Ads run by super PACs are typically harsher than the candidates’ own campaign ads, so here we go.
The super PAC backing President Obama unveiled a brutal new ad against Mitt Romney on Tuesday that blames the Republican candidate for indirectly causing a woman’s death from cancer.
The Priorities USA Action ad features an interview with Joe Soptic, who worked at a steel plant acquired in 1993 by Romney’s former private equity firm Bain Capital.
GST Steel declared bankruptcy and shuttered its Kansas City, Mo.-based plant in 2001 – two years after Romney says he turned over managerial control of Bain.
“When Mitt Romney and Bain closed the plant, I lost my health care and my family lost their health care. And a short time after that, my wife became ill,” he says in the ad.
“I don’t know how long she was sick, and I think maybe she didn’t say anything because she knew that we couldn’t afford the insurance,” Soptic continues. “And then one day she became ill and I took her up to the Jackson County Hospital and admitted her for pneumonia, and that’s when they found the cancer, and by then it was stage four. It was – there was nothing they could do for her. And she passed away in 22 days.”
“I do not think Mitt Romney realizes what he’s done to anyone,”
Soptic concludes. “And furthermore, I do not think Mitt Romney is concerned.”
The Republican candidate left Bain before GST Steel’s 2001 bankruptcy; Obama’s team has argued that the story is fair because Romney was at Bain when the initial investment was made. And Politico notes that Ranae Soptic died in 2006, long after the plant closed.
Romney spokesman Ryan Williams called the ad one of many “discredited and dishonest attacks” meant to “conceal the administration’s deplorable economic record.”