Romney wealth in focus on campaign trail

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney speaks at Lawrence Uni­ver­sity in Apple­ton, Wis., Fri­day. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

BETH FOUHY, STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

APPLETON, Wis. — Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial front-runner Mitt Rom­ney on Fri­day defended his per­sonal wealth amid inten­si­fy­ing crit­i­cism from his main GOP rival and Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s re-election cam­paign, unlikely allies work­ing to por­tray the for­mer busi­ness­man as out of touch with most Americans.

Rom­ney, who is worth up to $250 mil­lion, would be among the nation’s rich­est pres­i­dents if elected. His Demo­c­ra­tic and Repub­li­can oppo­nents have thrust Romney’s suc­cess to the fore­front of the pres­i­den­tial con­test as he tight­ens his grasp on the GOP nomination.

“If we become one of those soci­eties that attacks suc­cess, one out­come is cer­tain — there will be a lot less suc­cess,” Rom­ney said dur­ing a speech thick with gen­eral elec­tion under­tones at Lawrence Uni­ver­sity in Apple­ton, Wis. “You’re going to hear a deaf­en­ing cacoph­ony of charges and counter-charges and my pre­dic­tion is that by Nov. 6 most of you are going to be afraid to turn on your TV.”

The for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor argued his case sev­eral days before the GOP pri­mary Tues­day in Wis­con­sin, a state that has gen­eral elec­tion impli­ca­tions as he courts the working-class vot­ers who make up the bulk of the electorate.

Obama won Wis­con­sin by 14 per­cent­age points in Novem­ber 2008.

Speak­ing to Wis­con­sin vot­ers 250 miles to the west, Rick San­to­rum sug­gested anew that Rom­ney has lit­tle grasp of the prob­lems fac­ing work­ing Americans.

“We need some­one who can talk and relate to folks bat­tling in this econ­omy, not some­one talk­ing about being a CEO of a com­pany and mak­ing jokes about fir­ing peo­ple,” San­to­rum said.

“No, I don’t do very well among peo­ple with incomes over $200,000 in the Repub­li­can Party. Those aren’t the Democ­rats and inde­pen­dents we’re going to get in the gen­eral elec­tion,” he said. “We’re going to get the vot­ers Ronald Rea­gan brought to the table — folks who are blue-collar folks who shared our val­ues but were sus­pi­cious Repub­li­cans weren’t on their side.”

Though Rom­ney grew up with wealth and priv­i­lege as the son of a Michi­gan gov­er­nor, he has tried to down­play his early advan­tages and said in Friday’s speech that he took “an entry-level job” after grad­u­at­ing from Har­vard law and busi­ness schools.

“I loved cars and I was very tempted to stay in Michi­gan and go into the car busi­ness as he had, but I knew I would always won­der if any suc­cess I had was due to my father,” Rom­ney said. “So when I got out of busi­ness school, I stayed in Mass­a­chu­setts where I went to school and got an entry-level job with the best com­pany that would hire me.”

Despite efforts to con­nect, Rom­ney has repeat­edly reminded vot­ers — unin­ten­tion­ally — that he lives a dif­fer­ent kind of life. He casu­ally bet a rival $10,000 dur­ing a Decem­ber pres­i­den­tial debate. He’s adding sev­eral expen­sive upgrades, such as a car garage, to a home in Cal­i­for­nia. And he’s men­tioned mul­ti­ple times that his friends include the own­ers of pro­fes­sional sports teams.

Rom­ney spent vir­tu­ally his entire busi­ness career with Bain Con­sult­ing and Bain Cap­i­tal, the Boston-based pri­vate equity firms where he earned the for­tune that has allowed him to go for more than a decade with­out earn­ing a reg­u­lar paycheck.

Obama’s cam­paign is push­ing Rom­ney to release years of tax returns dat­ing to his career at the com­pa­nies. The cam­paign dis­trib­uted a Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle on Fri­day that raised ques­tions about Romney’s invest­ment income.

“First, we learned that Gov. Rom­ney may keep his invest­ments off­shore in order to claim spe­cial tax breaks,” Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said. “Now, we found out that he may have engaged in ques­tion­able maneu­vers to drive up the value of his IRA.”

Obama him­self is far more wealthy than the aver­age voter, though not in Romney’s class, and he earned his for­tune in recent years. The pres­i­dent and his wife, Michelle, reported income of $1.73 mil­lion in 2010, mostly from the books he’s writ­ten, accord­ing to his tax return. That was down from the $5.5 mil­lion of a year earlier.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., a ris­ing star in the GOP who endorsed Rom­ney on Fri­day, sug­gested that crit­i­cism from Obama and San­to­rum would fall flat.

“Here in Wis­con­sin we appre­ci­ate peo­ple who are suc­cess­ful. We reward hard work,” Ryan said. “Since when is that a bad thing?”

Exit polling sug­gests that Rom­ney may have to broaden his appeal to middle-class voters.

He has con­sis­tently per­formed bet­ter than his rivals among vot­ers with higher fam­ily incomes. Although Rom­ney has lost the over­all vote in eight of the 18 states where exit or entrance polls were con­ducted, he only lost vot­ers with six-figure incomes in three of them.

In Louisiana, the high-dollar tilt in Romney’s sup­port was par­tic­u­larly pro­nounced: A major­ity of those who voted for Rom­ney had six-figure fam­ily incomes though that group made up just three in 10 voters.

He’s try­ing to broaden his appeal, in part, by chat­ting about gambling.

“We were talk­ing about that. I guess there is a mas­sive, mas­sive lot­tery,” Rom­ney said while vis­it­ing a restau­rant Fri­day evening as Mega Mil­lions tick­ethold­ers across the coun­try awaited a record draw­ing. “I’m not plan­ning on play­ing the lottery.”

With a dry smile, he took a shot at a mega-donor and casino mogul who sup­ports Newt Gingrich’s cam­paign. “I under­stand that Shel­don Adel­son has bought some tick­ets,” he said.

Posted by AP News on Mar 30 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.