fact Check found that Romney had retreated from his managerial responsibilities between 1999 and 2002, but still retained his official role as Bain’s founder and chief executive.

More Stephen Braun.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
173 points174 points | 6 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
130 points131 points | comment
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
41 points42 points | 8 comments
vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
16 points17 points | 9 comments
vote
Obstruction Will Ruin GOP - Playing politics & abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
14 points15 points | comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations