Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is doing everything he can to appeal to voters in his native state of Michigan leading up to the February 28th Michigan Republican primary election.
Republican voters sometimes forget that the former Massachusetts governor who co-founded the Boston based Bain Capital was actually born and raised in Michigan.
As former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum continues to surge nationally and actually finishes better in polls of Michigan voters than Mr. Romney, the son of former Michigan governor George Romney is trying to connect with voters in Michigan by stating that he is a “Detroiter.”
‘A Detroiter in the White House’
Mr. Romney wrote an op-ed article in the The Detroit News Tuesday making an appeal to voters in Detroit and throughout Michigan to vote for one of their own.
“I am a son of Detroit. I was born in Harper Hospital and lived in the city until my family moved to Oakland County. I grew up drinking Vernors and watching ballgames at Michigan & Trumbull,” wrote Mr. Romney.
The Bain Capital co-founder goes on to discuss how his father became the president of American Motors in the 1950s and helped build a love of “roaring motors” within his son.
Mr. Romney’s op-ed article also slams President Barack Obama for conducting a bailout of the auto industry in 2009.
After he dropped out of the 2008 Republican primary race, Mr. Romney wrote an op-ed article in The New York Times entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”
In that article he also talked about his Detroit roots, and called upon the Bush administration to allow General Motors, Ford and Chrysler to go through a “managed bankruptcy,” which would allow newly competitive automakers.
Four years later, in his Detroit News op-ed, Mr. Romney takes a different tone in criticizing President Obama for using taxpayer dollars to bailout the auto industry with “chrony capitalism.”
Although he admits that the bailout did help workers keep their jobs, he uses the auto bailout as evidence that the president has mishandled the U.S. economy.
“The U.S. Department of Treasury, i.e., American taxpayers, was asked to become a majority stockholder of GM. And a politically connected and ethically challenged Obama-campaign contributor, the financier Steven Rattner, was asked to preside over all this as auto czar,” wrote Mr. Romney.
“This was crony capitalism on a grand scale. The President tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better,” added the former Massachusetts governor.
Voters in Michigan
How will voters in Michigan respond to Mr. Romney’s call for them to vote for a “son of Detroit?”
Thus far, Mr. Romney has not felt a warm welcoming from his native state, as voters in Michigan chose his rival Mr. Santorum in two polls released Monday.
In an American Research Group poll released Monday, Mr. Santorum finished with 33 percent of the votes, trailed by Mr. Romney at 27 percent.
The former Pennsylvania senator also trounced Mr. Romney in a Public Polling Policy poll of Michigan voters released Monday, as he finished with 39 percent compared to 24 percent for Mr. Romney.
More bad news out of Michigan came from CNN columnist and Detroit native LZ Granderson, whose weekly article published Tuesday slams Mr. Romney for being a “two faced liar.”
Still, Mr. Romney penned the op-ed Tuesday in The Detroit News hoping voters in Michigan will be attracted to his hometown appeal.
“It started with Henry Ford and continued with visionaries like William Durant, Walter Chrysler, and the Dodge Brothers. These giants never envisioned a role for government in their business, but relied on the hard work and commitment of private individuals,” wrote Mr. Romney. “Their dream is alive in all of us who have ever called Detroit home. And with a Detroiter in the White House, that dream can be realized once again.”
The polls and recent opinion article from Mr. Granderson show that the former Massachusetts governor will have to work harder to win over voters in Michigan over the next two weeks leading up to the Michigan Republican primary election.
A loss by Mr. Romney in the state where he was born and raised during a time when Mr. Santorum is surging rapidly could be a major blow to his candidacy hopes.
