By Paul West and Michael A. Memoli, Tribune Washington Bureau –
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Monday intensified a potentially crucial phase of his re-election try: an effort to define Mitt Romney in negative terms before voters have time to form a more positive image of the Republican challenger.
The president’s campaign released an attack ad focusing on Romney’s work as a private equity executive. Describing him as “a job destroyer,” it features former employees of a now-defunct Kansas City steel company talking about how they watched their employer “bleed to death” after Bain Capital, the investment firm headed by Romney, took control.
The TV ad drive is part of a wider effort by the endangered incumbent to disqualify Romney among members of a key swing-voter group: working-class white men.
In a departure from the diverse mix of ordinary Americans who typically populate Obama’s commercials, virtually everyone in the ad is a white male. The spot runs two minutes and is done in quasi-documentary style, an apparent attempt to grab viewer attention by imposing a veneer of seriousness on a political hit.
Equally notable is where the ads are directed: Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa and Pennsylvania.
The electoral map can and probably will change over the next 5 1/2 months, but those states — a mix of opportunity targets and virtual must-wins for the president — have now been singled out by his strategists as top battlegrounds at the start of the general election campaign. All are up for grabs, as is the presidency. Veteran Democratic pollster Peter Hart in a recent assessment called the November election “no better than a 50-50 proposition” for Obama.
For Romney, Virginia and Ohio are vital to any realistic scenario that gets him the 270 electoral votes needed to win. If Obama carries either one — he took both in 2008 — he’s almost certain to be re-elected.
Unless Obama wins Ohio or Virginia, however, he will need Pennsylvania and a batch of smaller tossup states — Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada — to make up the difference.
The Romney campaign responded that it welcomed Team Obama’s “attempt to pivot back to jobs and a discussion of their failed record,” a jab at last week’s unexpected detour by the president into the same-sex marriage issue.
“President Obama has many questions to answer as to why his administration used the stimulus to reward wealthy campaign donors with taxpayer money for bad ideas like Solyndra, but 23 million Americans are still struggling to find jobs,” said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul.
Fact checkers have pointed out that the bankruptcy of GS Industries, the subject of Obama’s attack ad, took place years after Romney had stepped down from day-to-day management of Bain.
Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, said that if Romney’s “central premise is that he’s an economic wizard who can grow the economy, it’s worth examining what that wizardry is all about.”
She told reporters on a conference call that when Romney’s record at Bain was a prominent topic in the GOP primaries, it cost him votes. Vice President Joe Biden will probably follow up on the anti-Romney attack themes during a two-day bus tour of Ohio this week.
Cutter said that Obama, who Republicans claim is anti-business, was not “questioning the private equity industry as a whole.” Hours later, the president attended a fundraising event at the Manhattan home of private equity executive Hamilton “Tony” James of the Blackstone Group, which drew 60 supporters at $35,800 a head.
