Pro-Gingrich Super PAC ad attacks Romney
A new video produced for a Super PAC supporting presidential candidate Newt Gingrich revisits an old attack on Mitt Romney, depicting the former Mass. governor as a corporate titan with little regard for blue-collar workers.
Winning Our Future's slickly-produced, two-and-a-half-minute trailer was posted online at kingofbain.com before being replaced with a "Trailer coming soon" notice. A spokesman for the organization said what was shown was a "tease," and that a new trailer and film will be released soon.
Through interviews with former employees of the American Paper and Pad Company (Ampad), news clips, and sharply worded on-screen text, the video tells the story of the Marion, Ind.-based office supply company that was forced to close in 1995 after Bain Capital - the private investment firm then headed by Romney - took over Ampad, forced out unionized workers, and cut benefits.
"We had this company that comes in and destroys everything that we ever worked for," an unidentified woman said in an interview included in the video.
Another man makes clear whom he felt was responsible for the layoffs: "The guy that was in charge of Ampad corporation at that time was Mitt Romney," he says on camera, later adding, " Them guys, they don't care about who I am."
The plant's closing and subsequent layoffs have long been a difficult topic for Romney politically. Similar ads focusing on the Ampad story are often credited with sealing Ted Kennedy's victory over Romney in the 1994 Massachusetts Senate race. Just last week, the Democratic National Committee brought a former Ampad union official to Iowa to tell his story of losing his job after Bain took over the company.
Romney's campaign has acknowledged that layoffs, while painful, are sometimes necessary for a company's economic health. They have said the candidate's focus now is on creating a robust economy in which companies can grow without having to resort to such measures.
Seeking to portray Romney as an elitist from Wall Street, on-screen text in the trailer states that Bain made more than $100 million on the Ampad deal, even though the manufacturing company was closed and its workers fired. A photo shows Romney's California beach house on screen as a woman from Marion tells the story of loading up a U-Haul with all of her belongings.
"I was getting ready to leave and I done turned around and I seen my home I had no more," she says on camera. "That was hard. Very hard."
Before the initial trailer was pulled down from the site, it directed viewers to the website whenmittromneycametotown.com and said a longer video would be coming soon.
Full CBS News coverage: Mitt Romney
