Taking a Whack at Romney's Private Equity Past

Even before Mitt Romney was the presumptive Republican nominee, President Barack Obama’s political advisers made it clear that their reelection effort would center on attacking Romney’s tenure as head of Bain Capital. Now we know what they had in mind. On May 14 the campaign rolled out a brutal ad depicting Romney as a rapacious figure of greed whose firm bought, and then bankrupted, GST Steel in Kansas City, Mo. Airing in several swing states, it features a laid-off steelworker calling Romney “a vampire.” A day later, another attack: Priorities USA Action, the pro-Obama super PAC legally forbidden from coordinating with the campaign, launched its own nearly identical ad painting Romney as the sinister capitalist destroyer of … GST Steel.

This ugly portrayal of Romney and private equity first took shape in the GOP primaries, when Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry labeled their rival a “vulture capitalist.” Obama will amplify this message, backed by what’s likely to be the richest campaign in U.S. history. In the next few weeks alone, the president’s team plans to spend some $25 million on ads, hoping to cement this impression of Romney before Memorial Day, when many voters tune out for the summer. “We expected that the general election would bring new attention to private equity,” says Ken Spain, vice president of public affairs and communications for the Private Equity Growth Capital Council, the industry’s Washington lobbying group. “But what is lost in the politically charged debate is the fact that the private equity industry has pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, supporting and strengthening tens of thousands of businesses in all 50 states.”