Romney never overcame bailout opposition in Ohio

In this photo from Nov. 6, United Auto Work­ers mem­ber Harry Van Uden attends a rally on Elec­tion Day at the UAW Region 1 tech­ni­cal train­ing cen­ter in War­ren, Mich. Only a cou­ple of weeks after Barack Obama won the pres­i­dency in 2008, the man who would become his Repub­li­can chal­lenger in the next elec­tion penned a New York Times col­umn with a fate­ful head­line: “Let Detroit Go Bank­rupt.” Those four words would haunt Mitt Rom­ney across the Rust Belt, where auto man­u­fac­tur­ing remains an eco­nomic pil­lar — espe­cially Ohio, which every suc­cess­ful GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee has car­ried, and his home state of Michi­gan, where his father was an auto com­pany exec­u­tive and gov­er­nor. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Paul Sancya)

JOHN FLESHER

Asso­ci­ated Press

DETROIT — Only a cou­ple of weeks after Barack Obama won the pres­i­dency in 2008, the man who would become his Repub­li­can chal­lenger in the next elec­tion penned a New York Times col­umn with a fate­ful head­line: “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

Those four words would haunt Mitt Rom­ney across the Rust Belt, where auto man­u­fac­tur­ing remains an eco­nomic pil­lar — espe­cially in Ohio, a state that every suc­cess­ful GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee has car­ried, and in his home state of Michi­gan, where his father was an auto exec­u­tive and governor.

Romney’s oppo­si­tion to the fed­eral res­cue of Gen­eral Motors and Chrysler didn’t nec­es­sar­ily seal his fate in those two cru­cial states. But no other issue hung in the back­ground for so long. And noth­ing that Rom­ney tried — his many vis­its, the mil­lions spent on ads, his efforts to explain and refine his posi­tion — could over­come it.

“The biggest deter­min­ing fac­tor was that we couldn’t han­dle the auto­mo­bile bailout issue,” said Bob Ben­nett, chair­man of the Ohio Repub­li­can Party.

Fairly or not, the per­cep­tion of Rom­ney as indif­fer­ent to the auto industry’s fate was “a cof­fin nail,” said John Heit­mann, a Uni­ver­sity of Day­ton his­to­rian who teaches and writes about the car’s place in Amer­i­can culture.

Ohio is sec­ond only to Michi­gan in auto-related employ­ment. A 2010 report by the Cen­ter for Auto­mo­tive Research in Ann Arbor said the indus­try accounted for more than 848,000 jobs in Ohio, or 12.4 per­cent of the work­force. That included jobs with vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers or deal­ers and with busi­nesses that sell prod­ucts or ser­vices to them, plus “spin­off” jobs pro­duced by their eco­nomic activity.

Exit polls con­ducted for The Asso­ci­ated Press and tele­vi­sion net­works found that about 60 per­cent of vot­ers in both states sup­ported the government’s loan and indus­try restruc­tur­ing pro­gram, and three-quarters of them backed Obama. The bailout also was pop­u­lar in Wis­con­sin, even though it hadn’t stopped GM and Chrysler from clos­ing plants there.

“We have a debt to pay back to Pres­i­dent Obama. He saved us,” said Joseph Losier, 33, a fourth-generation autoworker from sub­ur­ban Detroit. After the bailout, Chrysler hired 500 peo­ple at the stamp­ing plant where he works.

Even those with no direct con­nec­tion to the indus­try were grateful.

“He actu­ally kept his promise. I felt like he cared,” said Dar­lene Jack­son, 57, of Detroit, who has worked as a seam­stress since los­ing her city job dur­ing the recession.

Rom­ney insisted he’d been mis­un­der­stood — he wanted to save U.S. auto man­u­fac­tur­ing, not destroy it. In his news­pa­per col­umn, he argued that fed­eral loans would merely post­pone the com­pa­nies’ demise: “You can kiss the Amer­i­can auto­mo­tive indus­try goodbye.”

He called for a “man­aged bank­ruptcy” that would let the com­pa­nies cut labor costs and become more com­pet­i­tive. Proper roles for gov­ern­ment would include sup­port­ing energy and tech­nol­ogy research, adjust­ing tax poli­cies and pro­tect­ing car buy­ers’ war­ranties, he said.

But those nuances got lost as the cam­paign geared up. Automak­ers’ for­tunes had improved, and as many as 1 mil­lion jobs had been saved. Obama said Romney’s approach would never have worked because no pri­vate cap­i­tal was avail­able to keep the com­pa­nies afloat.

After stum­bling badly dur­ing the first debate, the pres­i­dent made the bailout an early topic dur­ing the sec­ond. He raised it again dur­ing the can­di­dates’ final encounter, which was sup­posed to be about for­eign policy.

“If we had taken your advice … about our auto indus­try, we’d be buy­ing cars from China instead of sell­ing cars to China,” Obama said.

A defen­sive Rom­ney retorted: “I’m a son of Detroit. … I would do noth­ing to hurt the U.S. auto industry.”

But by then, the argu­ment was a moot point for most Ohio vot­ers. Nearly seven in 10 had made up their minds before Sep­tem­ber, the exit polls showed.

With time run­ning out, Rom­ney strate­gists gam­bled by air­ing tele­vi­sion and radio ads in Ohio that claimed Obama’s poli­cies had led GM and Chrysler to build cars in China. The move back­fired, draw­ing sharp rebukes from both companies.

“It was very mis­lead­ing, to be kind. It really upset a lot of our peo­ple,” said Dave Green, pres­i­dent of a United Auto Work­ers local rep­re­sent­ing about 1,500 work­ers at a plant in Lordstown.

Obama won Michi­gan by a com­fort­able mar­gin but took Ohio with just over 50 per­cent of the vote. Despite his stead­fast sup­port of orga­nized labor, many blue-collar autowork­ers were torn because of dis­agree­ments with the pres­i­dent over issues such as guns and abor­tion, Losier said.

That’s where the bailout may have tipped the scales. Union mem­bers who backed the pres­i­dent lob­bied waver­ing co-workers, remind­ing them how dire their sit­u­a­tion had been when Obama took office.

“There was a real belief that they were going to liq­ui­date our facil­ity,” Green said. “Peo­ple were walk­ing around with clip­boards tak­ing inven­tory. It did not look good. The polls were all say­ing, ‘Don’t res­cue the auto com­pa­nies.’ But he did it anyway.”

In the end, Green said, the choice came down to a sim­ple ques­tion: “Who are we going to vote for — the guy who was try­ing to push us down the river or the guy who was throw­ing us a life vest?”

The bailout was pop­u­lar with inde­pen­dents and even some Repub­li­cans, and drew sup­port for Obama out­side the usual Democratic-leaning areas, said Chris Red­fern, chair­man of the Ohio Demo­c­ra­tic Party.

Frank Hocker, a retiree who once worked at a truck man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in Spring­field, said he wasn’t a single-issue voter. But when Obama “stuck his neck out and did the right thing with Gen­eral Motors, you know, that sat­is­fied me.”

Posted by AP News on Nov 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.